Interactive · Debasement Basement Tools
How much is inflation costing your savings?
At this year’s pace of about 3.9%, $10,000 of cash loses about $388 of buying power a year — roughly $1.06 a day, every day, including weekends. Kept since 2020, the same $10,000 now buys what $7,739 bought then. Measured in gold rather than in groceries, it has lost 55.7%.
Outside the US? The figures above are for US dollars and the US Consumer Price Index. Pick your currency below and the calculator switches to your own country’s official price index: the UK’s ONS, Statistics Canada, the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Stats NZ, Eurostat (Ireland’s CSO for Irish readers), Switzerland’s FSO, Mexico’s INEGI or Stats SA. Gold is priced in your currency too.
Cash kept since 2020 has lost this much of its buying power by 2026 (estimated), by each country’s own official index: 23.3% in the UK, 18.5% in Canada, 21.2% in Australia, 21.9% in New Zealand, 20.5% in the euro area and 7.0% in Switzerland.
Savings inflation calculator
Before tax. A checking account or a mattress pays 0.
$10,000 held since 2020
It now buys what $7,739 bought in 2020.
In 2020, $10,000 bought 5.65 ounces of gold. Today it buys 2.50. To buy what it bought then, you would need $12,921. Like a bag of chips: same bag, same price, more air inside.
Boiled off since midnight, still going
$0.0000
At 3.9% a year, $10,000 loses about $1.06 of buying power a day.
How this is worked out
- 1. Prices rose by the ratio of the Consumer Price Index now to the CPI in the year you chose: 334.4 ÷ 258.8 = 1.292.
- 2. Your cash, plus any interest compounded once a year, is divided by that ratio to give its buying power in that year’s dollars.
- 3. In gold: ounces your cash bought at that year’s average gold price, against ounces it buys at today’s price.
- 4. The ticking figure uses this year’s CPI pace, 334.4 ÷ 321.9 − 1 = 3.88%, spread evenly over the 31,557,600 seconds of an average year.
CPI-U annual averages from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis; 2026 is an estimate from second-quarter data and will be replaced by the full-year figure. Gold: annual averages to 2025, then spot, as dated on the card. Everything is computed in your browser; nothing you type is sent anywhere.
Sources: the CPI is the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ CPI-U, all items, US city average (series CUUR0000SA0), as annual averages in the Minneapolis Fed’s table. Gold annual averages from metalcharts.org; today’s gold from gold-api.com, with a stored fallback of $3,996.90 an ounce (October 24, 2026). Limits: the CPI is an average basket, so your own prices may have risen faster or slower; interest is before tax; a year’s average gold price hides the swings inside that year. Data updated October 2026.
Worked examples
CPI-U annual averages (2026 estimated from second-quarter data) and gold at $3,996.90 an ounce (October 24, 2026).
- $1,000 kept in cash since 2000 now buys what $514.95 bought then: 48.5% of its buying power gone by the CPI, 93.0% measured in gold.
- $10,000 kept since 2010 now buys what $6,522 bought then, a loss of 34.8% by the CPI and 69.4% in gold.
- $100,000 kept since 2020 now buys what $77,392 bought then. Matching its old buying power would take $129,212.
- $10,000 since 2020 earning 4.5% a year has grown to $13,023, which buys what $10,078 did in 2020. Its buying power rose 0.8% by the CPI, yet it still lost 42.3% measured in gold.
Inflation is a tax with no form to fill in
Nobody sends you a bill for inflation. Your bank statement says $10,000 at the start of the year and $10,000 at the end, and the number is perfectly accurate. What changes is everything else: the groceries, the rent, the car repair. The money is still there. It just buys less of the world each month, the way an ice cube in a glass is still technically all there until you notice you are drinking water.
That is why this page puts a ticking number on it. A loss of 3.9% a year sounds like a rounding error. A loss of about a dollar a day on ten thousand dollars, visibly counting up while you read, sounds like what it is: a slow leak in the one asset most people are told is “safe.” Cash is safe from going down in dollars. It is not safe from the dollar going down.
None of this means cash is a mistake. An emergency fund in cash does its job precisely because its dollar value does not swing; that stability is what you are paying the inflation for. The point is to know the price. This page is the receipt.
What interest rate beats inflation?
Any rate above the inflation rate keeps your buying power growing; any rate below it shrinks it more slowly than cash in a drawer. The gap between the two is called the real interest rate: a savings account paying 4% while prices rise 3.9% has a real return of about 0.1%, before tax. Tax is charged on the whole 4%, not on the 0.1%, which is the part of the arithmetic that rarely makes the brochure.
Type a rate into the calculator to see it work. The card shows your balance growing in dollars and, beside it, what that balance can actually buy. When the second number is smaller than what you put in, the interest has been a consolation rather than a return.
Why measure it in gold as well?
The CPI is the official measure, and this page uses it as the headline. It is also a basket the government chooses and reweights, and plenty of people suspect it runs low. Rather than argue about the basket, this page shows a second ruler that nobody in Washington maintains: what your cash buys in gold, at the year’s average price then and at spot now.
Gold is not a perfect measure either, and here is the bear case for my own position: it swings far more than the price of bread, so the gold figure depends heavily on the starting year. Pick a year when gold was expensive, such as 2011 or 1980, and cash looks much better against it. That is why the page shows both rulers side by side and lets you choose the year. If both say your cash lost ground, it did.
The rule of 72, applied to your cash
Divide 72 by an annual percentage and you get, roughly, the years it takes to double. Run it on inflation and you get the years it takes for prices to double, which is the same as the years it takes your idle cash to lose half its buying power. At 3.9% that is about 18.5 years. At 2%, the Federal Reserve’s target, it is 36. Either way it is shorter than most mortgages, and much shorter than a retirement.
Related: what a dollar was worth the year you were born, and the salary inflation calculator, which does the same arithmetic on your pay.
Questions people actually ask
How much is inflation costing my savings?
Multiply your cash by the inflation rate. At this year’s CPI pace of about 3.9%, estimated from 2026 data, $10,000 in cash loses about $388 of buying power a year, or roughly $1.06 a day. If the cash earns interest, subtract the interest rate from the inflation rate first.
How do you calculate the effect of inflation on savings?
Divide the Consumer Price Index today by the CPI in the year you started saving, then divide your balance by that ratio. The result is what your money buys today in the starting year’s dollars. $10,000 kept since 2020 buys what about $7,739 bought in 2020, a loss of 22.6%.
How much purchasing power has the dollar lost since 2020?
About 22.6% by the Consumer Price Index: prices rose by a factor of 1.292 between the 2020 average and the 2026 estimate, so $1 now buys what about 77 cents bought in 2020. Measured in gold, a dollar buys about 56% less than in 2020.
What interest rate do I need to beat inflation?
A rate higher than the inflation rate, which this year is running at about 3.9% by the CPI. The difference between the two is your real return. Tax is charged on the whole interest payment, so after tax you need a somewhat higher rate to come out level.
Is cash a safe place to keep money during inflation?
Cash is safe from falling in dollar terms, which is why it suits an emergency fund. It is not protected from inflation: each year it buys less unless it earns at least the inflation rate. This page shows the cost; it does not recommend what to do about it.
How long does it take inflation to cut the value of money in half?
Divide 72 by the inflation rate. At about 3.9% a year it takes roughly 18.5 years for prices to double, and so for idle cash to lose half its buying power. At the Federal Reserve’s 2% target it takes about 36 years.
Why does this calculator measure inflation in gold too?
Because the CPI is one official basket of goods that some people believe understates inflation. Gold is a second measure that no government maintains. It is more volatile than consumer prices, so the result depends heavily on the starting year, and the page shows both measures side by side.
Which inflation figure does this calculator use?
The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U), annual averages, as published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. The 2026 figure is an estimate from second-quarter data and will be replaced by the full-year number.
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