Overlay the money supply, prices, wages, home prices, gold and bitcoin on one axis, scrub any year to see what an average family earned and paid, and test which series move together.
One dollar from 1900 buys what — buys today. Overlay the money supply, the CPI, wages, home prices, gold and bitcoin on one axis, scrub any year to see what an average family earned and paid, and test which series actually move together.
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Overlay explorer
Every series is drawn on one axis. Indexed mode shows each series as a multiple of its value in the base year (log scale), so a ×1,300 money supply and a ×40 price level can sit on the same chart without a second axis. Pick eras (several at once), load a comparison set, project the trend forward, and click any year to pin it; the family card below follows.
Years
Presets
View
Options
Monetary history in this range
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The average family, year by year
Drag the year. Income, what the family spent it on, what the staples cost, and how many hours of work each one took. Dollar figures are nominal for that year; estimates are marked.
1900
Household
Income tier
Correlation of the selected series
Lead / lag test
leads
Rolling 20-year correlation of growth rates
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Ratios: price anything in anything
Divide one series by another. A home priced in years of family income, gold priced in CPI baskets, M2 per person, a wage measured in ounces of gold or in bitcoin.
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Compound growth by period
Annualized growth (CAGR) of each series across the era; a dash means the series had no data at the era's edges.
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What the data says
Every number below is computed from the series on this page, so it updates with the data.
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Methodology and sources
MethodologySeries and sources
Data table & CSV
This dashboard answers a simple question with a lot of data: what happened to the dollar, and what did it do to the cost of living? It covers 1792 (the Coinage Act that defined the dollar) to the present, using whatever sourced data exists for each period. Where no data exists, the chart shows a gap instead of a guess, and estimates are marked as estimates.
How to use it
Overlay explorer. Pick series and eras, then switch between Indexed (every series as a multiple of its base year, log scale), % change and Raw panes. Click any year to pin it.
Average family. Drag the year to see income, the budget split, staple prices and the hours of work each one took, for different household types and income tiers.
Correlation, lead and lag, ratios. Test which series move together, and price anything in anything: a home in years of income, a wage in ounces of gold.
Sources. Every series lists its publisher and coverage under Methodology and sources.
Limits
Pre-1959 M2 is the Friedman-Schwartz money stock, scaled to today's definition; no annual money series exists before 1907.
Family income before 1947 and home prices between census years are estimates.
The 2026 values are year-to-date averages, and the bitcoin price is a spot value on the date shown in the dashboard.
The projection mode extends each series' recent compound rate. It is an illustration of arithmetic, not a forecast.
