The inflation rate is 3.4%. That is not your inflation rate.
The headline number is an average of every household in the country. You are not
every household. Put in roughly what you spend each month and this works out the number that
actually applies to you.
Nothing is sent anywhere. The arithmetic runs in your browser.
What you spend in a month
Round numbers are fine. Leave anything at zero if it does not apply — a category
you do not spend on simply cannot move your rate.
Your inflation rate
—
Average household, same categories: — ·
Official all-items figure: 3.4%
Enter what you spend and the number appears.
What is doing the work
Each bar is how much of your total rate that category is responsible
for — its price change weighted by how much of your money goes there.
Gasoline rose 27.4% this year. Shelter rose 3.0%. And yet shelter moves the national
number far more, because it is 35.6% of the average household's spending and gasoline is 2.9%.
A big number attached to a small share of your money is a small problem. A small number attached
to most of your money is not. This is the entire reason your rate and the headline disagree.
The numbers, weekly
Sir Chomski reads the releases so you do not have to.
One email a week: what changed, what it means for the money in your account, and nothing else.