At the end of every year, I will compute the gains and losses on my investments. As part of the exercise, I will also compute the real gains or losses after inflation. Being human, I tend to focus on the larger nominal gains rather than the smaller real gains. However, the real gains after inflation does have an important story to tell. After reading "Beating the Street" by Peter Lynch, I decided to look further into the effects of inflation on my investment gains and investment policies.
In the 15 years of investing with my own money since 1998, the inflation rates have been as follows:
| Year | Inflation |
| 1999 | 0.0% |
| 2000 | 1.3% |
| 2001 | 1.0% |
| 2002 | -0.4% |
| 2003 | 0.5% |
| 2004 | 1.7% |
| 2005 | 0.5% |
| 2006 | 1.0% |
| 2007 | 2.1% |
| 2008 | 6.6% |
| 2009 | 0.6% |
| 2010 | 2.8% |
| 2011 | 5.2% |
| 2012 | 4.6% |
| ... |
