Change one thing that could happen next, from oil and tariffs to the Fed, and see roughly how much it would push inflation up or down over six months and a year. A guessing game of sorts, not a reliable prediction. The numbers come from rough starter estimates, and real inflation depends on far more than eight dials.
Inflation is how fast prices are rising across the whole economy. We already know what it is today. This page asks a narrower question: if one thing happens now, how much would it push inflation up or down over the next six months and the next year, compared with wherever inflation would otherwise have been? It never tries to say what inflation will actually be. Every dial is a thing that can happen, never a price reading: where the oil price is headed, the Fed's interest rate, new tariffs on imports, extra government spending, how fast the money supply is growing, how fast paychecks are growing, the unemployment rate, and the dollar against other currencies. A dial left alone adds nothing. Oil is the biggest short-term swing, tariffs and the dollar work through imports, and the Fed works slowly, as do money and government spending. The interactive version shows each push as a bar, rounded to about a tenth of a point, so you can add the bars up yourself.
A simplified teaching model with starter estimates, not a forecast or investment advice. Nothing you enter is stored.
The second tab is a purchasing-power calculator. Enter an amount, a yearly inflation rate, and a number of years. The calculator compounds that one rate every year and shows what today's money would cost, and buy, later. One constant rate, compounded every year: arithmetic at the rate you picked, not a forecast of prices. How it works, with a worked example: the inflation calculator guide.
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