Hello, everyone, and welcome to this Off the Cup. I am your host, Chris Martinson of Peak Prosperity

here, and we've got a very special episode today. I've been waiting a long time to talk to this guy.

Ed Boutkowski, Ed, thanks so much for coming here to the program. He is the author of something

called the Chapwood Index, which measures inflation, but not in a government-approved way.

He does it in a really weird way. He just measures how much things actually cost and compares that to how much they used to cost. Ed, welcome to the show. Well, great. Thanks for having me. It's an honor to be here. So, you know, I'm just going to turn to your website here a little bit because I love the way you put this and you said, you know,

this is in your about section at the Chapwood Index. It says, I'm tired of observing people

commit financial suicide. I firmly believe the government gravely underestimates the national

rate of inflation. A number also plagued with bias and statistical manipulation.

It's universally assumed that the government's rate of

inflation is accurate. It simply isn't. And that this is going to lead to a lot of trouble.

So how did you come to that view? And then I want to talk about the ways in which you think

the government's understating inflation. Well, I'll tell you, the way I came about this was my mother, who was dying,

I came home to surprise her one day when, and she surprised me and she wasn't home.

And I said, you know, when she finally walked in the door, I said, where were you?

And she said, I got a job.

And I said, why? And she says,

because your father didn't adjust my alimony for cola. And here I was a financial advisor. I didn't even

know what cola was. I thought, wow, you drink tab. What do you mean cola? And I kind of kid about that.

But she said, no, cost of living adjustment.

And so I started looking into it.

And there was a guy named Albert Singlinger who had an alternative index.

And back in 1983, he started calculating what the real cost of living increase was using the old method because the government

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