Value of £1 in 1955

[ShaunJ]

I like to to think in terms of beer purchasing power, which usually ends up somewhere between RPI and house prices.

A pint of beer in 1954 cost 9d, so with £2400 you could buy 64,000 pints if beer. To buy that quantity today you would need around £224,000. 

By contrast, a litre of petrol in 1954 would have cost around a shilling so £2400 would have bought 48,000 litres. At today's prices: £48,000. I hadn't realised that petrol was so much cheaper now in real terms.

[louisa maud]

My husband equated it to the cost of a bar of chocolate, what does that say,  yes,he is a chocoholic

I really must find out more about this man, he apparently fought in the Spanish Civil War,  hence him not appearing in tbe 1939 listings  or anywhere else

Louisa maud

[Crumblie]

In fact I really cannot believe that this man  left this amount of money, I wonder where he got it from to be honest, only found his marriage  and death, can't out his details online till I have cleared it with his family distantly related to me , his wife appears to have left nothing

Louisa Maud

In 1899 my gg grandfather left almost £3500 in his will and I have not got a clue where it came from. He was a drayman so he certainly did not earn it, I know he received a sixth share of his uncle's estate but unfortunately the will does not say what it amounted to, the total estate was only around that figure. I am trying to locate other wills he may have benefitted from but lockdown has put a stop to that at the moment.

[MaxD]

A down to earth way is to link the sum with average wages as Guyana has done.  £2400 is 320 weeks (6 years) wages @ £7 10s a week.

Average 2019 salary (Office for National Statistics and Fantasy) was £36611, equating to £222,5000 making ShaunJ's comparator pretty much on the money.

MaxD

   

[jc26red]

Pretty sure the price of petrol in 1954 was per gallon not litres. Need to divide the price by 4.56 to finish price per litre.

I remember fuel being 1s-3d per gallon and I wasn't born in 1954 

[ShaunJ]

Pretty sure the price of petrol in 1954 was per gallon not litres

4/6 per gallon = approximately 1/- per litre

[Gadget]

I think my pocket money was 6d a week 

PS - I'm sure petrol was 33p a gallon in 1972-3, just before the oil crisis.

[medpat]

Average wage at the time

https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/18416654

Their yearly survey showed that the average salary in the UK for men and women combined was £29,009, which includes those in both full-time and part work. For those in full-time work, the average UK salary is £35,423 and £12,083 for those in part-time.Nov 13, 2019

Roughly 40 times the amount from 1955 so £40.00

[MaxD]

Not a great difference between our ONS figure of 36.6 and the Aus figure of 35.4 but it does point up how fraught statistics can be (see present day daily announcements!).

MaxD