I keep finding surprising and interesting things among the many stashes of papers my mother left. Here’s another goodie. It’s a single page summary of the Lind family’s monthly spending during 1946. That was before my time, so it was a family of three, living in a small home on Bishop Estate leasehold land purchased in 1942. My mother was fanatic on keeping track of spending, tracking everything down to individual postage stamps used to pay bills, right up to weeks before she died in January. So this summary sheet is backed up by a ledger book listing outlays for each month. Amazing.

The amounts appear very low expressed in the original 1946 dollars. But adjusted for inflation, they look quite different. I used an inflation calculator to figure out what those 1946 costs would look like in current dollars (actually, dollars at the end of 2012). Here’s my calculation of the original costs adjusted for inflation.

I haven’t had time to pore over the results. What strikes you as interesting? Leave a comment.