£3 in 1940 is worth £214.62 today

Buying power of £3 in 1940

This chart shows a calculation of buying power equivalence for £3 in 1940 (price index tracking began in 1750).

For example, if you started with £3, you would need to end with £214.62 in order to "adjust" for inflation (sometimes refered to as "beating inflation").

When £3 is equivalent to £214.62 over time, that means that the "real value" of a single U.K. pound decreases over time. In other words, a pound will pay for fewer items at the store.

This effect explains how inflation erodes the value of a pound over time. By calculating the value in 1940 dollars, the chart below shows how £3 is worth less over 85 years.

According to the Office for National Statistics, each of these GBP amounts below is equal in terms of what it could buy at the time:

This conversion table shows various other 1940 amounts in today's pounds, based on the 7,053.84% change in prices:

How to calculate inflation rate for £3 since 1940

Our calculations use the following inflation rate formula to calculate the change in value between 1940 and today:

Then plug in historical CPI values. The U.K. CPI was 20.2 in the year 1940 and 1445.07656057603 in 2025:

£3 in 1940 has the same "purchasing power" or "buying power" as £214.62 in 2025.

To get the total inflation rate for the 85 years between 1940 and 2025, we use the following formula:

Plugging in the values to this equation, we get:

Data source & citation

Raw data for these calculations comes from the composite price index published by the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS). A composite index is created by combining price data from several different published sources, both official and unofficial. The Consumer Price Index, normally used to compute inflation, has only been tracked since 1988. All inflation calculations after 1988 use the Office for National Statistics' Consumer Price Index, except for the current year, which is based on The Bank of England's forecast.

» Read more about inflation and investment.