Saturday, June 20, 2009

Deflationary Donations

Last June, after donating $25 to Cornell (directed to the Cornell Chimes fund), I decided I could commit myself to donating $25 every year in perpetuity. Furthermore, to make sure my gift would maintain the same buying power over time, this amount would be adjusted each year to account for inflation.

Well, BLS has just released the CPI numbers for the month of May, so I did some quick math to calculate my annual contribution to Cornell:

$25 in 2008 dollars * 213.856 (May '09 CPI-U, all items) / 216.632 (May '08 CPI-U) = $24.68 in 2009 dollars

Ah, deflation. Thank you, Helicopter Ben!

I can't wait to get my letter from President David Skorton thanking me for my $24.68 donation this year.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That is brilliant slash hilarious. For all of our sakes, let's hope that next year's donation jumps up a bit. I'm thinking $25.47.

J