What It Cost
Pick a year and see real average prices — gas, eggs, bread, a stamp, a new house — next to 2025. Then check whether things really got more expensive, or whether the dollar just shrank.
How to read the table
Then is the average U.S. price that year. 2025 is the same item's average last year. Then, in 2025 dollars takes the old price and adjusts it for overall inflation. If today's price is lower than the adjusted one, that item actually got cheaper in real terms.
Food and energy prices are the Bureau of Labor Statistics' average-price series for U.S. cities. The house figure is the median sale price of new homes. Stamp prices are the first-class letter rate in effect at mid-year.