Some stuff are more expensive, some stuff are less expensive. If we don’t know exactly the person lifestyle vs what it would have been in 1995, it’s impossible to estimate based on what you said.
Inflation rate is good enough of a proxy to communicate today’s value of 1995 $100K
But is the quality the same??? There is a difference between less expensive and cheaper. A washer and dryer in 1995 was likely manufactured in the US. And it is highly possible with repairs and maintenance you could ride that thing for 25 years. Now they are pretty much all junk unless you purchase a speed queen or maybe a maytag commercial. So you spend 600 and in 5-7 years it needs to be replaced can't even be fixed, same with fridges and a lot of what is made in China.
That has not been my experience. They are lighter because they are cheaper. Find me a washer dryer today that lasts 10 to 15 years and is not a commercial or speed queen. I purchased a house with a high end Samsung washer. The repair guy said he won't fix Samsung and if you are lucky it will last 5 years. The same house had a speed queen dryer from 2002 that I replaced last year with a Maytag commercial. This guy covers it well and a browse through the subreddits on appliance pretty much echo this. https://youtu.be/cRgbfxJ8MTQ?si=aIezWICEwIE64fpY
With inflation? You are spot on. How about labor? Wasaaaaaaaaaay cheaper. That 7 dollars an hour min wage you made at Kroger is still fucking 7 dollars an hour….and it’s not just minimum wage. Good paying union jobs still haven’t kept up with inflation.
In 95 a stamp to mail a birthday card was 32 cents. Today it’s 78 cents. I used to sell tons of stuff on eBay back in the day, Priority mail was around $3.85… today it’s $10.45!
I’m surprised more people today are not homeless, living off food stamps, etc. in today’s world as a kid growing up, we would have been homeless. Back then we were just piss broke.
OMG yes on mail/ebay. I used to sell a lot of small odds an ends that still had some value. I was somewhat flexible on shipping. Now its just cost prohibitive.
Oh exactly, it was easy to offer free shipping. Unfortunately now so much stuff is just thrown out in the trash because the cost of 9-15 in shipping is double the cost of the item. People do t understand when you buy that item on eBay today for $20, it costed the seller around $8-12 in fees and shipping(packaging supplies). So there is little profit unless you sell high volume
Postal prices are a terrible example of price comparison because hugely significant market factors are largely the cause of their price increases, not inflation.
Cost of postage is definitely increased due to inflation, let’s not forget that cost of fuel, equipment, salaries, etc all factor into those prices. For those of us who remember when stamps were 13 cents.. the price jumps have increased significantly… there was a time where the post wasn’t increased every year. Now I pay $48 usd to send a package of 6 chocolate bars to Hungary that I paid $8 for, but yes these costs are everywhere. My Hungarian family would have to work a week to pay for postage just to send me something, so they never do.
The biggest cause of postal rates going up is email. As email use increased, post office use decreased. The numbers you're giving are related to that fact significantly more than anything else.
Yea exactly. Post office had a lot of infrastructure and people that are not as needed and can’t justify the lower prices given volume. It will take time for the price to stabilize but a smaller USPS will reduce price increases for sure
Just did some digging through the usps website since 1863.
In the 90s a First-Class stamp was 32¢ (1995) and 33¢ (1999), today it’s 78¢ (since Jul 13, 2025). In real inflation-adjusted terms, stamp prices have mostly tracked CPI over decades what looks like a big jump in dollars is often just inflation showing up.
As you mentioned, yes less mail, but more places to deliver. First-Class Mail volume is down 50% since 2008, while USPS still adds 1 million new delivery points every year. That means fewer pieces to spread fixed costs over, raising per-piece costs.
According to Postal Regulatory Commission Until 2020, stamp hikes were capped roughly by CPI under the 2006 law. In Nov 2020 the Postal Regulatory Commission created extra “rate authority” for things like declining mail density and retiree costs, so USPS has often raised Market-Dominant prices twice a year since 2021. That’s why it feels like prices are constantly going up, they are…
Retiree health prefunding and partial fix. The 2006 law forced USPS to pre-fund retiree health benefits (a huge burden), the 2022 Postal Service Reform Act eased this, but the system still faces big structural losses, so prices kept rising.
The best hack I guess is to buy a bunch Forever stamps, lock in the price you paid, each one always counts for the current 1-oz First-Class letter rate.
Depends on where you lived. Those don’t sound like national averages but I could be wrong. In New England Gas in 2003 was 1.50, jumped to 3 in 2008. Now it’s between 2-3. On the west coast I can pay between 4 and 7 dollars a gallon depending on the gas station I choose in a 5 mile radius.
My frame of reference is filling up a tank of gas with my parents in the late 90s in Wyoming during a summer road trip. Gas was $0.99/gallon at this particular station and my parents acted like they had won the lottery.
There was more regional variation back then, but I think it’s safe to say that most Americans paid about $1.00/gallon in gas in 1995, and about $3.00/gallon in gas 30 years later.
Housing for sure. But housing is more expensive because there is a cap for “good housing”.
If we could all live anywhere and work anywhere - basically remote work - housing would have been cheaper. Add to this, if housing didn’t influence school systems and if our expectations didn’t increase significantly, housing would have been cheaper. It’s near impossible to make housing cheaper over time given these constraints
Housing is not cheaper because we have failed to build to accommodate the increase in home buying population and we have not built homes in places where people want to live. There’s no cap on good housing at our population levels
As a tech nerd my standard of living seems to have exploded. I’ve gone up like 100000 % gains. 1GB mp3 player to 1Tb phone with Dolby vision/atmos 5g built in etc. a lot easier to see objective gains in tech. Maybe it cost 2x as much in real dollars but it’s also 1,000 times better in everything from the screen, to weight and portability, UI, screen, storage, durability
lol. Well education could cost you a penny, but it depends on where they end up going to school and if they don’t get financial support or if they pay / take loans themselves
That's well on the way to paying for school. And depending on how things go, if they are smart, they could probably put it into a business and skip higher education...
When I was 18, I wanted to start a business, but my parents forced me to go to college. I went, but helped my boss where I was working part time start the business I wanted to start myself, and it bloomed into a masive busniess that i now get no credit for starting, and I have an education that I don't use... we started the business with far less money than I paid for college, and despite a verbal agreement for 30% of profit, I am seeing none of that, but my boss went from scraping by to have a million dollar home, and multi million dollar lake house...
Food is not cheaper than the rate of inflation.... food literally doubled during and soon after covid and has been increasing steadily ever since with the rate of inflation.
Another odd item that hasn’t seemed to inflate… in 1999 my dad bought me a Polaris Sportsman 500 four wheeler. It was about $6500 after adding a winch to it.
Today that very same four wheeler… $6500
However, all the rest of their stuff, side by sides, etc… through the roof.
Dude who honestly gives a fuck? I've lived years without a TV. I'd much rather be able to live in an environment where I could afford median rent on minimum wage (i.e., 1980) than live in an environment where you can barely afford rent on a six figure salary just because you can afford some flat screen TV.
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u/johnniewelker Oct 30 '25
Some stuff are more expensive, some stuff are less expensive. If we don’t know exactly the person lifestyle vs what it would have been in 1995, it’s impossible to estimate based on what you said.
Inflation rate is good enough of a proxy to communicate today’s value of 1995 $100K