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Personal Inflation Tracker

The U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI) is built by blending together everyone's spending into one national basket. Enter your own monthly spending by category and find your actual personal inflation rate, based on official BLS category data, not the government's average household.

By , founder and editor Updated

Your monthly spending

Total monthly spending: $0

Lookback period

Your personal inflation
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Official CPI-U, same period
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Your spending mix

    What's driving it

    Each category's share of your total personal inflation figure.

      Your basket vs official CPI-U, 1993-2025

      Both lines rebased to 100 at 1993, using your current spending mix held constant across the whole period.

      Bold line: your weighted personal index. Dashed line: official CPI-U (all items).

      How this tracker works

      The headline inflation number reported in the news is derived from one fixed national basket representing an average urban household, with weights determined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics' estimation of how the average household actually spent. No individual's real expenses match that average perfectly. This tracker uses the same official category-level BLS data, the nine major expenditure groups since at least 1993, and reweights them to reflect the spending proportions you enter, so the result reflects your own basket's historical price trend, as opposed to the national average one.

      A worked example, calculated using the exact data and formulas this page uses: a household spending $1,800 per month on housing, $600 on food, $400 on transportation, $250 on energy, $300 on medical care, $100 on education, $200 on recreation, $100 on apparel and $250 on other goods and services, totaling $4,000 a month in total, would have seen a personal inflation rate of +26.1% over the 5 years from 2020 to 2025, against the official CPI-U's +24.4% for the same time frame. The single biggest driver in that example is Housing, accounting for approximately +12.4% of the overall difference in those rates, the category worth checking first whenever your number and the headline number diverge.

      Why the two numbers usually differ

      Housing and medical care have generally increased faster than the average CPI-U headline over the past two decades, while apparel and, at times, recreation have increased at a lower pace. Anyone whose budget disproportionately includes the higher-priced categories, renters in a competitive market, households with high medical costs, will typically experience a personal rate above the official one. Anyone whose spending leans toward the lower-pacing categories will often experience the reverse. Neither number is wrong; both answer different questions, one about the national average basket, one about yours.

      This fixed-weight method holds your entered spending split constant across the whole lookback period and applies it to how each category's own official index actually moved. That isolates the effect of prices changing from the effect of your own spending habits changing between now and the past, which is a real limitation worth knowing: if your spending mix itself has shifted a lot, say you moved from renting to owning, the further back the lookback period goes, the less accurately that older mix represents your current spending.

      Where to go from here

      If your personal inflation rate is running hot, the contribution list above shows exactly which category to focus on first, and the budget & cash flow tracker is the logical next step for turning that into a plan. If you're trying to determine whether a raise actually kept pace with inflation, the real wage calculator lets you compare two salaries against the same official CPI data, and the US inflation calculator gives you a simplified "what is this dollar amount worth today" answer using the same headline series shown here for comparison.

      Frequently asked questions

      How is this different from the official CPI-U inflation rate?
      The official Consumer Price Index combines individual expenses into a single fixed basket representing the typical urban household; it is no one's actual budget. This tracker applies the same official BLS category-level data, but weights it based on your entered spending mix, so someone who spends most of their money on housing and medical care, both of which have increased much faster than the overall CPI in recent years, will normally have a personal rate higher than the official one, while someone who spends more on categories like apparel or recreation, which have increased less rapidly, will generally see a lower one.
      Where do the category numbers come from?
      Nine major expenditure groups of official BLS CPI-U, averaged across U.S. cities, not seasonally adjusted: Housing, Food & beverages, Transportation, Energy & fuel, Medical care, Education & communication, Recreation, Apparel, and Other goods & services. Each group is its own published BLS series, listed under Data sources below, last refreshed 2026-08-16.
      Why does Energy overlap with Housing and Transportation?
      BLS defines Energy & fuel as a cross-cutting special aggregate, covering both home energy (electricity, natural gas, heating oil) and motor fuel, drawn from pieces of what Housing and Transportation would otherwise include. It is not additional spending on top of those categories. Put your utility bills and gas or EV charging costs under Energy, and use Housing and Transportation for rent or mortgage and vehicle costs excluding fuel, so nothing gets counted twice.
      What is a "fixed-weight" personal inflation rate?
      It is the same general approach behind how the official CPI-U itself is calculated between its periodic weight updates: your spending mix, as a percentage of your total, is held constant and applied to how each category actually moved over the period, rather than recalculating your mix every year. This is standard for this kind of estimate, because it isolates the effect of prices changing from the effect of your own spending habits changing, which is a different question.
      Why doesn't this convert to my local currency?
      Every figure comes from official U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, so this tool only reflects U.S. city-average prices in U.S. dollars. Relabeling the currency would misleadingly imply the underlying price data was somehow international; it isn't. Like the site's regular inflation calculator, this tool is only applicable to U.S. pricing.
      Is this my exact personal inflation rate?
      It's a genuinely better estimate of inflation than the national headline figure for anyone with a spending mix differing from the average, but it still uses national average prices within each category, not the specific prices you personally paid. Rent in one city can rise very differently from rent in another even though both feed into the same national Housing index. Treat the result as a meaningfully more personalized estimate, not a lab-precise measurement of your own receipts.
      Is my spending data private?
      Yes. Your entered amounts are stored only in this browser's local storage and used entirely client-side against the baked BLS data already shipped with the page. Nothing is sent anywhere.

      Method and limitations

      Your personal rate is a fixed-weight estimate: it uses a weight that does not change over time, reflecting today's spending split held constant and applied to how each official BLS category index actually moved. It still uses national average prices within each category, not your own receipts, so it is a meaningfully better estimate than the headline figure for anyone whose spending mix differs from average, not a measurement of your literal cost of living. "Energy & fuel" is a cross-cutting BLS special aggregate spanning both home energy and motor fuel; report them separately from what you enter under Housing and Transportation so nothing is double-counted. Covers the United States only.

      Data sources

      This tool runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you enter is sent to us or stored.

      For general information and education only. This is not financial advice and not a recommendation to buy or sell anything. This tool is provided as is, with no warranty of accuracy: like any software it can contain errors, so always verify figures against your broker or the original source before acting on them. Trading and investing carry risk, including the risk of losing more than your initial outlay.

      Spotted an error? Email [email protected] and it will be corrected. Maintained by Joey van Diest.