A personal Rate of Inflation ...

I mentioned this subject in a post a few years back, but inspired (!) by the recent decision by NS&I to tie future index-linked certificate renewal returns to CPI instead of RPI, CPI being typically around 1% lower than RPI, I decided to have a go at calculating a personal inflation rate to see how it compares with the UK government's own 'official' figures.  

At the time of writing, CPI is running at 2.4% per annum and RPI at 3.3%.

My results are tabulated below with a few following notes on the methodology and values used etc.  I've hidden the columns with the actual sums spent, and am just displaying the percentage changes from 2017 to 2018.

including holidays & travel

a) our long winter break was used as a proxy for all the 'Holidays & Travel' category, and its costs were multiplied by 2 to represent the other holidays we also take throughout the year.   Because our 2018 early break was actually paid for in late 2017, I calculated the costs which would be incurred today of taking an identical trip in early 2019, using exactly the same flights, accommodation & duration etc.