One of the ways people can calculate changes in cost of living is through the Consumer Price Index, which measures the changes in price from month to month on selected services. This measurement can give us a sense of how much we can actually buy with the money we make. For more information about the CPI, or to see the CPI tables, check out the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Interested in learning more about budgeting electronically. The post below from Get Rich Slowly offers links and a short summary of several tools available for electronic financial tracking.