Personal inflation calculator

How much more does your own basket cost than a year ago? Your spending mix × official price changes by category (BLS CPI-U, August 2026). Exact amounts or rough percentages; nothing leaves your browser.

Your inflation 3.15%officialCPI 3.4%top driver: Owning a home (owners' equivalent rent)

Enter what you spend a month in each group. Price change: August 2026 vs a year earlier, BLS CPI-U.

Groceries (food at home)+2.19%8%Restaurants & takeout (food away from home)+3.37%6%Alcohol & tobacco+3.24%2%Clothing & shoes+3.61%2%Rent+2.75%8%Owning a home (owners' equivalent rent)+3.08%25%Electricity, gas, water & trash+4.97%4%Furniture & household supplies+1.98%4%Gasoline+27.4%2%New & used cars-0.41%8%Car repair & maintenance+5.24%2%Car insurance-5.13%2%Public transit & airfares+15.37%2%Hotels & lodging away from home+3.25%2%Doctors, hospitals & health insurance+2.48%6%Prescription & OTC drugs-2.69%2%Phone & internet+1.13%4%Tuition & childcare+3.34%2%Recreation+2.68%6%Personal care+3.83%2%Pets+3.25%2%Everything else+3.4%

Your personal inflation: 3.15%

Official CPI (August 2026): 3.4% · yours is 0.25 pts lower

The same purchases cost about $156 a month more than a year ago.

Biggest contributors

Owning a home (owners' equivalent rent)+0.79 pts
Gasoline+0.54 pts
Public transit & airfares+0.30 pts

Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U), U.S. city average, not seasonally adjusted; average-basket weights — BLS relative importance, December 2025. Data retrieved 2026-10-13. BLS.gov cannot vouch for the data or analyses derived from these data after the data have been retrieved from BLS.gov. Tratobor can fill in your own shares from your tracked spending.

How it works

Personal inflation is a weighted average: for each category, your share of spending times that category's price change over the year, summed up. That's how the official CPI is built too — BLS weights each category by what the average household spends; here the weights are yours. The average basket uses BLS relative importance (December 2025), so with it the result lands near the headline 3.4%.

“Amounts” uses 22 categories. “Rough %” groups them into 8 broad ones; a broad group's price change is the average of its parts weighted by the basket (or by the profile you picked). Retiree, under-25 and income profiles are real baskets from the Consumer Expenditure Surveys (2024); driver, traveler and the like are estimates.

Amounts and shares are computed on this page and never sent anywhere. “Share your result” puts only the final numbers in the link.

Data sources

Data retrieved 2026-10-13. BLS.gov cannot vouch for the data or analyses derived from these data after the data have been retrieved from BLS.gov.

Why your rate differs from the official one, with worked examples: the personal inflation rate guide.