Personal Inflation Index
The government says inflation is 5.5%. Your actual cost-of-living might be 9%+ — because your spending mix is not the average Indian's. Build your personal CPI from your real spending buckets and see what it means for your retirement corpus.
Your personal inflation rate
7.38%
Based on ₹1.22 L/month total spending
Your Monthly Spending
Set ₹0 for buckets that don’t apply to you.
Housing
₹50.5k/mo · 41%
🏠
Rent / EMI
💡
Electricity, water, gas
🏢
Society maintenance
🧹
Domestic help / cook / driver
Food
₹18.0k/mo · 15%
🛒
Groceries & food at home
🍽️
Eating out & food delivery
Transport
₹8.5k/mo · 7%
⛽
Fuel (petrol/diesel)
🚕
Cabs, autos, public transport
🔧
Vehicle service & insurance
Education
₹19.0k/mo · 16%
📚
School / college fees
✏️
Tuition, coaching, classes
Healthcare
₹7.0k/mo · 6%
🏥
Doctor visits, medicines, hospitals
🛡️
Health & life insurance premiums
Lifestyle
₹10.0k/mo · 8%
📺
OTT, software, gym, memberships
👕
Clothing, shoes, accessories
💇
Salon, grooming, wellness
📱
Phones, gadgets, appliances
Travel
₹9.0k/mo · 7%
🏖️
Domestic travel & weekends
✈️
International travel
What’s Driving Your Personal CPI
Contribution = your spending share × that category’s inflation. The bigger this bar, the more this bucket alone is moving your number.
🏠
Rent / EMI
+1.43 pp
📚
School / college fees
+1.35 pp
🛒
Groceries & food at home
+0.69 pp
🧹
Domestic help / cook / driver
+0.59 pp
🍽️
Eating out & food delivery
+0.44 pp
What This Means In 20 Years
Adjust the horizon →
Today’s annual spend
₹14.64 L
per year
At HEADLINE 5.5%
₹42.72 L
what calculators assume
At YOUR 7.4%
₹60.78 L
₹18.07 L more
Retirement corpus — the brutal version
Using the standard 25× rule (4% safe withdrawal). The headline-CPI number is what every other retirement calculator shows you.
Corpus needed @ headline CPI
₹10.68 Cr
Sunny calculator answer
Corpus needed @ YOUR CPI
₹15.20 Cr
+₹4.52 Cr more (42% bigger)
Use Your Number Elsewhere
Plug
Personal Inflation Index — Why The Government’s 5.5% Is A Lie For You
The RBI’s CPI is a national average — it blends a Delhi-suburb private school with a village Anganwadi, a Mumbai cardiologist’s bill with a PHC consultation, and Brent-priced petrol with subsidised gas. The result is a number that’s structurally lower than the inflation an urban salaried professional with kids in private school actually experiences. Every retirement and SIP calculator on the internet then plugs in that number and produces a corpus target that’s 20–60% too low.
The Personal Inflation Index builds a CPI from your spending mix. If 30% of your budget is private-school fees inflating at 11%, and another 15% is healthcare inflating at 10%, your real cost of living is rising at 8–9% — not 5.5%. That single correction can mean adding ₹2–3 Cr to your retirement target.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do my categories show different inflation rates from MoSPI?
MoSPI publishes sub-indices that are blends of urban + rural and public + private. Our category rates are calibrated to the urban private-sector experience: private school fees (ASSOCHAM survey: 10–12% YoY), urban healthcare OOP (NHA: 9–11%), insurance premiums (IRDAI: 10–14%). For groceries and fuel we use the published MoSPI numbers because those are not significantly distorted.
My rent is fixed for 11 months — does that count?
Yes. Even though your rent doesn't change month-to-month, when your lease renews it will jump at typical urban-renewal rates (we use 5% YoY). For a homeowner with a fixed EMI, the EMI itself doesn't inflate — set EMI to ₹0 and just enter maintenance + utilities.
How is the corpus number calculated?
Standard 25× rule (4% safe withdrawal): corpus = future annual spend × 25. We compute the future annual spend at both the headline CPI and your personal CPI over your chosen horizon. The gap is what every other retirement calculator under-estimates by.
Will my personal inflation rate stay the same?
No — and that's the point. As your income grows, you tend to spend more on the high-inflation buckets (private schooling, healthcare, premium travel). Rerun this periodically. Households often see their personal CPI rise from ~6% in their 20s to 9–10% in their 40s with school-going kids.
Why does private-school inflation matter so much?
A ₹3 lakh school fee inflating at 11% becomes ₹19 lakh in 18 years. The total cost of one child's K-12 education in a top-tier private school in 2024 ₹ is around ₹70–90 lakh; by the time today's newborn graduates, that's ₹3.5–4 Cr per child. This category single-handedly destroys most retirement plans built on 6% inflation.