Hey, it’s Jeffrey — back again!

I kept one client at the same rate for almost 4 years.

From spring 2022 through the end of 2025. Increasing it crossed my mind a few times, but I never really sat down and thought about it. The work was steady, the relationship was good, and the number felt fine. So it just stayed where it was.

Then I ran the math against CPI, which is the Consumer Price Index. It's the main way the government measures how prices are changing over time. Basically, it tracks how much more (or less) the same stuff costs compared to last year.

Cumulative CPI inflation during the stretch I held that rate? 12.8%. That means by the end, I would have needed to charge about 13% more just to have the same purchasing power I started with. Every single month I didn't adjust, that gap was growing. The total cost of waiting? Roughly $8,100 in purchasing power I'll never get back.

I finally corrected it this January with a 45% increase. I'm ahead now. But those years in between? Gone.

Here's what most people don't think about: an inflation adjustment isn't a raise. It's just treading water. A real raise is whatever you get above inflation.

So if you got 3% this year and inflation was 3%, your reward for a year of work was zero. Your employer kept you in the same place. And if inflation was higher than your raise? You took a pay cut wrapped in good news.

Most salaried people have a vague sense of this, but almost nobody has separated the two. How much of your lifetime raises were real, and how much was just the cost of everything going up? Once you see the split, you'll think about your next salary negotiation very differently.

This week's prompt maps your actual income history against real CPI inflation data. It shows you your total nominal raises vs. your total real raises after inflation, how much purchasing power you've actually gained or lost, and what you'd need to be earning today just to break even with where you started.

The number is either reassuring or uncomfortable. Either way, you should know it.

Try it in Claude →

Here's what came up when I ran it on my numbers👇

I ran this on two different income sources.

The first one was the one I mentioned above. I held the same rate from spring 2022 through the end of 2025. During that time, cumulative inflation hit 12.8%. By December 2025, I would have needed to be earning about 13% more just to break even with where I started.

Over 44 months, the total purchasing power I left on the table was roughly $8,100. I corrected it in January 2026 with a 45% increase, so I'm well ahead of inflation now. But those years of standing still? That's real money I didn't collect.

The second one was more subtle. I'd gotten regular raises over many years, and my rate had gone up about 47% total. Sounds great, right? But the prompt showed me that cumulative inflation over the same period was about 31%. So my real income growth was only about 16 percentage points, not 47. Still ahead, but not by nearly as much as I thought.

The pattern it exposed was interesting: every time I got a raise, I jumped ahead of inflation. Then inflation slowly ate into that lead until the next bump. Right now, I'm still ahead on that one. But if I wait another year or two without adjusting, I'll fall behind again.

Keep going? Ran the main prompt? Here are two ways to go deeper:

AI tip worth trying this week: Finding the perfect hotel

My wife and I are planning a trip to Portugal this summer — Lisbon, the Douro Valley, Porto. The first question was: which Lisbon neighborhood to even search in? Baixa, Alfama, Chiado, Bairro Alto. Each has a different vibe, and while reviews can eventually get you there, they're mostly written about the hotel, not about which part of the city makes sense for your specific trip.

Instead of sifting through all of that, I described my situation to Claude and asked it to walk me through the neighborhood tradeoffs. Two minutes later, I knew exactly where I wanted to stay and why — then I read a few targeted reviews to confirm.

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