See what money from any year is really worth in another year's dollars
💡 Why This Matters A dollar amount from decades ago doesn't mean much on its own — a $500 price tag in 1913 and a $500 price tag today represent wildly different amounts of real buying power. This tool converts between any two years using official government inflation data.
A Ford Model T cost about $500 in 1913 — which, adjusted for inflation, works out to over $12,600 in 2018 dollars, using the same official CPI data this calculator runs on.
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Equivalent value = original amount × (target year CPI ÷ reference year CPI), using the official Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) annual averages published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The ratio of the two index values tells you how much prices have changed between the two years, and applying that ratio to your dollar amount gives its equivalent buying power.
A bigger equivalent value means prices rose between your two years (the normal, expected direction — inflation). A smaller one means prices fell (deflation), which has happened during a handful of periods in U.S. history, most notably the early 1930s. The size of the change reflects the general cost of living, not any one specific product.
CPI tracks a broad basket of goods and services and won't perfectly match the price history of any single item — some things (electronics, medical care) have inflated or deflated very differently from the overall average. This calculator covers 1913 through 2024 using finalized official annual averages; more recent years aren't included until BLS publishes a finalized annual figure.
Use this to put historical prices, wages, or prizes in perspective — a $30,000 salary in 1980 and a $30,000 salary today are not remotely the same thing in real terms. It's also useful for comparing your own past purchases or a family member's old pay stub against today's cost of living.
Example: A Ford Model T cost about $500 in 1913. Using the CPI-U ratio for 2018 ÷ 1913 (251.107 ÷ 9.9), that $500 is equivalent to about $12,682 in 2018 dollars — meaningfully more than a basic new 2018 car cost, even though the Model T looked cheap on paper at the time.
Equivalent value = original amount × (target year CPI ÷ reference year CPI). This uses the official Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) annual averages published by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Inflation — the general rise in prices over time — means a dollar buys fewer goods and services each year on average. The CPI tracks this by measuring the changing cost of a standard basket of consumer goods.
This calculator covers 1913 through 2024, using official BLS CPI-U annual averages — the full range for which the modern, methodologically consistent CPI series exists.