“Dollars do better
if they are
accompanied by sense.”
~ Earl Riney

One dollar. Two 50¢ pieces. Four quarters. Ten dimes. 100 pennies. Their value is all the same, and compared to its purchasing power in my childhood, it’s not worth much today.

What could $1.00 buy sixty years ago — in 1964? Here are a few examples:

• A dozen donuts
• 20 Hershey’s bars
• Two McDonald’s Big Macs
• Three gallons of gas
• One gallon of milk
• One movie ticket
• 20 first-class postage stamps
• Four large boxes of Cheerios

Things are a little different today:

• A dozen donuts – $21.00
• 20 Hershey’s bars – $27.80
• Two McDonald’s Big Macs – $12.78 
• Three gallons of gas – $14.28
• One gallon of milk – $5.99
• One movie ticket – $14.50
• 20 first-class postage stamps – $13.60
• Four large boxes of Cheerios – $33.96

And then there’s real estate. My parents purchased their 38th Avenue home in San Francisco in 1956 for $18,500. My mother sold it in 2014 for more than one million dollars. Go figure.

The website amortization.org reports that $1.00 in 1964 is equivalent to $9.93 in 2024!

Okay, to be fair, income has increased, as well. The minimum wage in the State of California in 1964 was $1.30/hour. The State’s minimum wage as of January 1, 2024 is $16.00/hour, and as of April 1, 2024, some fast food workers will begin receiving a $20.00/hour minimum wage. 

When I began my teaching career in the Catholic Diocese of San José in 1979, my first-year annual salary was $7,900. A first-year teacher today earns close to $50,000/year. I cringe to think what a lay teacher in a Catholic school was making in 1964.

One thing, for certain, has not changed. In the words of the ancient Roman philosopher Seneca, “It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.”