Wealth Watch: What's Your Personal Inflation Rate?
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Of all the puzzles facing investors and savers, inflation may be the most perplexing. Economic data suggest prices are rising very, very slowly. The world’s inflation rate is the lowest in more than two years, the OECD said on June 4, and the U.S.’s April inflation rate of 1.1 percent is less than half its already-low rate of a year ago.
Still, we’re anxious about inflation, and we should be, because inflation shrinks our purchasing power and that can push goals out of reach. Consumers surveyed by the University of Michigan worry the inflation rate will nearly triple over the next year.