Spending & savings · 2 min
Cash feels like zero risk because the number never goes down. The price does the moving instead. This instrument prices the drain — deposit rate against inflation, compounded over your horizon — and separates the cash that's doing a job (the liquidity floor) from the cash that's just quietly shrinking.
Current accounts, savings, the float that never moves.
Your honest expectation, not the target. The scenarios test ±1.5 points regardless.
Sets the liquidity floor — the cash that's employed, not idle.
Everything is calculated in your browser as you type. Nothing you enter is sent or stored, and no account is needed.
Paying rent to inflation.
$46,478
purchasing power the pile loses over 5 years, at these rates
| The pile, nominal, at the horizon | — |
| What it buys then, in today's money | — |
| Purchasing power lost | — |
| The drain, per year | — |
| Liquidity floor (6 months) — the cash with a job | — |
| If prices run at | Real value at horizon | Lost |
|---|---|---|
| — | — | — |
| — | — | — |
| — | — | — |
The floor exists for a reason. Cash that covers six months of life is insurance, and insurance is allowed to cost something — the drain only becomes waste above the floor.
Chasing yield to escape the drain has its own failure modes: lock-ups when you need the money, and risk that arrives exactly when everything else falls too.
Real rates flip sign. When deposits pay more than inflation, idle cash quietly earns — this page is worth re-reading whenever the central bank moves.
Everything below is calculated from your inputs. Inflation is an assumption you control; the scenarios stress it ±1.5 points regardless.
real_factor = ((1 + deposit) / (1 + inflation)) ^ n
real_value = cash × real_factor
lost = cash − real_value
floor = 6 × monthly_spending
The gauge reads purchasing power lost over the horizon as a share of the pile, the line at the house 5% — the level at which the drain stops being a rounding error and starts being a position. The liquidity floor of six months' spending is a convention: cash below it is employed, not idle.
Limitations. One inflation figure stands in for your personal basket, which may run hotter. What the excess cash should do instead is a conversation for you and an adviser — this page only prices the cost of not having it.