What $100 Bought in 1976, and What It Buys Today

Every year the same paycheck buys a little less. You feel it at the register long before you see it in a chart. I wanted to put real numbers on that feeling, so I went back to 1976 and priced three things everybody pays for: groceries, gas and a place to live.

Every number here comes from government data. The sources are at the bottom.

What $100 from 1976 is worth today

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) tracks prices with the Consumer Price Index, or CPI. It's the average cost of a basket of things households buy, measured the same way year after year. Using its yearly averages, $100 in 1976 bought what about $566 bought in 2025.

Since 1976 the dollar has lost about 82% of its buying power. A $100 bill still says 100 on it. It just buys what about $18 bought back then.

Groceries, gas and a new house, then and now

Here's the same spending priced at both ends. "Times higher" is the latest cost divided by the 1976 cost.

Where each row comes from:

• The average household spent $6,224 on food at home in 2024 (BLS Consumer Expenditure Survey). I priced that same basket back to 1976 with the CPI for food at home.
• The average household spent $2,560 on gasoline in 2024 ($2,411, plus $149 bought on out-of-town trips). At the 2024 average price for regular, $3.30 a gallon (EIA), that's about 775 gallons. In 1976 regular (leaded) averaged 59 cents a gallon, so the same gallons cost about $457.
• The house is the median sales price of new houses sold, from the Census Bureau. Half sold for more, half for less.

Some prices ran ahead of the rest

Now compare each row with prices overall. From 1976 to 2024 the CPI rose about 5.5 times, and from 1976 to 2025 about 5.7 times.

So groceries rose a little less than prices in general, and gas roughly kept pace. The new house went up much faster than everything else.

Most of what the table shows is the dollar losing value, which pushes up everything priced in dollars. Housing is the one that ran well ahead of the rest.

The paycheck side

Prices only hurt when pay doesn't keep up. The federal minimum wage was $2.30 an hour in 1976 for most covered workers. It has been $7.25 since July 2009. That's about 3.2 times higher, while prices overall are about 5.7 times higher.

Most people earn more than the minimum, so treat it as the floor. It still shows what happens to any paycheck that stays put while prices climb.

Like I always say, the goalposts always move.

That's how it feels from the inside. You reach the number you were working toward, and by then it costs more.

What will $1 be worth in 20 years?

Nobody knows the future inflation rate, so here are three examples. From 1980 to 2025, prices rose about 3.1% a year on average (BLS CPI). The other two rates are there for comparison.

These are examples, not a forecast. Even at the lowest rate, a dollar loses about a third of its buying power in 20 years.

What people usually do about it

There are four common answers, and plenty of people try more than one:

• Ask for a raise, or change jobs for better pay.
• Take a second job or a side gig.
• Invest for the long term, so savings have a chance to grow faster than prices.
• Learn a skill that earns money outside the paycheck.

None of these is wrong. For me it was the last one. I taught business at high school and university level for more than 20 years, and I still came home to an employee's paycheck. So I learned to trade, and I built a routine I could repeat around a normal day. If you're wondering how that fits next to a job, I wrote up the routine I teach.

Trading doesn't fix inflation, and it isn't for everyone. Most people who day trade lose money. One large study found that 97% of people who kept day trading Brazil's equity futures market for more than 300 days lost money, and I wrote about why that happens and how to keep losses small. It's a skill, and like any skill it takes practice, on paper first.

If you want to see the routine I teach, it's here.