£100 in 1808 → £8,892.53 in 2020

Buying power of £100 in 1808

This chart shows a calculation of buying power equivalence for £100 in 1808 (price index tracking began in 1750).

For example, if you started with £100, you would need to end with £8,892.53 in order to "adjust" for inflation (sometimes refered to as "beating inflation").

When £100 is equivalent to £8,892.53 over time, that means that the "real value" of a single U.K. pound decreases over time. In other words, a pound will pay for fewer items at the store.

This effect explains how inflation erodes the value of a pound over time. By calculating the value in 1808 dollars, the chart below shows how £100 buys less over the past 212 years.

According to the Office for National Statistics, each of these GBP amounts below is equal in terms of what it could buy at the time:

How to Calculate Inflation Rate for £100 since 1808

This inflation calculator uses the following inflation rate formula:

Then plug in historical CPI values. The U.K. CPI was 12.8 in the year 1808 and 1138.2433607545 in 2020:

£100 in 1808 has the same "purchasing power" or "buying power" as £8,892.53 in 2020.

To get the total inflation rate for the 212 years between 1808 and 2020, we use the following formula:

Plugging in the values to this equation, we get:

News headlines from 1808

Politics and news often influence economic performance. Here's what was happening at the time:

• African Benefolnt Society is formed.
• The US Congress prohibits the importing of slaves.
• Herman Daendels becomes the Governor General of the Dutch East Indies.

Data Source & Citation

Raw data for these calculations comes from the composite price index published by the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS). A composite index is created by combining price data from several different published sources, both official and unofficial. The Consumer Price Index, normally used to compute inflation, has only been tracked since 1988. All inflation calculations after 1988 use the Office for National Statistics' Consumer Price Index, except for 2017, which is based on The Bank of England's forecast.

» Read more about inflation and investment.