Don't let all those numbers worry you. You have 19 thousand and change now. The only question is whether the little stuff is more or less than half of another thousand. Look at the first digit after the 19 thousand. It's an '8'. That's all you need. That '8' tells you that the whole thing is closer to 20 thousand than it is to 19 thousand. So the "nearest thousand" is 20,000 .