What Inflation Really Does to Your Cash
Most people think of cash as "safe." It doesn't go up. It doesn't go down. It just sits there. But that's not what actually happens. Inflation silently erodes the value of every dollar you hold.
The real numbers
We built a US Dollar (Cash) tracker using actual Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI data. Here's what $1,000 in cash is worth in real purchasing power from different start years:
- Since 2000: $510 (-49.0%). Nearly half your purchasing power, gone.
- Since 2005: $581 (-41.9%)
- Since 2010: $650 (-35.0%)
- Since 2015: $708 (-29.2%)
- Since 2020: $774 (-22.6%). Six years, a quarter of your value erased.
2021-2022 was brutal
The post-COVID inflation spike hit 8% in 2022 alone. That single year destroyed more purchasing power than any year since the early 1980s. If your savings account was paying 0.5% interest (as many were), you lost over 7% in real terms in one year.
Cash vs everything else
Every stock chart on this site now shows a "Cash" benchmark line. It's the faint red line slowly declining while investments grow. The visual makes the cost of inaction impossible to ignore.
For comparison, the same $1,000 in the S&P 500 since 2000 would be worth over $7,600. That's a 15x difference between investing and holding cash.
What to do about it
This isn't financial advice. But the math is clear: holding cash long-term is guaranteed to lose purchasing power. Even bonds have historically outpaced inflation, though they've struggled in recent years.
Use the calculator to see what any investment would have returned, or browse all investments to explore your options.