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Inflation and the Dollar

What a dollar buys, why it buys less each year, and how the official numbers are built. Start with the basics of the Consumer Price Index, then use the tools to see what inflation has done to money from any year.

CalculatorInflation CalculatorWhat money from any year is worth today.Open the calculator

Guides

Guide · 28 Oct 2026The CPI Report: Release Schedule and How to Read ItWhen the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes the Consumer Price Index, what the September 2026 report showed, and which lines of the release carry the signal.Guide · 28 Oct 2026CPI Explained: What the Consumer Price Index Measures and How It Is CalculatedThe index behind Social Security raises, I bond rates and most inflation headlines: how it is put together, whose spending it reflects, and where its critics have a point.Guide · 28 Oct 2026What Is Stagflation?The word for rising prices in a stalling economy, the decade that defined it, and what the latest US figures say about whether it is back.Guide · 28 Oct 2026Deflation vs Inflation (and Disinflation)What deflation is, how rarely the US has had it since the 1950s, why central banks treat it as worse than mild inflation, and what Japan's long bout of falling prices showed.Guide · 28 Oct 2026What Causes Inflation: Demand, Costs, Money and ExpectationsThe five forces that push prices up, how each showed in the 2021 to 2023 surge, and which of them sit behind the 3.7 percent inflation rate of September 2026.Guide · 28 Oct 2026PCE Inflation: The Fed's Preferred Gauge, and How It Differs From CPIThe price index behind the Federal Reserve's 2 percent target: the latest BEA figures, how it is built differently from the CPI, and the next release dates.Guide · 28 Oct 2026Inflation Rate 2026: Month by Month, and What Drove ItEach monthly CPI reading for 2026 with its release date, the energy shock behind the rise, how the Federal Reserve responded, and when the next figures land.Guide · 28 Oct 2026Shrinkflation: Smaller Packages, Same PriceWhat shrinkflation is, how the Bureau of Labor Statistics catches it in the consumer price index, what its research shows about the size of the effect, and where it is most common.

Tools

CalculatorReal Return CalculatorWhat a gain was worth after inflation.ChartInflation Rate by YearAnnual CPI inflation from 1914 to the latest release.

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