Listen Money Matters - Free Your Inner Financial Badass. All The Stuff You Should Know About Personal Finance.

Our listener Eric has made an appearance in the past to school us on bonds. Today he’s back to teach us about inflation.  What Is Inflation?  Economic concepts can be broken down into the micro and the macro. Micro looks at the smaller picture concerning the behaviors of individual consumers and businesses. Macro is the study of the economy as a whole and where inflation falls.  Inflation is one economic concept that most of us see on a regular basis. It’s the purchasing power of your money, the general increase of the cost of goods and services over a specified period of time. Your dollar that is worth X today will not be worth X five years from now. Consumer Price Index One of the best measures of inflation is consumer price index. CPI measures changes in price of a set of consumer goods and services purchased by households. There are eight major groups that include the costs of things like cereal, rent, dresses, gas, prescription drugs, televisions, college tuition and funeral expenses. The Big Mac inde