# $9000 in 2004 = ?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9000-in-2004/516522>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [November 6, 2009, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9000-in-2004/516522 "2009-11-06T02:51:14Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 7\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Anchuldigs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ed8c4c/32.png) [@Anchuldigs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anchuldigs)\
**Post date:** [November 6, 2009, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9000-in-2004/516522/1 "2009-11-06T02:51:14Z")

</div>

How much money would nine thousand nominal dollars be worth today?

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Jormungandr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a6a055/32.png) [@Jormungandr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jormungandr)\
**Post date:** [November 6, 2009, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9000-in-2004/516522/2 "2009-11-06T03:01:29Z")

</div>

> [@Anchuldigs](#):
>
> How much money would nine thousand nominal dollars be worth today?

$10,289.68

> **[CPI Inflation Calculator](https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl)**

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Anchuldigs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ed8c4c/32.png) [@Anchuldigs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anchuldigs)\
**Post date:** [November 6, 2009, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9000-in-2004/516522/3 "2009-11-06T03:02:54Z")

</div>

Awesome! Thanks!

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Alex\_Dubinsky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dbc845/32.png) [@Alex\_Dubinsky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alex_Dubinsky)\
**Post date:** [November 6, 2009, 3:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9000-in-2004/516522/4 "2009-11-06T03:03:15Z")

</div>

Praise our moderate inflation

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\
**Post date:** [November 6, 2009, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9000-in-2004/516522/5 "2009-11-06T13:55:53Z")

</div>

Not sure which question the OP is really asking. His sentence doesn’t really parse.

The stuff you could buy for 9,000 2004 dollars in 2004 would require spending 10,289 2009 dollars today.

9,000 2009 dollars would buy the stuff today that you could have bought for 7,871 2004 dollars in 2004.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![pan1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e495f1/32.png) [@pan1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pan1)\
**Post date:** [November 6, 2009, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9000-in-2004/516522/6 "2009-11-06T14:44:48Z")

</div>

For food and such, yeah…

The trick to maximizing your money is to be into things that get better with time - like technology.

in 2004, that $9000 wouldn’t buy a 60’ LCD TV, now it will buy four or five.  
A Quad core processor PC with DDR3 RAM? Bill Gates could only afford a couple of those in 2004.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![minor7flat5](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/minor7flat5/32/258_2.png) [@minor7flat5](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minor7flat5)\
**Post date:** [November 6, 2009, 5:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/9000-in-2004/516522/7 "2009-11-06T17:02:28Z")

</div>

I prefer this guy’s Inflation Calculator site:

[http://www.westegg.com/inflation/](http://www.westegg.com/inflation/)

He has links there to sites that use different kinds of gauges for inflation as well.

I found it quite fitting that the first time I looked for this site I was trying to figure out how much Nick in The Great Gatsby was paying in rent ($80/mo in 192?). In the book, Gatsby lived on West Egg. The site I found for inflation was, … [westegg.com](http://westegg.com).