Confused by high interest rates on credit cards?

What’s a percent rate? It’s a fractional expression of value, during a period of time.
20% a year means that $ 100 today will be worth $ 20 more in one year.
And 10% inflation rate means that something that costs $ 100 today will cost $ 10 more, or $ 110 in one year.

At times numbers can get so huge that it’s hard to make sense out of them, until we can re-work them into more manageable pieces of information. We believe we did a good job with the article How much Credit Card Debt do Americans have?.

But when the news that Zimbabwe’s inflation rate has now hit 11,200,000 %, yes eleven million two hundred thousand percent, our heads started to spin.

At that rate, a candy bar that costs $ 1 today will be priced at $ 112,001 a year from now.
If your electric bill this month was $ 100, next month the same consumption of kWh would be $ 9,433.
If you paid $ 15.00 to dry clean your suit, next week it would cost $ 338.08.
The same grocery that you bought today for $ 80, will cost you $ 326.15.
And if you go shopping for shoes and you take your time looking at that $ 69.99 pair of shoes, they will ring for $78.96 at the cash register one hour later.

It’s crazy math, and it is reality for the people of Zimbabwe, and it makes us feel glorious with gas prices now being below the $4.00 mark at the pump.

News source: CNN
Photo credits: ZeroOne (cc)

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