Purchasing power calculator
How much has inflation eroded the value of your money since 2000?
How to use this tool
Understanding purchasing power erosion
Purchasing power is the real value of money — what it can actually buy. When inflation runs at 5% per year, a basket of goods costing $100 today will cost $105 next year. Over a decade, that same basket costs $163 — a 63% increase. Your money buys 37% less than it did 10 years ago.
Cash that earns no interest loses purchasing power when prices rise. Using this site's annual US series for 2001–2026, including the 2026 estimate, $10,000 held in cash since 2000 has purchasing power equivalent to about $5,191 in 2000 dollars. To buy the same basket in 2026, you would need about $19,266. Results for high-inflation countries can be much larger and should be read alongside the linked source notes.
Methodology
This calculator answers: "how much money would I need today to buy what a given amount bought in an earlier year?" We compound each year's actual inflation rate sequentially — not a flat average — since inflation compounds year over year, the same way interest does.
Converting $10,000 from 2020 to 2023 using this page’s annual rates for 2021, 2022 and 2023 (4.7%, 8.0%, 4.1%):
$10,000 × 1.047 × 1.080 × 1.041 = $11,771 — the same purchasing power as $10,000 had in 2020.
We report local-currency inflation only — no foreign-exchange conversion is applied. Switching currency simply switches which country's CPI series is used. Sources: Data Sources.