cost of living - then and now

[EmmaGrundyForPM]

I'm really conscious of how expensive houses are now compared to when my parents bought their first home (in 1963). However, I'd not realised how expensive other things were back then.

I've just found a copy of "Good Housekeeping" magazine from 1955 in a box of stuff in our loft. There's an article about refrigerators and it says they start from 66Guineas. I Googled wages for that year and the average manual worker earned £10 per week. So a basic fridge would cost about 7 weeks salary. Now, a basic fridge is about £120 so maybe 13 hours work for a manual worker?

I also read an article online about Christmas food through the ages. Apparently in the 1930s, a turkey cost the equivalent of a weeks wages for the average family. Now, a turkey costs maybe 3 or 4 hours of work.

I think we concentrate on house price rises without thinking about how other costs have dropped.

Totally agree OP. I think expectations have also changed considerably. Eating out has got ridiculously expensive however in years gone by it wasn't even a thing that people did regularly let alone expect.

I know food is much cheaper now than it used to be, but the idea that a turkey cost a weeks wages is gobsmacking. I usually spend about £60 on a free range turkey from our butcher. Even if I was only on minimum wage it would still only be 12 hours wages not a weeks worth.

I remember my school plimsolls costing a pound because my Mother used to fret so much about them when I was in primary school so probably about 1971. My much older sister was in her first job in a shop and earned about £6 per week.

I also remember being taken out for dinner once as a child when I was ten when a family friend from America visited. We had fish and chips every other Friday. Nothing else but an ice cream at the seaside was ever bought outside the home.

I remember in the 1980s we were one of the last families we knew to get a tv.
One girl at school said her family had (iirc) 4 or 5 tvs. We were completely blown away by this because at the time I think a tv was £200-300. Now you can probably get a small tv for around £100.
My parents spend over £100 on a washing machine in the 1970s or 80s. You can probably get a beko one for not much more than that now.

Yes I agree

Housing costs are very high now but costs of good is comparatively low.

I remember when I was a student in the late 1990s...clothes were so much more expensive than they are now. And yes, remember when people would rent their television?!

And I often hear very elderly people say why don't young people just stop buying the latest tech and consumer goods and then they can get on the property ladder...it's nonsense. Housing is so expensive and goods are so cheap, giving up the latter won't make a dent in being able to afford the former.

exactly @Comedycook
Even stuff like cutting down on takeaways or buying coffees out. If you bought a coffee for £3/day every day on your way to work, at the end of the year you would have spent about £700. If you didn't buy the coffee at the end of the year, thats not going to have made an enormous difference to your deposit (in relation to the cost of a flat or house) and the price of the property will have appreciated more than £700
Thats not to say its not worth trying to save but it really isn't as easy as "just cutting down"

Plus I hate it when people talk about millenials "having to have the latest iphone" for example. Its all very well the next generation saying its unneccessary but in this day and age a smart phone or some sort of tech is neccessary for so many things, or they become inaccessible. Ok it doesn't have to be the latest or most expensive but tech and electrical goods seem to have a far shorter shelf life than they did years ago so they need replacing far more frequently.

Well it depends.

For many, it's not just the single £3 coffee, it's a £3 coffee and a bought lunch, and a takeaway once or twice a week and the difference in the cost of the latest iphone replaced every 2 years, compared with a cheaper but still perfectly decent smart phone used until it breaks, and fast fashion and cocktails and a new car on PCP and tattoos, hair, nails and beauty treatments etc etc etc.

That can all add up to thousands of pounds a year and a couple of years of cutting down by 80% probably is a house deposit in much of the country.

Clothes are so much cheaper now.

And flights.

Comedycook I rented a computer in the mid 90’s do I could do my dissertation.

I agree with @BarbaraofSeville it's more about changing the way you spend money.

But yes houses prices are huge. Even here in Australia, in my little far-from-the- city suburb, house prices have risen ridiculously.

We bought 3 years ago and our house would now sell for $100k more.

Food was much more expensive but it was possible to buy a really nice house on one salary. Electrics were expensive but they lasted and were repaired. Clothing was quite expensive but it was well made.

My DM refused to work and frittered away money. Had she worked we would have been quite well off

@CrimbleCrumble1

Clothes are so much cheaper now.

Totally

I’m 50. I remember new clothes being a treat or an investment, rather than something you threw in the trolley with the groceries. Even as a teen in the 1980s, places like H&M and TopShop were not that cheap. I think we had Peacocks, but not Primark. I was blown away when I first saw clothes in Asda (Cardiff) in about 1990.

Housing (Shelter) is on the very first rung of Maslows Heirachy of needs, along with food, water, sleep. Its essential to survival. Turkeys, fridges, vacuums, fashion etc are not. So the fact that many goods are cheap now, and secure ownership of housing for many is out of reach, is not right for society.

Also, many years ago a couple would buy a cooker/fridge/washing machine/hoover and it would probably last their lifetime. These things were frequently fixed rather than bring chucked and replaced.
When me and DH moved in together we bought a doer-upper, grafted hard on it, then sold it and used the profit to buy our family home. Lots of our furniture was second hand. I see lots of my kids friends and young work mates wanting brand new homes with all mod cons.

Mum said Clarks shoes were the equivalent of a whole year of child benefit

I don’t think shoes were that expensive.

When I look at my last year of primary school photo, there are more kids wearing their own clothes than uniform. I didn’t wear a uniform always, and I remember having a pair of trainers one year that were school and home shoes. No school shoes.

When I started work as a fire-alarm engineer in 1981 my weekly wage was £33.50.
If I recall correctly an LP was £9.99.
A years TPF&T insurance for my moped was £35.

I remember new clothes being a treat or an investment, rather than something you threw in the trolley with the groceries. Even as a teen in the 1980s, places like H&M and TopShop were not that cheap. I think we had Peacocks, but not Primark

As a uni student over twenty years ago, t shirts and tops were about £20...now you can buy them in primark for a couple of pounds. I wish there had been such cheap clothes when I was younger!

Interesting isn’t it.

We’ve gone from a time when everyone rented pretty much - both my sets of grand parents rented ( born 1900 ish) - my parents and aunt / uncle bought nan a house after
Pop died which must have been 1984 ….and inherited it when she died. Mum and dad bought the house I grew up in , in 1970 (8k or something ) . I bought my 1st house with husband in 1989 as 2 full time child free people. I’m not sure my kids will buy ,

Pretty much everything though is relatively cheaper than my 1970s childhood. Food loads cheaper , clothes , even cars. Dunno about relative fuel prices though …

However there a new spending streams - I can remember going out for meals in the 1970s with my parents - so posh 😂. Definitely not “ go out and meet a friend from lunch / brunch - that was sarnies in the park and an ice cream even for grown ups 😂.

And the amount we all spend on tech 😱. I wonder how that compares to early tvs though. My dad was a gadget freak and I remember our first microwave / I bet that cost loads 😂

After my Dad passed away in 2019 we cleared the house and he had kept a lot of receipts from the 1970s.

I was quite shocked at the prices - washing machine over £100, wardrobe and dressing table around £120 each and second hand Ford car £1750.
The house itself sold for almost 14 x the purchase price but the other items you could buy for a similar price to 40 years ago.

Electrical and white goods are so much cheaper now in real terms. And yes, things lasted much longer bsvk then. I remember my grandad had a Kelvinator fridge which I think he bought in the 50s, it lasted until he died in 1995.

My grandad was middle management, reasonably well off, and bought a television for the Coronation. It cost the equivalent of several months salary.

I remember spending £70 on a black blazer from a in 1987 before going off to uni. I think it was from Littlewoods or C&A so not high end. That’s equivalent to £200 today