What inflation rate should I use?

It depends on what you are buying. General inflation is one figure; education and healthcare have run well above it in India for years. For those, use a higher rate, and treat the result as a range rather than a point.

Why not just subtract inflation from my return?

Subtraction is an approximation that drifts as rates rise. The correct relation divides rather than subtracts, and the tool prints both so you can see the size of the error for your own numbers.

Does this predict future prices?

No. It applies the rate you supply. Whether that rate turns out to be right is a question about the economy, not about the arithmetic.

How does this change how much I need to save?

Substantially. A goal stated in today's money has to be inflated to the year you will spend it before you work out what to save, or you will arrive with a corpus that buys far less than you planned for.

Inflation Calculator

What today's cost becomes, and what today's money will still buy.

Everything runs inside your browser. Your files never leave your device.

Result

The result appears here as you type.

Ask about Inflation Calculator

Questions about what this tool does, which option to pick, or what it can and cannot handle.

The question you type here is sent to an AI provider to be answered — your files and whatever you put in the tool above are not, and the assistant cannot see them. Answers are generated and can be wrong. The tool itself is not guessing: it runs deterministic code on your device.

About the Inflation Calculator

Inflation works exactly like compound interest, pointed the wrong way. This shows both directions: what something costing a given amount today will cost after a run of years, and what today's money will still buy by then.

The second figure is the more uncomfortable one. At six per cent, money loses about forty-four per cent of its purchasing power over ten years and about seventy per cent over twenty. A retirement corpus that looks generous in today's terms is being planned for a future in which each rupee buys a third of what it does now, which is why any long-horizon plan built on today's expenses without inflating them is badly wrong from the start.

Enter your expected return in the last field and the tool also computes the real return — what you gain after inflation has taken its share. It uses the proper relation rather than subtracting one rate from the other, and prints both so the difference is visible. Subtraction is a decent approximation at low rates and drifts noticeably as the numbers rise; at twelve per cent against six, the honest figure is about 5.66 per cent rather than six.

A caution about which rate to use. Headline inflation is an average across a basket that may look nothing like yours. Education and healthcare costs in India have run well ahead of the general index for years, so a school fee projection or a medical corpus deserves a materially higher rate than a grocery bill does. Running the same amount at two rates and treating the answer as a range is more honest than a single figure.

How to use it

1Enter what the thing costs today and the inflation rate you think applies to it.
2Set the number of years you are projecting over.
3Read both the future cost and what today's money will buy by then.
4Add your expected return to see the real rate, and compare it against the rough subtraction.

Questions

What inflation rate should I use?: It depends on what you are buying. General inflation is one figure; education and healthcare have run well above it in India for years. For those, use a higher rate, and treat the result as a range rather than a point.
Why not just subtract inflation from my return?: Subtraction is an approximation that drifts as rates rise. The correct relation divides rather than subtracts, and the tool prints both so you can see the size of the error for your own numbers.
Does this predict future prices?: No. It applies the rate you supply. Whether that rate turns out to be right is a question about the economy, not about the arithmetic.
How does this change how much I need to save?: Substantially. A goal stated in today's money has to be inflated to the year you will spend it before you work out what to save, or you will arrive with a corpus that buys far less than you planned for.