“True. This isn’t that much money, really. (meaning it’s not as much as some people might think)”
I was born in South Carolina five days before the D-Day invasion of Normandy. I would estimate that a dollar is worth now, in this area, approximately what a nickel was worth when I was born. It depends on how you compute it but if you’re referencing real estate it is not even worth that much. If you compare total living costs for an equivalent lifestyle it can’t possibly be worth much more than that. Anyone who had a hundred thousand dollars in 1944 could have put it in the bank at three percent and supported a family on the interest for some years before it was no longer enough. Now you could easily spend the hundred grand in one year without any great extravagance.
$100k in 1944 would probably be equivalent to a few million today, especially measured in gold or silver.