Money Matters makes no apology for using this column to mark the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings that changed the tide of the Second World War. I was in Normandy recently and there were stark reminders of the intensity of the fighting, the loss of life and the sacrifices that enabled us to enjoy the freedom of the modern day.

Today, we take for granted things that those brave soldiers could never have imagined. The microwave oven, video recorder and hovercraft came along in the immediate post war years. But the big technological steps started in 1957 when IBM invented the first PC and would continue through the 1960s, which ended with us watching colour TV and Neil Armstrong setting foot on the moon.

How much would technology have advanced had the result been different?

It was ramped up in the 1970s when we welcomed microprocessors, floppy disks, video game consoles, touchscreens, lithium batteries, GPS and the Rubik’s Cube. The latter is hardly an electronic masterpiece, but it remains the best selling puzzle of all time. World wide web, laptops, satellite TV and, of course, mobile phones followed.

The list is endless, but how much of it would have happened had the result been different 80 years ago?

So let’s go back to money matters. What has happened to the value of money in those 80 years? Well the value of £1 has lost over 98% of its value since 1944. Looked at the other way around, £1 in 1944 is equivalent to nearly £60 today.

That’s equivalent to an average inflation of 5.15% over the last 80 years. The actual inflation rate in wartime 1944 was, coincidentally, very similar to 2024 at approximately 3%.

An average salary of around £30,000 a year today would have seen you earning around £550 per annum in 1944. Before tax that is; the standard rate of income tax 80 years ago was a whopping 50%, leaving you little more than £20 in your hands every month.

Unthinkable, isn’t it? But then so were the events of 80 years ago.