Value of $100 in 1999, adjusted to 2026

What happened to prices between 1999 and 2026

Between 1999 and 2026, the Consumer Price Index went from 166.6 to 332.243. Cumulatively, prices increased 99.4%, which works out to an average of 2.59% per year. Put differently, a dollar in 1999 bought what $0.50 buys in 2026: the 1999 dollar lost 49.9% of its purchasing power over these 27 years.

The median household earned about $40,700 in 1999, gas averaged $1.17 a gallon, and a new home cost roughly $161,000. Inflation ran at 2.2% for the year, ticking back up from 1998’s decade low as oil prices recovered from their collapse. The decade closed with two changes to the financial system that would shape the one after it: on January 1, the euro launched as an accounting currency across 11 European countries, trading alongside national currencies like the French franc and German mark ahead of physical cash in 2002, and in November, Congress passed the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, tearing down the Depression-era wall between commercial banks, investment banks, and insurers. Stock markets, meanwhile, were absorbed in a boom of their own: the Nasdaq surged through the year on soaring internet-stock valuations, and the Federal Reserve raised interest rates three times in the second half of 1999 partly to cool the exuberance, even as it pumped extra liquidity into the banking system to guard against any disruption from the Y2K rollover. A first-class stamp cost 33 cents. Inflation had spent the decade falling from 1990’s 5.4% peak to averages closer to 2-3%, and 1999 closed it out almost exactly where the 1990s as a whole had settled.

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The destination year: 2026

In 2026, prices rose 3.2% and $100 from 1999 had the buying power of $199; the year's average CPI of 332.243 is the level behind every 2026 figure on this page.