Use our gold vs inflation calculator to see the impact of holding gold vs cash. Pick an amount and a starting year to see the value in cash, earned interest in a high-yield savings account, or if you had converted it to gold.
Starting amount
Starting year
Value over time, indexed to 100 at the starting year
What this shows: dollar vs gold
Prices keep going up so the dollar buys less than it used to. That’s why you’ll see that your cash number is lower than what you started with. The money is still there but it just down doesn’t go as far.
The savings account is an option because it pays interest but that interest doesn’t always keep up with inflation depending on the time frame that you’re looking at.
You’ll notice that gold gets priced in dollars so when the dollar buys less, gold costs more. Gold doesn’t pay interest but it can be a safe-haven asset to preserve and protect the value of your dollars.
You can change the starting year to see adjustments in the numbers and run different scenarios.
Cash figures use the annual average CPI-U for the U.S. city average from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, with the July 2026 index of 333.918 standing in for today. Savings figures compound annually using each year’s average 3-month Treasury bill rate, a common stand-in for a safe interest-bearing account rather than any specific bank’s APY, taken from NYU Stern’s historical returns dataset and carried forward with a recent short-term rate of 4.15% for the partial 2026 stretch. Gold figures use annual average gold prices from the National Mining Association’s “Historical Gold Prices, 1833 to Present,” the London Bullion Market Association, and the World Gold Council, with an August 2026 spot price of $4,455 an ounce standing in for today. These are estimates for illustration, not investment advice, and they get updated as new data comes out.
