I often catch myself using online tools to calculate what a given amount of money is worth in todays dollars. This must be my economics minor coming out. This was especially true when watching the AMC original series Mad Man and large sums would be negotiated and talked about during episodes. I would usually pause the episode to calculate how much a given amount was worth today. There are many websites that make this calculation for you, but I wanted to see if I could make one for myself. The following tools pulls the average Consumer Price Index by year since 1913 from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and adjust for inflation. The calculation is as follows:
$$
\text{Price In Second Year} = \frac{\text{Second Year CPI}}{\text{First Year CPI}} * \text{Year 1 Amount (\$)}
$$
Fun fact, In seasnon 7 episode 7, Joan’s 5% share of the agency worth around $1.5M at the time would be worth well over $14M today.