Stay Ahead of Inflation
You can’t control inflation, but you can take steps to help manage its negative impact on you and your investments. Explore the effects of rising prices and the different strategies available to help your portfolio combat inflation.
Assess the Risk
How Does Inflation Affect Your Money?
Inflation shrinks the money you’re setting aside for your future. What can you do about it? You could adjust your budget lower as the cost of living rises—or come up with a plan to stay ahead of inflation.
Source: Inflation Calculator, American Century Investments, 2026.
Inflation Goes Up, Buying Power Goes Down
Even low inflation gradually eats away at your money. At just 3%, a $100,000 investment will lose almost a quarter of its purchasing power over 10 years. At 6%, it could be cut in half.
See how inflation could affect your current portfolio.
Is Your Portfolio Ready for Inflation?
People experience inflation differently. Find out if you and your investments are positioned to face current and future inflation.
Explore Inflation Strategies
Which Investments May Help During Inflation?
Every investor faces the same challenge: making sure inflation doesn’t erode the value of their money. But addressing that challenge in your own portfolio depends on your priorities.
Along with traditional strategies to preserve purchasing power, you may wish to pursue growth to help your money outpace inflation over time. Or you may need to add an income stream to cover current needs amid rising prices. The key is to create a mix that aligns with your goals and has the potential to stay ahead of inflation.
Choose Inflation-Fighting Investments Based on Your Objectives
Grow Assets
Growing a portfolio at a rate ahead of inflation is a goal for most investors. Here are some considerations before choosing investments.
Diversify for growth. Diversification, or spreading your money across multiple asset classes, may lead to a smoother pattern of performance over time. Choose investments with a low correlation to each other—meaning they don’t all move in the same direction at the same time. Learn more about building a diversified portfolio.
Invest for your time horizon. The longer you have to invest, the more you may want to consider investments with higher-risk/higher-reward potential because you have time to recover from market drops. Generally, the closer you are to your goals, the less risk you’ll want to take. Get a personal assessment to understand your goals and time frame.
Consider quality-oriented equity investments. Investing in equities offers the opportunity to outearn inflation, while focusing on quality helps to manage risk.
Investments to Consider
Generate Income
When prices rise, you can also consider investments with the potential for regular income.
Diversify your income streams. A variety of income-generating investments may help create a steadier income stream and provide the potential to reduce risk and enhance returns over time. Learn more about income investments.
Look to bonds for income. Bonds are essentially loans to governments, municipalities and corporations. You typically receive regular interest payments from the bonds until maturity, when your initial investment is repaid (unless the issuer defaults). Explore the basics of bond funds.
Consider dividend-paying investments. A dividend is payment of a company's earnings to stockholders as a distribution of profits, and regular dividends can be used as a source of income. Here’s how dividends can contribute to income and total return.
Explore income from real estate investment trusts (REITs). These securities trade like stocks and invest in real estate through properties or mortgages. Publicly traded REITs must distribute at least 90% of their taxable income as dividends, which could make them an attractive option for income.
Investments to Consider
With ETFs’ generally lower costs, more of your investing dollars can be put to work for you and potentially compound over longer time horizons.
Preserve Purchasing Power
The risk of inflation eating away a portfolio’s purchasing power is well documented. That’s why investments that help you keep pace with rising costs play an important role.
Consider Treasury inflation-protected securities (TIPS). Issued by the U.S. Treasury, TIPS are directly linked to the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which is commonly used to measure inflation. When CPI changes, TIPS’ principal value also adjusts up or down. Understand the benefits of inflation-protected bonds.
Diversify duration. Interest rates and bond prices move in opposite directions. The shorter the bond’s duration (a bond’s price sensitivity to interest rate changes), the less its price will swing when rates change. Diversifying duration can help smooth out performance. Find out more about duration and interest rates.
Focus on quality. Higher-quality investments (in fixed income or equities) may experience lower volatility. Lower-quality bonds tend to experience more volatility in response to changes in economic and market conditions. Learn more about bonds and credit quality.
Investments to Consider
These funds are actively managed ETFs that do not seek to replicate the performance of a specified index. To determine whether to buy or sell a security, the portfolio managers consider, among other things, various fund requirements and standards, along with economic conditions, alternative investments, interest rates and various credit metrics. If the portfolio manager considerations are inaccurate or misapplied, the fund's performance may suffer.
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Inflation and Your Investments
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Important Information
Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) are bought and sold through exchange trading at market price (not NAV), and are not individually redeemed from the fund. Shares may trade at a premium or discount to their NAV in the secondary market. Brokerage commissions will reduce returns.
The value and/or returns of a portfolio will fluctuate with market and economic conditions.
Different investment styles tend to shift in and out of favor depending upon market and economic conditions, as well as investor sentiment. A fund may outperform or underperform other funds that employ a different investment style, and the stocks selected by the fund manager may not increase in value as predicted.
There is no guarantee that the investment objectives will be met.
Diversification does not assure a profit nor does it protect against loss of principal.
The information is not intended as a personalized recommendation or fiduciary advice and should not be relied upon for investment, accounting, legal or tax advice.
Investment return and principal value of security investments will fluctuate. The value at the time of redemption may be more or less than the original cost. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
Historically, small- and/or mid-cap stocks have been more volatile than the stock of larger, more-established companies. Smaller companies may have limited resources, product lines and markets, and their securities may trade less frequently and in more limited volumes than the securities of larger companies.
International investing involves special risks, such as political instability and currency fluctuations. Investing in emerging markets may accentuate these risks.
Derivatives may be more sensitive to changes in market conditions and may amplify risks.
Global Real Estate Fund Disclosure
Due to the limited focus of this fund, it may experience greater volatility than funds with a broader investment strategy. It is not intended to serve as a complete investment program by itself. Understanding inherent risks such as interest rate fluctuation, credit risk and economic conditions are important when considering an investment in real estate. The fund is classified as nondiversified. Because it is nondiversified, it may hold large positions in a small number of securities. To the extent it maintains such positions; a price change in any one of those securities may have a greater impact on the fund's share price than if it were diversified.
Equity Income Fund
The fund invests in convertible securities, which may be affected by changes in interest rates, the credit of the issuer and the value of the underlying common stock. The fund also may invest in foreign securities, which can be riskier than investing in U.S. securities.
Ultra Fund
The fund is subject to potentially greater short-term price volatility than that associated with an average stock fund.
Fixed Income Disclosures
Investments in fixed income securities are subject to the risks associated with debt securities including credit, price and interest rate risk.
Generally, as interest rates rise, the value of the bonds held in the fund will decline. The opposite is true when interest rates decline.
The lower rated securities in which the fund invests are subject to greater credit risk, default risk and liquidity risk.
Credit risk is the risk that an obligation won't be paid and a loss will result. Generally, a lower credit rating indicates a greater risk of non-payment. Liquidity risk is the risk that the fund will have difficulty selling its debt securities.
In certain interest rate environments, such as when real interest rates are rising faster than nominal interest rates, inflation-protected securities with similar durations may experience greater losses than other fixed income securities. Interest payments on inflation-protected debt securities will fluctuate as the principal and/or interest is adjusted for inflation and can be unpredictable.
Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs): Foreside Fund Services, LLC - Distributor, not affiliated with American Century Investment Services, Inc.
Mutual Funds: American Century Investment Services, Inc., Distributor.