If you're not worried about inflation's effect on your future, you should be. It can really eat away at the value of your money. It has averaged around 3% annually over long periods, which is enough to turn a seemingly sizable nest egg into just a few bites of an omelet. Viewed on a shorter-term basis, a 3% inflation rate for the year is enough to turn a 10% return on your investment over a year into a "real" return of less than 7%. In case you're not convinced yet, here's one last example: What would cost you $100,000 today will cost you more than $240,000 30 years from now, if inflation averages 3%.

Now that you're a little worried, permit me to worry you even more with a relatively new consideration: the ongoing economic crisis. One of the possible (though not necessarily certain) long-term effects of our stimulus packagescould be a future increase in inflation.

In an inflationary environment, if you leave a lot of money in cash, it will shrink in value year by year. It might look the same, but it will buy less, and that's what really matters. Even leaving long-term money in a bank account can be disastrous, if it's earning you 2% interest while you're dealing with a higher inflation rate of 4% or more.

So how do you beat inflation? There are several ways.

Index funds and dividends
A simple index fund has a lot to offer, which is why we've recommended them pretty much since the dawn of Fooldom. Index funds are easy to invest in, and can also be extremely inexpensive. They let you earn the market's return without having to decide which individual stocks to buy or sell, and when to do so. And a broad-market index fund also features a dividend yield.

Is that such a big deal? Well, yes. Many investors don't know this secret, but between January 1926 and December 2006, 41% of the S&P 500's total return was derived from dividends, as opposed to stock price appreciation. And thanks to our current recession, dividends right now are especially attractive.

The dividend yield on the S&P 500 index fund is around 2.4% -- enough to get you most of the way to covering the historical average inflation rate. In comparison, the S&P 500's dividend yield was around 1% back in 2000.

Individual stocks
You can fight inflation with individual stocks, too, as many of them also offer dividend yields, plenty of which are well above 3% these days. For example, here are some large-cap stocks with yields topping 4% that have also earned high ratingsfrom our Motley Fool CAPS community of investors:

Company

Dividend Yield

ConocoPhillips (NYSE: COP)

4.2%

Kraft Foods (NYSE: KFT)

4.4%

NYSE Euronext (NYSE: NYX)

4.3%

Kimberly-Clark (NYSE: KMB)

4.2%

Merck (NYSE: MRK)

4.9% Continued...