What rate of inflation should you assume for purposes of clients’ long-range planning, including retirement needs analysis?

If you are focused only on the Consumer Price Index (CPI), you might assume a rate such as 2.0 percent, the average annual CPI increase over the last 10 years.

Read: 10 states where $100 buys the least

However, there is growing evidence the CPI understates the real rate of inflation many clients are facing.

So, perhaps a better question to ask is: Which clients may be facing more inflation than they think?

For the answer, look to several alternative calculations of U.S. inflation, none of which are published by the U.S. Government. Here they are:

#1: John Williams’ Shadow Government Statistics

This is the oldest among the three. Williams has continued to calculate CPI data based on the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ methodologies before modifications were made in 1990. His data indicates that without the 1990 changes, the CPI would have averaged about 3-4 percent more than reported annually over the past 25 years.

#2:The State Street PriceStats Inflation Series

In 2008, an ambitious undertaking called The Billion Prices Project @ MIT was launched to scour the Internet and capture real-time prices. In the U.S., this data has become the State Street PriceStats Inflation Series.

It is updated daily (not seasonally adjusted) and has shown about the same readings as the CPI over long periods of time, although it is more sensitive to short-term price shifts. For example, this year, the index increased sharply from a low of -1.2 percent in January to +.6 percent at the end of May.

#3: The Chapwood Index

The newest and perhaps most controversial inflation data is the Chapwood Index published by Chapwood Investments. Since 2011, Chapwood has gathered data on prices of 500 commonly-purchased goods and services in 50 major U.S. metropolitan areas.

For calendar year 2014, Chapwood says the highest annual inflation rates in the U.S. were in California cities:

San Jose (13.7 percent)
San Diego (13.1 percent)
Long Beach (12.9 percent)
San Francisco (12.7 percent)

The lowest annual rates were in these cities:

Colorado Springs (6.6 percent)
Albuquerque (7.1 percent)
Wichita (7.4 percent)
Jacksonville (7.6 percent)

The Chapwood Index raises eyebrows mainly because it consistently puts U.S. inflation so much higher than the CPI. But it also reveals truths that the CPI masks—such as escalating housing costs in California cities.

According to the CPI, average U.S. shelter costs have increased just 3.0 percent over the last 12 months.

Showing your clients the Chapwood Index will help to emphasize a key point—namely, inflation doesn’t affect all areas of the country, or all households, the same. Right now, it’s having greatest impact on people who live in cities, rent, have large families (groceries), pay their own health care premiums, or have children in college.

The best way to determine each client’s personal rate of inflation is to track actual household expenses, much as Chapwood does. Many clients may find that their own personal rate of inflation falls somewhere between CPI and Chapwood.

Read: No Social Security COLA likely in 2016

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