Short version: almost all of it. Two different ways to measure the loss give two different numbers — both brutal. Here's the math behind each one, and why they don't match.
Measured against gold, the dollar has lost about 99.5% of its purchasing power since 1913. Gold cost $20.67/oz when the Federal Reserve was created; as of mid-2026 it costs roughly $4,200/oz — so a 1913 dollar now buys about 1/203rd of the gold it used to.
Measured by the government's own Consumer Price Index (CPI), the loss is smaller but still severe: about 97%. It takes roughly $32–$33 today to buy what $1 bought in 1913.
Either way you slice it, the dollar you're holding is a shadow of the dollar your great-grandparents held.
“How much has the dollar lost” isn't a single number — it depends what you're measuring the dollar against. The two standard yardsticks are gold and the Consumer Price Index. Both start from $1 in 1913, the year the Federal Reserve Act was signed into law.
| Method | $1 (1913) is worth today | Loss |
|---|---|---|
| Gold ($20.67/oz → ~$4,200/oz) | ~$0.0049 | ~99.5% |
| CPI-U (BLS official inflation) | ~$0.03 | ~97% |
The gold math is simple division: 20.67 ÷ 4,200 ≈ 0.0049. A dollar today buys about half a cent of the gold it bought in 1913 — a 99.5% decline. The CPI math works the other direction: the Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks what a fixed basket of goods cost in 1913 versus today, and it now takes roughly $32–$33 to buy what $1 bought then, which is the same as saying the original dollar is worth about three cents of 1913 purchasing power — a loss of roughly 97%.
Most of that decline happened after Nixon closed the gold window on August 15, 1971. At that point gold was still pegged at $35/oz. From $35 to roughly $4,200/oz as of mid-2026 is a loss of about 99.2% in gold terms. By CPI over the same 1971-to-today window, the loss is about 87%. In other words: the dollar had already lost the bulk of its value by 1971 relative to gold's pre-Fed price, but the rate of loss accelerated once gold stopped acting as any kind of anchor at all.
Both numbers are measuring the same underlying decay. They just aim at different targets.
Gold's price carries a premium beyond ordinary supply and demand: it's what people flee to specifically when they distrust a currency. That premium means gold captures monetary debasement more directly — it isn't diluted by substitution (nobody swaps gold for a cheaper metal the way a shopper swaps steak for chicken).
The Consumer Price Index tracks food, rent, gas, medical care, and other everyday purchases. It's the government's official inflation gauge, and it's methodologically revised over time (substitution, hedonic adjustments) in ways that tend to understate the felt decline — which is part of why its number is smaller than gold's.
Neither number is “wrong.” They're two lenses on the same fact: a 1913 dollar buys a lot less of everything today, whether you price it in bread or in bullion. Gold just shows the decay in sharper relief, because it's the asset people have used for five thousand years specifically as a store of value against currencies that don't hold theirs.
The decline wasn't gradual erosion from natural causes. It traces to five specific, dated decisions.
Congress creates the Federal Reserve, giving the US a central bank empowered to expand the money supply beyond what gold reserves alone would allow. This is the starting line for every measurement on this page.
Read: Six Men on a Train to Jekyll Island →The government makes private gold ownership illegal and forces Americans to turn in their gold coin, bullion, and certificates. The following year, the price of gold is revalued from $20.67 to $35/oz — a 69% markup on the gold just collected, and an instant devaluation of every remaining dollar.
Read: The Day the Government Made Gold Illegal →Forty-four nations agree the dollar will be the world's reserve currency, redeemable by foreign governments for gold at $35/oz, with every other major currency pegged to the dollar. The dollar becomes “as good as gold” — for 27 years.
Read: How the Dollar Got Pegged to Gold — and Then Unpegged →Nixon suspends dollar-to-gold convertibility, ending Bretton Woods. Gold is freed to float and quickly leaves $35/oz behind for good. Every currency in the world becomes pure fiat in the same instant.
Read: The Night Nixon Killed the Dollar →With no metal constraint left, the money supply expands under central-bank discretion alone. Gold runs from $35 to roughly $4,200/oz as of mid-2026 — the entire post-1971 leg of the 99.5% decline.
Read: Every Fiat Currency Dies →You don't need a currency to collapse overnight for this to cost you. A “well-managed” fiat currency does the damage slowly and on purpose. The Federal Reserve's own stated target is 2% inflation per year — that sounds trivial until you compound it. Over a 40-year working life, holding cash at a steady 2% annual debasement destroys 55% of its purchasing power (1 − 0.9840 ≈ 0.55), in the best-case scenario where the target is actually held.
That's the built-in cost of holding dollars long-term, before any unexpected inflation spike. It's the reason “save your money” and “save your purchasing power” are not the same instruction.
Want to see this at the level of a specific year, a specific price, a specific paycheck? The Sound Money Calculator lets you look up any year's prices yourself — groceries, cars, houses, wages — and compare them in dollars versus gold. And if the term “fiat” itself needs unpacking, start with What is fiat money?