Q: What does the personal inflation calculator do?
A: It gives a broad indication of your personal inflation taking into account what you spend your money on; this is different from the official figures which are national averages.
Q: How does it do this?
A: By allowing you to enter your own estimates of what you spend your money on.
Q: Can I use my own estimates of how much the prices of things I buy have changed?
A: No. The calculator uses national average prices which are collected every month by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). Every month around 120,000 prices are collected across around 650 different items by visiting a wide range of shops in about 150 different locations across the country.
Q: Does this mean the official inflation figures are wrong?
A: No, the official figures are national averages. For most purposes, including for managing the economy, averages are what is needed. This is the practice throughout the world, but some people will experience inflation below the average and others above the average.
Q: What is housing depreciation and why is it included in the calculator?
A: The cost of owning your house or flat is a complex area of statistics. The calculator uses the same approach as the official Retail Price Index (RPI). This identifies three elements of the cost of owning your own property:
The cost of day to day housing repairs, maintenance, and DIY;
The cost of any mortgage interest payments (see below);
What is known as housing depreciation, which represents the average cost of major repairs or renovations needed to maintain the property at a constant quality.
Q: Why do I have to enter the value of my outstanding mortgage?
A: The official Retail Price Index (RPI) includes interest payments on mortgages, most people know what their monthly payments are, but not necessarily how much of this is interest. The calculator makes an estimate of the interest based on the current average mortgage rate and the value of your outstanding mortgage.
Q: Why do I have to enter the value of my property?
A: This is needed for calculating depreciation.
Q: Who will see the figures I enter and will they be kept confidential?
A: This information is not recorded or stored by ONS - it is simply used to generate your personal inflation rates.
Q: The calculator give a figure for how much I have spent on buying a car; why? This is nothing like what I have spent.
A. This figure relates to the average annual spend on car purchases by car owners. It would be too complicated to work out different rates for different cars, so in this part of the calculator we assume the average. If you input no expenditure for fuel for transport then we assume that you don’t have a car.
Getting started
