I'm looking for a formular to price goods bought in 1900 to what they would
be worth today

There are problems with doing this, but most data I find (google) say a
dollar is about 4% of what is was in 1900, ie a dollar then is worth 4 cents
now. The only problem you will have doing this conversion is that things
didn't change at the same rate. For example gasoline is expensive now, but
its cost has grown at a much slower rate than many other items, the same goes
for staples such as wheat and corn.
--
-John Northwest11
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"jackco" wrote:

I'm looking for a formular to price goods bought in 1900 to what they would
be worth today

The problem is more significant than that. Many goods, such as real estate,
professional services, professional athletes' salaries, have increased at
rates far in excess of inflation over the past 106 years. Many other goods,
such as medicine, books, clothes, food, and paper, have declined in absolute
dollar terms over the previous 106 years.

Just consider that a person who earns the measily sum of $10,000 per year in
2007 can call anyone on the planet for pennies per minute via Skype, and then
remember that not even Rockefeller could do the same in 1900.

Dave
--
A hint to posters: Specific, detailed questions are more likely to be
answered than questions that provide no detail about your problem.


"John Bundy" wrote:

There are problems with doing this, but most data I find (google) say a
dollar is about 4% of what is was in 1900, ie a dollar then is worth 4 cents
now. The only problem you will have doing this conversion is that things
didn't change at the same rate. For example gasoline is expensive now, but
its cost has grown at a much slower rate than many other items, the same goes
for staples such as wheat and corn.
--
-John Northwest11
Please rate when your question is answered to help us and others know what
is helpful.


"jackco" wrote:

I'm looking for a formular to price goods bought in 1900 to what they would
be worth today

John Bundy (remove) wrote...
....
dollar is about 4% of what is was in 1900, ie a dollar then is
worth 4 cents now. . . .
....

Reverse that: 4 cents in 1900 are worth a dollar now, or today's
dollar is worth the equivalent of 4 cents in 1900.

On Mar 7, 11:26 am, jackco wrote:
I'm looking for a formular to price goods bought in 1900 to what they would
be worth today

Well, it depends on what "goods" you are talking about, not to mention
what country. But generally, for the US, people use the CPI. You can
find a CPI calculator at http://www.bls.gov/cpi . Note: the
calculator only goes back as far as 1913.

As for a formula, when I enter $100 in 1913 dollars, the calculator
says that is equivalent to $2044.61 in current dollars (2007). So the
average inflation rate can be computed as follows:

=rate(2007-1913, 0, -100, 2044.61)

Assuming that the same average rate applies to 1900 through 2007 (an
over-simplication), you could estimate the equivalent 1900 price as
follows:

=pv(A1, 2007-1900, 0, -2044.61)

where A1 contains the RATE(...) formula above.