The value of money
What is money from 1920 worth today?
Measured by U.S. consumer prices, a dollar from January 1920 takes 17.36 dollars to match today. Below, the standard amounts — and what they bought at the time.
1920 amounts, in today’s money
$1.00$17.36
$10.00$174
$100$1,736
$1,000$17,356
$10,000$173,565
$100,000$1,735,648
CPI-U, all items, not seasonally adjusted · January 1920 to August 2026 · U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
Had $10,000 been invested in 1920 instead
A different question again: not what money could buy, but what it would have become. Equity figures include reinvested dividends.
U.S. Large-Cap Equity Composite (total return)observation June 2026 · Robert J. Shiller, Yale University$456,770,534