How can I find the current inflation rate?

Knowing inflation rates and trends in as important part of your finances. If you know the rates and you know the trends you can better plan for your future. Someday things will not be worth what they are worth today; they will probably be much more expensive. You want to plan you finances around that possibility so that when the time arrives you are not left with too little money to take care of yourself and your family with. If you plan for inflation rates in the future you can plan to save more today so that when that times comes you will still have enough money saved to cover your costs.

Finding out inflation rates and trends is not very difficult. The government calculates and displays inflation rates as do many other companies. These rates are usually displayed month by month and year by year. To find those that calculate inflation rates all you have to do is look them up on the internet. Some companies give more detailed calculations than others. The government usually takes inflation rates to the nearest decimals. Other companies will take the inflation rates to the nearest two decimals to show a more accurate counting.

Taking the numbers to the nearest two decimal places rather than the nearest one decimal place actually does give a much more accurate counting. If you can you will want to find the chart of a company that takes the rates to the nearest two decimal places. That way you can get a better view of what you are planning for.

Some companies will not just show you the inflation rates but they will also provide links to places that can show you inflation trends. Knowing the trends is important because they help you to see the big picture rather than the month by month picture. The month by month picture is good, but it cannot predict what will be happening in fifteen years while studying the trends can. If there is a common, reoccurring trend you will want to know what that is so that you can plan for it to happen again.

Say you just want the inflation rates on houses since last year. Maybe you want to know how much the cost of your home has inflated since you bought it. There is an easy formula for calculating these inflation rates for your self. If you want to calculate them for your self you are going to need the current Consumer Price Index (CPI). This index is generated monthly by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The CPI will tell you the costs of different items, such as houses. One month they might be worth one million dollars and one year later in that same month they might be inflated to one million five hundred thousand.

To find the inflation rate you simply subtract the first price from the second. In this case the rate went up by five hundred thousand points. You then divide this number by the original price, one million. You will then get a decimal; in this case you will get .5. If you multiply that decimal by one hundred, it will give you the percentage rate that homes have increased. This is a very unlikely example, but for this particular example the rate would have gone up fifty percent in a year.

This process was not difficult in the slightest and it is something that would be very easy for you to do on your own. Maybe you want to know how much money to save so that you can buy a home in ten years.calculating inflation rates in this way can give you a good idea of just how much you might need to save.