See both directions of inflation at once: what your money will be worth, and what it's really worth.
Inflation cuts both ways through the same math. A present amount needs to grow just to keep pace with rising prices, and a future amount is worth less once it is translated back into today's purchasing power. This calculator runs both directions from the same three inputs at once.
It is, in face value. What changes is what that $1,000 buys. At 6% average annual inflation, prices after ten years are about 79% higher, so the same shopping basket costs $1,791. Read the other way, $1,000 arriving in ten years buys what $558 buys now.
The rate drives how fast the gap opens. Halve it to 3% and the same $1,000 needs to become $1,344 rather than $1,791, while future money holds $744 of today's value instead of $558.
No. The rate is a figure you enter, applied at the same level for every year in the period.
Actual inflation varies year to year, and a single average rate smooths all of that away. The result answers what happens if prices rise at a constant rate, which is a useful shape to see but is not a record of what any particular economy did.
Inflation moves value in two directions at once, and both are the same math run forwards and backwards. Going forward, a fixed amount of money needs to grow in face value just to keep buying the same things, since prices are rising around it: future value = amount × (1 + rate)ⁿ. Going backward, a fixed future amount is worth less once you translate it into today's purchasing power, for the same reason: present value = amount ÷ (1 + rate)ⁿ. Divide by that same growth factor instead of multiplying by it, and you get what a future dollar is really worth right now.
These two directions are exact mathematical inverses of each other, not two separately-tuned formulas: take the backward result and run it forward through the identical formula, and you land back on the original amount, because dividing by (1 + rate)ⁿ and then multiplying by (1 + rate)ⁿ exactly cancels out. That's why this calculator shows both statements from the same three inputs at once, instead of asking you to pick a direction first.
That's why $1,000 today isn't worth $1,000 in 10 years, in either direction: even a modest 6% average annual inflation rate compounds to roughly 79% more expensive prices over a decade, meaning $1,000 today would need to become about $1,791 in 10 years just to buy the same basket of goods. Read the other way, $1,000 received 10 years from now is only worth about $558 in what it can buy today.