WHAT IS $5
REALLY WORTH?
Track the purchasing power of five bucks over time.
How much has $5 lost?
Held as cash since 1971, five bucks has surrendered most of its buying power.
A dollar kept under the mattress didn't lose value because it was spent — it lost value because the supply of dollars grew. This is monetary debasement, measured against the goods $5 could actually buy.
The Purchasing
Power of $5
What $5 from each month is worth in today's money. The further back you go, the more five bucks could buy.
How fast is your $5
getting devalued?
Track how quickly the purchasing power of five bucks is falling over the past six months.
In the Past 6 Months
Debasement is currently running faster than 77% of months since 1971.
Methodology: Debasement Speed measures the percentage decline in the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar over the previous six months, based on the U.S. Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U). The 0–100 Debasement Speed Index is normalized against the fastest six-month purchasing-power deterioration observed in the historical dataset. The historical percentile shows the percentage of months since 1971 with a lower six-month purchasing-power loss.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — CPI-U, All Items, Monthly (1982–84 = 100), via FRED.
What could
$5 buy?
Five bucks used to go a lot further.
WHAT HAPPENED
TO YOUR $5?
See what $5 would be worth today if you had held it as cash, gold, silver or Bitcoin.
Cash is measured using CPI-based purchasing-power equivalence. Gold, silver and Bitcoin are measured using historical market prices.
Bitcoin had the highest historical return over this period.
How your $5 would have changed
Normalized to $5 at the start of 2015.