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Calculators · Inflation

The shrinking dollar

Pick a year. See what your money was worth then, and how much of the dollar is left today.

$
Jump to a moment

$100 in 1971 buys what this buys in 2026

$825.64

88%of its buying power is gone

Average a year3.91%
Biggest jump in a year+13.5% (1980)
Years55

What a 1971 dollar buys, year by year

Dotted lines mark the moments you can jump to.

Follow the moneyInflationPurchasing powerCPI vs. inflationM2: the money supplyYour Big Mac number

CPI is an average for city households. Your own costs can rise faster or slower. Education, not financial advice.

Sources: Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Consumer Price Index, 1800 to present (yearly averages; before 1913 the numbers are historians' estimates). The latest year is the Minneapolis Fed's estimate, from the change in prices between the second quarter of the year before and the second quarter of that year. M2 in 2020: Federal Reserve via FRED (M2SL), $15.49 trillion in Feb. 2020 to $19.12 trillion in Dec. 2020.