The question of stability of the Standard Model Higgs vacuum is important not only for beyond the Standard Model physics but also for cosmological inflation. A large inflationary rate, as suggested by the recent BICEP measurements, implies that, if unstable, the electroweak vacuum should have decayed quickly during inflation, making the statistical likelihood of a universe like ours extremely low. I present new bounds on the critical values of M_H and M_t required for absolute stability of the Standard Model electroweak vacuum, derived using mass-dependent beta functions and discuss the implications for inflation. I also compare decay via the Hawking-Moss and Coleman-de Luccia instantons and the stochastic approach to vacuum decay employable for large Higgs quantum fluctuations during inflation and discuss the scenarios in which each dominates.
