Tech: Time Travel currency converter ?????

Subject: Tech: Time Travel currency converter ?????
From: GUEST,time tunneller
Date: 23 May 14 - 04:03 PM

Ok, anyone know if there is an online converter simnilar to eg. $s to £s,
but instead can convert old value of £s to current value ?

For instance, How much would £150 in 1976 be worth now at current rate due to inflation ?

Subject: RE: Tech: Time Travel currency converter ?????
From: Will Fly
Date: 23 May 14 - 04:10 PM

£150 in 1976 would be worth, in crude terms, around £950 today - but that's a very crude figure. It all depends on whether you consider purchasing power, annual rates of inflation, and all sorts of other figures.

Subject: RE: Tech: Time Travel currency converter ?????
From: Megan L
Date: 23 May 14 - 04:11 PM

This might be some help

Subject: RE: Tech: Time Travel currency converter ?????
From: GUEST,JTT
Date: 23 May 14 - 05:26 PM

Buying Power of the Pound sites might help.

Subject: RE: Tech: Time Travel currency converter ?????
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 23 May 14 - 06:46 PM

Even without working out values 'then' and 'now', I find a useful reality check in converting prices of small items to shillings and pence. For example, if there are ten strawberries in a pack labelled as "only" £1.49, those strawberries are almost 3 shillings each. If a lettuce is "only" 75 pence, that is 15 shillings. And I am never tempted by the little chocolate bars at the checkout, priced at HOW MUCH??? in shillings - they have to be joking.

Subject: RE: Tech: Time Travel currency converter ?????
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 23 May 14 - 07:59 PM

I try not to think about it.

England once had a penny post, and I am old enough to remember when a letter could be mailed with a two-cent stamp in the U.S.

I remember the 5 cent candy bar, Topsie (eq. to 2 1/2 pence).
I paid $29,000 for my house which now has a city tax valuation of $750,000.

Will Fly gave a sensible answer. All is relative.

Subject: RE: Tech: Time Travel currency converter ?????
From: GUEST,.gargoyle
Date: 23 May 14 - 08:48 PM

According to the US and UK govts....there was been no inflation in the past decade.

This might help you if you trust government.

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency/default0.asp#mid

Sincerely,
Gargoyle

In the world of finance, gold/silver can give a check. In the world of reality look to coffee, cocoa, petroleum.... all UK imports....two non-essential.

Subject: RE: Tech: Time Travel currency converter ?????
From: GUEST,Musket
Date: 24 May 14 - 02:31 AM

If such a converter exists in a meaningful fashion it would have to look at the same shopping basket of course.

Inflation is a bugger to calculate. The arbitrary government calculators never relate to peoples' experience anyway. Flat low inflation over recent years sounds plausible if you look at property prices in The North but laughable if you are buying in The South East. Conversely, therefore in The North, the percentage of your income spent on electricity gas and water has increased more than some poor bugger with a London mortgage.

The cost of luxury goods has gone down but so has the ability to afford them.

It isn't just the shopping basket, it's also how relevant the shopping basket is.

Subject: RE: Tech: Time Travel currency converter ?????
From: GUEST,BobL
Date: 24 May 14 - 03:49 AM

Not being an economist, I never could understand why inflation seems to be tolerated or even necessary - I think of it as nature's way of saying we're earning too much for what we're producing.

Subject: RE: Tech: Time Travel currency converter ?????
From: GUEST,Eliza
Date: 24 May 14 - 03:56 AM

A cauliflower now costs at least a pound. A pound for a cauli. And a pound for a small bag of spuds. Incredible.

Subject: RE: Tech: Time Travel currency converter ?????
From: GUEST, topsie
Date: 24 May 14 - 10:18 AM

My local Tesco is currently selling cauliflowers at £1.20. Yesterday I bought one with a reduction label, making it 45 pence (that's STILL 9 shillings!). When I got home I checked my till receipt and found I had been charged £1.20 because the person doing the reductions had not stuck the new price label over the original barcode. I am now about to go back to the shop for a refund.
Always, ALWAYS check your receipt - this kind of thing happens to me at least once a week, and it always seems to be a mistake in the shop's favour. Most of the shoppers I see either refuse a receipt or throw it away immediately without looking at it.
Tesco's official policy is to refund double when a mistake is made, which may be OK in a large store, but try asking for it in a smaller branch and the unpleasantness means it is just not worth it if you want to shop there again. (With it happening about once a week I would soon run out of places to shop.)

Subject: RE: Tech: Time Travel currency converter ?????
From: gnu
Date: 24 May 14 - 12:02 PM

Q... $750,000! THAT sucks!

Subject: RE: Tech: Time Travel currency converter ?????
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 24 May 14 - 01:56 PM

Gnu, Calgary is for rich Alberta entrepreneurs. The average house price here is $450,000 and rising. The Huffington Post predicts a resale price of a half million in 2017, but I think it will be more.

Lots in my neighborhood (and many others in areas where infill and apartments are prohibited) are set at a tax price of about $500,000. Often a resale house here (now about 50-60 years old) is completely gutted and rebuilt by the new owner, at a cost of a few hundred thousand. The house across the alley from me was offered at $1.2 million after the rebuild. Across the street from it is a golf club so it has open grassed area there.