Understanding how inflation affects your purchasing power is crucial for financial planning. This tool helps you visualize the real value of money across different time periods.
Deflation Desk uses the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) to calculate equivalent salary values across different years.
The CPI-U measures the average change in prices paid by urban consumers for a market basket of consumer goods and services. By comparing CPI values between two years, we can determine how much more (or less) money you would need to maintain the same purchasing power.
Equivalent Salary = (Current Salary × Target Year CPI) ÷ Current Year CPIOur primary data source is the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), which has been tracking consumer prices since 1913. We use annual average CPI-U values for our calculations.
Bureau of Labor Statistics - CPIItem prices for the buying power comparison (milk, eggs, gasoline, bread) come from the BLS Average Price Data series, which tracks prices of specific consumer goods over time.
BLS Average Price DataSee what your current salary would have been worth in any year from 1913 to today, adjusted for inflation.
Understand the total percentage change in prices between your comparison years.
Compare how many everyday items (milk, eggs, gas, bread) your salary could purchase then vs now.
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