I heard “If I Had $1,000,000” by the Barenaked Ladies over the weekend, and — because this is apparently what happens to your brain after some time in the business — I did not think about the house, or the fur coat, or the exotic pet. I thought about inflation!
Specifically: is a million dollars still the number?
Ed Robertson started writing that song in the summer of 1988, improvising it on a bus to entertain kids at a music camp. It landed on the band’s first cassette in 1989 and became famous on Gordon in 1992. So the million dollars in that song is a 1988 million dollars. That’s thirty-eight years ago. Long enough for two very quiet forces to do some very loud math.
Force One: Inflation, The Slow Leak
The Consumer Price Index averaged 118.3 in 1988.¹ As of June 2026, it’s 333.952.² That’s a multiple of 2.82. Which means the purchasing power of that million dollars now requires:
“If I Had $2.8 Million”
But that’s not investing. Let’s look at the more important question.
Force Two: Compounding, The Strong Build
Now flip it. Suppose our narrator had actually gotten the million in 1988, resisted the tree fort, and put it in a portfolio with no cleverness in it whatsoever: 80% U.S. stocks, 20% U.S. bonds, rebalanced once a year, dividends and interest reinvested.
Using the S&P 500 total return index³ and the Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Bond Index⁴ from year-end 1988 through June 30, 2026, that million dollars becomes roughly $41.4 million — a compound return of about 10.4% a year.
“If I Had a Million Dollars Before the Greatest Bull Market in History, Didn’t Panic Sell, and Stayed Invested, I’d Have $41.4 Million”
Which is a considerably less catchy chorus, and a considerably better outcome.
The honest fine print: index returns, no taxes, no fees, no trading costs, and a hypothetical investor with the emotional composure of a rock. Real life shaves that number. It does not, however, change the shape of it.
The Part That Actually Matters
Here’s the comparison I keep coming back to. Over that exact same stretch:
- A million dollars sitting still now buys what $354,000 bought in 1988.
- A million dollars put to work grew to $41.4 million — which buys what about $14.7 million would have bought in 1988.
Same starting dollar. Same calendar. Roughly a 41-fold difference in outcome, driven entirely by whether the money was doing anything.
Neither force announced itself along the way. Inflation averaged about 2.8% a year — invisible in any given month, brutal across four decades. The portfolio averaged about 10.4% a year while enduring 1990, 2000–2002, 2008, 2020, and 2022. On no particular Tuesday did either one look like it was building toward an eight-figure spread. They just kept going.
That’s the whole lesson, and it doesn’t require a spreadsheet: time is doing something to your money whether you’ve given it a job or not. Inflation is what happens to a million dollars that sits. Compounding is what happens to a million dollars that works. You don’t get to opt out of the first one. You do get to opt into the second.
The song asks what a million dollars could buy. The better question, and the one nobody writes a chorus about, is what it could become.
The Hard Part Isn’t the Math
Look again at what that $41.4 million actually required. No stock picking. No timing. Not one clever call. Only that the money stayed where it was through 1990, 2000 through 2002, 2008, 2020, and 2022.
That is the part that most often goes wrong. The arithmetic is easy. Sitting through a steep drawdown while your income is coming out of that same account is not.
So we do not ask families to have the emotional composure of a rock. We build the structure that makes composure less necessary, starting with knowing where the next several years of spending is coming from before the market decides anything. A bad quarter should be a headline, not a decision.
If you want to talk about what your money is doing between now and the next thirty-eight years, schedule a conversation with our team.
Sources & References
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: All Items in U.S. City Average (CPIAUCNS), 1988 annual average. Retrieved from FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CPIAUCNS
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Consumer Price Index — June 2026, News Release USDL-26-1191, July 14, 2026. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm
- S&P Dow Jones Indices. S&P 500® Index, total return series. https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/en/indices/equity/sp-500/
- Bloomberg Finance L.P. Bloomberg US Aggregate Total Return Index Value Unhedged USD (LBUSTRUU). https://www.bloomberg.com/professional/products/indices/quote/LBUSTRUU:IND
Important Disclosures:
Content in this material is for general information only and not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. Gatewood Wealth Solutions and LPL Financial do not provide legal or tax advice or services.
All investing involves risk including loss of principal. No strategy assures success or protects against loss.
The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual.
This information is not intended to be a substitute for specific individualized tax or legal advice. We suggest that you discuss your specific situation with a qualified tax or legal advisor.
The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index is a capitalization weighted index of 500 stocks designed to measure performance of the broad domestic economy through changes in the aggregate market value of 500 stocks representing all major industries.
The Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Bond Index is an index of the U.S. investment-grade fixed-rate bond market, including both government and corporate bonds.
Bonds are subject to market and interest rate risk if sold prior to maturity. Bond values will decline as interest rates rise and bonds are subject to availability and change in price.
