How can I format a decimal to always show 2 decimal places?

Question

You should use the new format specifications to define how your value should be represented:

>>> from math import pi  # pi ~ 3.141592653589793
>>> '{0:.2f}'.format(pi)
'3.14'

The documentation can be a bit obtuse at times, so I recommend the following, easier readable references:

the Python String Format Cookbook: shows examples of the new-style .format() string formatting
pyformat.info: compares the old-style % string formatting with the new-style .format() string formatting

Python 3.6 introduced literal string interpolation (also known as f-strings) so now you can write the above even more succinct as:

>>> f'{pi:.2f}'
'3.14'