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Inflation calculator: what your money will be worth
Inflation calculator: see what your money will be worth in 10, 20 or 30 years, and how much you'd need then to buy what it buys today.
$100,000 left sitting in a checking account will have the buying power of $55,367.58 in twenty years, if inflation runs 3% a year. No money leaves the account. The statement still says $100,000. What changed is what that number gets you at the register. Enter your own amount and term below and the calculator gives you both readings: what your money will be worth, and how much you would need by then to buy what it buys today.
What will my money be worth in 20 years?
Divide the amount by (1 + inflation) raised to the number of years. With $100,000, inflation at 3% and a twenty year term, that is 100,000 divided by 1.03 to the power of 20, which comes out to $55,367.58. The other $44,632.42 did not go anywhere. It was never spent and it was never taxed. Prices moved, and the same dollars stopped reaching as far.
Ten years is the term most people actually plan around, and it is gentler. At 3%, $100,000 keeps $74,409.39 of its buying power after a decade. That is the part worth sitting with for a second, because a quarter of your money quietly evaporating is not the sort of thing that shows up on a statement anywhere.
| Inflation | In 5 years | In 10 years | In 20 years | In 30 years |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2% | $90,573.08 | $82,034.83 | $67,297.13 | $55,207.09 |
| 3% | $86,260.88 | $74,409.39 | $55,367.58 | $41,198.68 |
| 5% | $78,352.62 | $61,391.33 | $37,688.95 | $23,137.74 |
| 7% | $71,298.62 | $50,834.93 | $25,841.90 | $13,136.71 |
At 3% a year, $100,000 buys $55,367.58 worth of goods after twenty years. Nothing has to go wrong for that to happen. No market crash, nobody stealing anything. It is what a savings account does across two completely uneventful decades.
What inflation rate should I use in the calculator?
Start with the latest official number for your country, then run it again two points higher to see the uncomfortable version. In the United States the Consumer Price Index is published monthly by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and that is the figure to look up. This page does not print it, on purpose: it changes every month, and a stale number sitting in an article is how people end up planning against a year that already ended.
For long horizons, 3% is the conventional planning assumption in the US, which is why the calculator opens there. The Federal Reserve targets 2% over the longer run, so 2% is the optimistic lane and 3% leaves a little room for the target being missed. Anything above 5% is a stress test, not a forecast.
One honest warning about the method. The calculator applies the same rate every single year, and real inflation does nothing of the kind. It runs hot for a stretch, cools off, occasionally goes somewhere nobody modeled. What this gives you is the order of magnitude of the problem, which is the part almost nobody has a feel for. It will not tell you the price of anything in 2046.
How much will I need to buy the same thing later?
Same formula, flipped. Instead of dividing you multiply, so to buy in twenty years what $100,000 buys today you would need $180,611.12. That is $80,611.12 on top of what you have, just to stand still. Over ten years the same target is $134,391.64.
This is the reading that changes decisions, because most goals are written as a fixed number and almost none of them are fixed. Rent of $2,000 a month becomes $3,612.22 at 3% over twenty years. A $35,000 car you are saving five years for lands closer to $40,574.59 by the time you are actually buying it. Switch the toggle at the top of the calculator to run your own goal this way.
Why this matters if you are saving for something
Because it changes the question you are asking. A savings target is not a number you walk toward while it waits for you. It moves while you save, and the longer you take the more it moves. Putting away $30,000 over three years leaves you short if the thing you wanted went up 3% a year in the meantime.
Which gives you a rule you can actually use. Under a year, ignore inflation. That money needs to be safe and reachable because it has a date on it, and 3% of one year is noise next to the risk of tying it up. Past three years, ignoring it starts costing real money, especially when the thing you are buying is also getting more expensive while you save.
Where this tool stops being the right one is worth saying plainly. It only projects forward. If your question is what $100 in 1990 is worth in today’s dollars, you need the full historical CPI series, and the BLS runs a free calculator that does exactly that, better than we could. And if you want to see returns fighting back against inflation rather than just watching the loss, that is the compound interest calculator, which handles the other side of the same scale.
The reason any of this is more than arithmetic is that you have to know what you are spending now before a projection means anything. That is what AI Money does. You log expenses by sending a WhatsApp message, talking to it, or photographing the receipt, and on Android it can read the transaction texts your bank already sends you. There is a free plan that stays free, and Pro is $3.99 a month or $32.99 a year. It does not import from your bank today and it does not split bills with friends, so if automatic bank sync is the feature you are shopping for, we are the wrong app and the budgeting app comparison will point you somewhere better. Otherwise it is available here.
Frequently asked questions
Divide the amount by (1 + inflation) raised to the number of years. With $100,000, 3% inflation and twenty years, that is 100,000 divided by 1.03 to the power of 20, which gives $55,367.58 of buying power. To answer the reverse question, how much you will need to buy the same thing, multiply instead of dividing: $180,611.12.
At 3% annual inflation it holds $55,367.58 of today’s buying power, so it loses about 45%. At 2% it holds $67,297.13, and at 5% only $37,688.95. The account balance itself never changes. Those figures assume the money earns nothing at all, which is roughly what a checking account does.
Use the latest official figure for your country and then repeat the calculation two points higher to see the bad scenario. In the United States the Consumer Price Index comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and is updated monthly. For long horizons, 3% is the common US planning assumption and the Federal Reserve targets 2% over the longer run. This page deliberately does not print a current rate, because a stale one would have you planning against last year.
No, and that is a deliberate limit. Converting dollars from a past year into today’s dollars requires the complete historical CPI series, and a series that has not been updated returns wrong answers that look precise. The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes a free CPI inflation calculator for that job. This tool projects forward using whatever rate you type in.
Under a year you can ignore it, and that money should stay safe and liquid because it has a spending date attached. Past three years it moves the result enough that leaving it out changes the plan, particularly when whatever you are saving for is also rising in price. A five year car fund at 3% needs roughly 16% more than the sticker price you saw on day one.
Yes. You can pick euros, Brazilian reais, Mexican, Colombian, Chilean or Argentine pesos and Japanese yen, each with the symbol and thousands separator its own country uses. The arithmetic is identical everywhere. What changes from country to country is the inflation rate you need to type in, so look up the local one rather than reusing the US default.
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- US Bureau of Labor Statistics: Consumer Price Index
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Updated August 23, 2026
