Worth Today

What is old money worth today?

Worth Today calculates the real value of money over time using historical data from the Federal Reserve. Enter an amount and a year range to see two things side by side: how inflation eroded purchasing power, and how much you would have if you'd invested in Treasury Bills instead.

What it does

• Inflation adjustment — uses the Consumer Price Index (CPI) to show what a dollar from any year is equivalent to today
• Treasury Bill returns — compounds historical 3-month T-Bill rates year by year to show real investment growth
• Side-by-side comparison — tells you by how much T-Bills beat (or lost to) inflation over your chosen period
• Historical data tables — browse raw CPI and T-Bill rate data by year or month

Data goes back to 1934 and is updated from FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data).

Stack

• Next.js 16 — React framework
• TypeScript
• Tailwind CSS
• Chart.js — growth chart

Running locally

You'll need Node.js 18 or later.

git clone https://github.com/sirindudler/worth_today.git
cd worth_today
npm install
npm run dev

Open http://localhost:3000.

Updating the data

Data is bundled at build time from data/cpi.json and data/treasury-bills.json. To pull the latest from FRED:

npm run update-data

Then restart the dev server.

Data sources

Dataset	Source	Series
Consumer Price Index	FRED	CPIAUCSL
3-Month Treasury Bill Rate	FRED	TB3MS