Things your parents led you to think were 'special' or 'expensive' that you now take for granted?

I still do lots of these things now, in years to come my kids will complain about:
Heating, reluctantly use it, just put another jumper on
Taking drinks/snacks from home on a trip out
Sharing bath water
Getting a chocolate bar from the shop means getting a £1 multipack and sharing (I'm not paying 79p for one bar😂)
Getting an ice cream means going in Tesco express for a multipack
Cinema is kids club £2.50 on a Saturday morning when the films already 2 months old
And dinner out is a £1.99 Burger King (no drink tho, bring one from home!)
We are on a low income, not just incredibly tight!

Red Leicester because it was cheaper than Cheddar (no idea why)
Club or Penguin bars instead of normal sized chocolate bars, mostly Penguins because Clubs had more chocolate.
My mum would open a big bar of Bournville and make it last a month, it was her special mum treat kept in the booze cabinet where we weren't supposed to look (that cupboard was like Narnia to me).
Vienetta was a Sunday dinner pudding only (once I stayed home as a teenager when the rest of the family went away and I ate a whole one that I later found out was intended for my brother's birthday tea)
No Ribena, just very watery squash
My mum always brought the coolbox everywhere with one marmite roll each and a packet of unbranded crisps, maybe a satsuma. My parents would lug the bloody thing on coastal walks, it was ridiculous!
I don't think I knew what a taxi was until I was in my twenties
We occasionally went out for dinner and it was always to the same Italian place in the next village, it felt like the height of posh.
My mum used to buy the cheapest offcuts of meant and make stew that was pretty much just gristle. I would chew it up and keep it in my mouth and then spit it down the toilet.
My idea of a fancy birthday meal was bolognese mince and pasta shells.
Weirdly, we all got Bucks Fizz before school on our birthdays after the age of 12 though.
We weren't allowed to have Tampax tampons, had to be lillets ones that didn't have an applicator.

Special K for some reason.

I think strawberries (and any fruit come to that) used to be a lot more seasonal and possibly a lot more expensive, I remember my Mum commenting on a classmates lunchbox content and saying (not to him of course!) that he was spoilt because had strawberries!

I can't remember anything specific as we never went without but everything was very much rationed, like Ribena being strictly one glass a day.

We used to get fresh cream cakes on a Saturday from the bakers up the road to eat with tea watching the Dukes of Hazard/Pink Panther. That seemed the height of luxury to me - I'm still easily pleased.

cigars my mum offered to knit my DD a school jumper last year. We are frugal but not poor. I said no thank you, I will buy her one with the school logo on like every other kid in the school.
My mum is lovely, she just doesn't see that uniform means, well, they all have the same!

Eating out was an indulgement and waste of money we would eat out once a year on holiday and have the chipshop maybe once or twice. Cornettos were for grown ups

The thing I coveted most, above all things, and never got - a KP Choc Dip! A close second, Kinder Eggs! We drank Coke like water and had a drawer full of "treats" but Mum would never ever buy those two items - complete waste of money, apparently .

Also heating - we didn't have it, just a stove in the living room. I still prefer a cold house now, and I'm the one who kvetches about the heating when DP puts it on.

Meat from the shops - we ate our own pork and goat and occasionally chicken, never bought any. Apart from the odd burger at birthday parties, I never had beef until I went on a French exchange aged 12. I feel totally decadent buying steak now (but I do!)

Reading these I wonder what our children will say in years to come. I’m a low earner, single parent and my ds’s favourite food is fajitas which is fairly costly. He asks for them by saying ‘can you afford the stuff for fajitas this week?’
I can’t wait to tell him we have fajitas tonight!

Most of our clothes were hand me downs from our well off cousins
Going to mothercare or Adams to choose something new was a treat maybe once a year

Hot water on demand.

Cafes. (Never ever went to them.)

Angel Delight. (Instant whip all the way, sadly.)

Findus Crispy Pancakes. How I longed to try one, but never did. And now I am old and can buy one for myself, I don't want to!

Oh my god...yes to most of these 😂

All I remember from my childhood was that we had central heating in the house, but it was never used as it was broken. Instead we had to put an electric heater in our room, and have that until it was warm, it was then switched off, we were given a hot water bottle. I moved out as an adult and had central heating in my new house.

Clothes from a shop was a luxury, we got our clothes from jumble sales. As soon as I was earning my own money I bought myself stuff from shops.

Both my dps worked. Where was this money going? Back to their home country. It wasn’t just money it was parcels

Wrapping paper, mum always told us to be careful with the big bits and not to rip them so we could reuse them
And I got a kinder egg about twice a year it was a massive treat
I work in a shop now and see kids who get a kinder egg every day!

Luxury item, Christmas Day only.........Heinz cream of tomato soup

My mother is 89 and becoming increasingly confused. She recently came to live with us. I've noticed that she hides what she considers treats - chocolate biscuits, sweets, cakes and eats them when we are not in
She can have anything she wishes or desires, but continues to do this. I think it is a throw back to her years of austerity.

As full fledged grown ups DH and I are finding it difficult to come to terms with lights being switched off if we momentarily leave a room - similar with the TV .... oh and the sharp intake in breath through clinched teeth, if we stand for more than a second looking into the fridge or freezer with the door open 'wasting electricity' apparently

My parents reckoned you should only use one sheet of loo roll for a wee and two for a number two. Fuck that for a game of soldiers.
This, although we were allowed three sheets. My dad used to describe it as "one for wiping, two for polishing".

Jeans Levi’s and wranglers were a total waste of money when you could get them in Tescowear. However my mum would spend lots on best clothes. The first thing I bought with my own money was a pair of Levi’s.
She also cut up mars bars to share. Choc ices were a treat. Only use the phone after 6 pm. If the phone rang earlier you worried because it must be an emergency. Orange juice extremely rare. We drank milk for breakfast till old enough for tea.
We also always had to start our tea with bread and butter!! Loathed bread and butter!

A couple of years ago I saw a Viennetta in the supermarket (Germany, so still more random). It was purchased in great excitement and duly hyped to my bemused kids. They've SHRUNK

My Dm and stepdad are quite well off and so treat themselves with meals out, holidays etc but the other day I suggested they get a taxi somewhere are they looked at me like I was insane!!!
I explained it wouid probably cost no more than £5 and she was very surprised.
I don't use taxis much as we have 2 cars and don't drink really but I'm still pleasantly surprised when the driver tells me the fare

Just realising I still do alot of this. We have one box of cereal at a time and my children have school shoes and trainers for home. We still haven't put the heat on. Takeaways are birthdays only.

From my childhood I remember not going out until after lunch so we didn't have to get food out. Anything bar an ice lolly or a chocice from the freezer was for adults. Never had coke or any fizzy drink. Squash was barely detectable the amount we were aloud. All my clothes where cheap rip off versions of my friends adidas/kappa from the market.

Nodding along to a lot of this!
I remember my mum being very scathing at the idea of a prepackaged sandwich. Oh the decadence!
She used to tell me off an awful lot for not eating much of my packed lunch at school. Probably because my mum really was a terrible sandwich maker and by lunch time everything smelt of warm banana.
Weak squash.
Fizzy pop only for holidays. It was always a value brand.
New clothes. Most of mine were 2nd or 3rd hand. Trousers with white rings around the ankles as they'd been turned up and then let down.
Hand knitted school jumpers. This was the real kicker. Everything else I could just about cope with, but this was the pits. Everyone else in the whole school could somehow afford proper uniform, but I had to stand out like a sore thumb with my handmade jumper.
Add it all together, I might as well have been walking round with a neon sign over my head reading "BULLY ME PLEASE".

Yes to phone calls before 6pm - but in those days it was much more expensive to phone during the day.

Eating out and souvenir shops.

Fizzy pop and any kind of treat.

New toys and books.

Needless to say I went the complete opposite way in parenting

Orange juice. Never had it as a drink but Mum used to make a recipe which called for it but used to get some weird frozen concentrated stuff in a tube.

Tinned fruit. Not allowed actual fruit juice but it was a massive treat to be given the juice from a tin of mandarins.

Toast. Regarded as a treat for Sunday’s only.

Showers. Never allowed them as they were wasteful. Bath had about an inch of water in. When I was old enough to run my own, Mum would walk in and tell me off for the amount of water I had in it.

Smoked salmon. Brought home by dad in his annual Work Christmas hamper so only had on Christmas Eve every year. It goes in my trolley once a week!

Plastic sandwich bags, had to be washed and used over and over again.

Clingfilm, very precious stuff and treated with reverence.

Never, ever eating out and sitting in motorway service stations with bacon sandwiches watching everyone else cockily going inside. DM still goes a deadly shade of pale if lunch out is mentioned though will spend thousands on home, cars and garden!