Reweight the Nowflation CPI Gauge's 3.45% basket to your life — renter or owner, how much you drive, eat out, healthcare use, tuition — and localize electricity and piped gas to your state. Same public component data, transparent multipliers.
The official CPI weights one basket for everyone; nobody buys exactly that basket. This page takes the same 21 Nowflation components behind the Gauge — each with its October 2026 weight and year-over-year change — and reweights them to five answers about your life, so the number it returns is your inflation rate computed from the same public component data, not a new model. Summing weight × year-over-year change across the components with the official weights gives 3.32% for October 2026 — the page's reference figure, and the one every profile below is compared with. The Nowflation CPI Gauge (3.45%) aggregates the same components on the BLS December chain, where a component counts in proportion to its weight and its price change since December, so a component whose price has risen fast since December counts for more there than in this fixed-weight average; today the Gauge minus this average is +0.13pp. Both price the owners'-equivalent weight on the all-tenant rent index, so a renter's basket and the average one differ only through the other answers.
After the multipliers the weights are renormalized to 100% and applied to every monthly frame back to 2018, so the page shows your rate through time, not only today. The multipliers are deliberately simple and documented; the page calls itself an approximation, and it is one.
| Profile | Personal inflation rate | vs the official basket |
|---|---|---|
| Renter, average driver, average dining and healthcare, no tuition (the page default) | 3.32% | 0.00pp |
| Owner with a mortgage, heavy commuter | 4.56% | +1.24pp |
| Owner, home paid off, mostly cooks, light healthcare use | 3.66% | +0.34pp |
| Renter who does not drive, eats out a lot, paying tuition | 2.36% | -0.96pp |
| Heavy healthcare use, otherwise average | 3.22% | -0.10pp |
For the default profile the largest contributions come from Motor Fuel (2.9% of the basket at 40.16%, +1.16pp), Shelter: Rent (34.0% of the basket at 1.97%, +0.67pp), Food Away (5.4% of the basket at 3.46%, +0.19pp), Transportation Services (6.3% of the basket at 2.77%, +0.18pp), Food at Home (8.3% of the basket at 1.77%, +0.15pp).
The second step swaps the national electricity and piped-gas readings for your state's EIA residential rates (the AAA state pump prices do not have a year of history yet, so motor fuel stays national), weighted by your basket, and reports the difference in percentage points. In July 2026 (EIA, the latest month), residential electricity was rising fastest in Hawaii (+21.9%), New Hampshire (+16.7%), Maine (+15.8%) and slowest in Connecticut (-12.5%), Louisiana (-3.0%), Utah (-2.5%); regular gasoline (AAA, October 18, 2026) is dearest in California ($6.18), Hawaii ($5.64), Nevada ($5.4) and cheapest in North Carolina ($3.62), Georgia ($3.74), Texas ($3.79). The full state ranking is on the inflation-by-state page.
The national Gauge (3.45%) is this calculation with the official weights and the live-priced components; the official CPI (3.7% for September 2026) is the same basket priced by the BLS survey with its shelter lag. Your number differs from both for one reason only — the weights — which is why the page shows the contribution of each component rather than a single figure.
Zillow data: Data Provided by Zillow Group.