Doing some salary analysis on my W2 to compare inflation against raise percentages over my time in role. I'm getting stuck on inflation though. Core CPI is a nonsense made-up number, so is there a place to pull or a way to calculate actual inflation without food, energy, and housing stripped out? I don't know about you, but I can't actually live without food, energy, and housing so core CPI is less than useful. I'm hoping for a an annual number I can just find, but I'll do a calc if needed. I spent a few hours google searching but didn't find any easily scraped numbers. My guess is I'll have to use core CPI and add back in food (best I could find was https://www.usinflationcalcula... though I find the number in the 12-month graph at the top really suspect) and energy from regional Fed or BLS data, but thought I'd check with the brain trust to see if there's a better option. My output doesn't have to be hugely accurate, but I'm hoping for something I can use that's closer to reality than core. 

Any ideas?