Use our inflation calculator to see how increases in the cost of living have affected you in the past year.
Some goods contribute more to the overall inflation rate than others – if some products see a large increase in prices, while others stay more stable, then inflation would be driven by the changing prices in that spending category.
So, how the headline inflation rate affects your household depends on which products you tend to spend your money on. This calculator estimates a personal inflation rate for your household.
How to use the calculator
This calculator estimates a personal inflation rate based on your household spending patterns and compares this to headline inflation. You will be asked how much your household spends on a range of categories including:
- groceries
- housing
- communication
- transport
- leisure
- other costs and expenditure
The calculator will:
- estimate how much your monthly spend has increased over the past year
- show you how this compares with previous years
- break down which items are contributing most to your cost-of-living increases
When thinking about your household spending, consider the spending of every person you live with, including partners and children. If you live in shared accommodation, or do not know the spending patterns of others in your household, just provide your personal share of expenses.
For the most accurate estimate, provide detailed costs for as many of the fields as possible. It is also important to consider irregular purchases, such as household appliances or a new car, and include the average amount this costs you per week, month or year.
For more details on how the calculator works and its limitations, see the further information section.
Office for National Statistics notes
Our measures of inflation are designed to reflect the change in prices of goods and services bought by all households.
The calculator uses the latest available inflation indices, but it cannot predict how prices might affect you in the future. It also cannot account for any changes in your spending habits over time or for variation in prices of products within a category (for example, whether you buy supermarket own-brand or premium-range groceries).
The calculator uses our most comprehensive measure of consumer prices inflation, which is the Consumer Prices Index including owner occupiers’ housing costs (CPIH). The CPIH is identical to the CPI but includes the costs associated with owning, maintaining and living in one’s own home (like repairs and home improvements). It does not measure the change in the value of a house. In this calculator, we use mortgage spend, and repair and maintenance costs, as a proxy for owner occupiers’ housing costs.
The CPIH covers household spending on goods and services but not spending by businesses.
The calculator assumes that expenditure categories are adjusted by inflation. Some expenditure, especially on large items like vehicles, may be fixed over a period, so monthly payments would have remained unchanged.
An indicative average spend for each category is provided to allow users to compare their spending to similar households; the inflation rate for the average household will differ slightly from our headline measure of consumer price inflation, the CPIH, as more thorough weights and methods are used for the CPIH, in line with international guidance.
