What is inflation
costing your cash?
Every year your dollars stay static in a bank account, price inflation and monetary expansion erode their real buying power. Explore your potential purchasing-power loss over 1 to 30 years — backed by official ABS and RBA data.
Your bank account balance on paper (unchanged nominal dollars).
What your savings will actually purchase in today's prices at 4% p.a.
Purchasing Power Trajectory
Nominal Cash Balance vs. Constant-Dollar Purchasing Power
See What Inflation Means for Your Household
A static balance calculator only shows part of the picture. Create a free CashedUp account to protect your real-world finances:
The Silent Money Trap: Nominal vs. Real Dollars
Your bank balance shows nominal dollars. But your real wealth is measured by what those dollars can actually buy at the checkout.
Compounding Erosion
At 4.0% inflation, $100,000 loses half its purchasing power in less than 18 years. You still have six figures on paper, but only buy $50,000 worth of lifestyle.
Monetary Expansion Gap
When broad money grows faster than real economic output, asset prices (housing, shares) outpace cash. Liquid savings face continuous relative dilution.
The Time Machine Solution
CashedUp maps your incoming salary, bills, and savings targets along a chronological timeline — projecting both your nominal cash and your real future purchasing power.
Consumer Price Inflation (CPI) vs. Broad Money Growth (RBA)
Average annualised growth rates across historical 5-year benchmark cycles. These discrete milestone samples provide long-term historical context and are deliberately rendered as discrete bars rather than an interpolated continuous line to prevent misleading readings across sparse observations.
The Australian Consumer Price Index (ABS Catalogue 6401.0) measures the quarterly and monthly change in prices of a fixed basket of goods and services purchased by typical Australian households (food, housing, transport, healthcare, education).
RBA Table D3 measures the expansion of currency and deposit liabilities created by the Australian banking system. While money expansion can place upward pressure on asset and goods prices, it does not equal measured consumer inflation.
Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS)
Consumer Price Index, Australia (Catalogue 6401.0)
Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA)
Table D3 — Monetary Aggregates (Seasonally Adjusted)
The CashedUp Inflation Time Machine provides mathematical illustrations of compound inflation erosion based on publicly published Australian economic data. CashedUp Finance Pty Ltd does not provide personal financial product advice. Past movements in consumer price indexes or monetary aggregates do not guarantee future inflation outcomes.
Semantic distinction notice: The Consumer Price Index (CPI) reflects observed consumer price changes. M3 and Broad Money measure monetary aggregate growth and do not represent measured consumer price inflation. Combined rate scenarios are strictly hypothetical stress tests.
Data integrity & sampling notice: Historical comparison charts present discrete 5-year cycle milestones drawn from official ABS Catalogue 6401.0 and RBA Table D3 publications. They do not constitute a continuous monthly time series. To prevent misleading interpolation, comparisons are rendered as discrete bars rather than continuous lines.
See What Inflation Means for Your Household
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