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Printed August 25, 2026 · https://trycleartally.com/inflation-calculator
Estimates for educational purposes only — not financial advice. See https://trycleartally.com/disclaimer.
Inflation Calculator
$100 in 2000 is worth
in 2025 dollars
Total price change
Average per year
over 25 years
Based on the U.S. city-average CPI for all urban consumers (CPI-U), the standard headline measure. Your personal inflation depends on what you actually buy — housing, healthcare, and education have historically outpaced the average, so treat this as a broad benchmark, not your exact cost of living. Estimate only, not financial advice.
Inflation Worksheet
Equivalent value
$186.96
Based on CPI-U (U.S. city average). Personal inflation varies. Not financial advice.
Calculated using the standard formulas described at https://trycleartally.com/methodology — for educational estimates only, not a quote or financial advice. Verify with your lender or financial institution before making decisions.
See what a dollar amount from one year is worth in another, using official CPI data — or project a sum forward at an inflation rate you choose.
Reviewed by the ClearTally editorial team · Last updated July 20, 2026 · Methodology & sources
Planning ahead? Inflation is why a retirement projection needs a return well above it to grow in real terms, and why the salary raise calculator asks what your raise is really worth once prices move.
How it works
Prices are measured by the Consumer Price Index (CPI), a running tally of what a typical basket of goods and services costs. Because it's an index rather than a dollar figure, converting money between two years is just a ratio: take the amount, multiply by the later year's index, divide by the earlier year's. That's all “in today's dollars” means — the same buying power, restated at current prices.
The year-to-year mode uses annual-average CPI-U data (all urban consumers), currently covering 1913–2025. The fixed-rate mode ignores the data and instead compounds a rate you pick, which is the better tool for looking forward — nobody knows next decade's inflation, so you model a scenario rather than read off history.
Example: $100 in 1980 had the buying power of about $314in 2020. Prices rose 214% over those 40 years, which works out to an average of 2.90% a year. The yearly figure feels small; the cumulative one is why your grandparents' prices sound made up. That's compounding running quietly in the background of everyday life — the same force behind the compound interest calculator, just working against you instead of for you.
FAQ
The year-to-year figures use CPI-U — the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers, U.S. city average — published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and mirrored on the Federal Reserve's FRED database. This tool uses annual averages, currently through 2025, and it's built into the site rather than fetched live, so it's fast and doesn't change under you mid-session. It refreshes once a year after the December release lands.
Because CPI-U is an average across a fixed basket meant to represent a typical urban household, and nobody is that household exactly. If you rent in an expensive city, have kids in daycare, or spend heavily on healthcare or tuition, your personal inflation has almost certainly run higher than the headline number — those categories have outpaced the average for decades. If you own your home outright and drive little, yours may have run lower. The index is a benchmark, not your receipt.
Use the CPI mode to look backward — 'what was this salary/price/amount worth back then,' where there's real data to draw on. Use the fixed-rate mode to look forward, where there isn't: pick a rate (2–3% is a common long-run assumption, more if you want to be cautious) and see what a sum needs to grow to just to hold its value. A retirement plan that ignores the second calculation quietly overstates what your savings will buy.
Yes — if you convert a later amount back to an earlier year, or across one of the rare stretches when prices fell (deflation, as in parts of the 1930s and 2009), the 'equivalent value' comes out lower and the total change is negative. That's correct: it's telling you the same nominal money bought less in the earlier year, or that prices genuinely dropped over the span.
It's central to both. A raise or an investment return only makes you better off if it beats inflation — a 5% return during 3% inflation is really about 2%. Debt cuts the other way: fixed-rate debt gets cheaper in real terms over time, since you repay it with dollars worth less than the ones you borrowed. The investment return and retirement calculators linked below let you factor an inflation assumption into those projections.