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.

@Dougieowner

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 when the LP and the concert ticket cost about the same. Nobody would have spent the best part of a day's wages on a concert ticket back then.

I though an LP was £5 in the 80’s 🥴

My DF liked to be amongst the first to get gadgets, he bought a Betamax video recorder around the late 70’s ( I think). I think it was something like 2 or 3 hundred.
My DM used to have one big item at a time from her catalogue and pay it off monthly, once it was paid off she would get something else.
My parents got on the property ladder by part building by a house on a share ownership scheme in the kids 70’s, they both worked full time.
Where as my DH and I bought a 1930’s extended semi in the South East easily on one salary when I was a student in the mid 90’s. We used my student loans as the deposit, got a cash back mortgage. This mortgage gave the 5% deposit back which then paid for our wedding a month later. This seems crazy now compared with what youngsters have to do to get on the property ladder. We ended up with a house and a wedding without saving hardly anything.

Sorry that should say part buying not part building.

@GoodnightGrandma

I though an LP was £5 in the 80’s 🥴

For some reason I have kept some LP receipts from the late 70s.. The most expensive was £3.56

@GoodnightGrandma

I though an LP was £5 in the 80’s 🥴

A Top Ten album on cassette was £4.50 from Woolies, slightly more in Our Price, but they had the “low” price for low ranking albums too. Vinyl was cheaper. Non chart albums were very pricey!

Another thing… Converse All Star shoes - the plain ones cost about £40 for about 3 decades, I remember my dad grumbling about “£40 for sand shoes” which I wanted (new, not my brothers’ hand me for down Dunlop Green Flash) for my birthday in the mid 80s… now they “only” cost £50ish.

I think people need to remember wages were often very low for the average working man and worse for women. There was no minimum wage and I remember working a waking overnight shift in a nursing home for £1.10 an hour in 1992. Yes house prices were relatively cheap, but borrowing was very expensive in the late 80s and early 90s. In fact our mortgage interest rate was in double figures when we bought our 1st home. When my parents bought their 1st home in 1960 they only got a mortgage because the lender agreed to take my mum's wages in to account, which was quite unusual then. On the other hand people didn't expect to have all the mod cons as soon as they moved in to a home. We had second hand furniture and no washing machine in our first couple of years. A dishwasher wasn't an essential in a kitchen and you knew you had to save up to get things. Having said that our 1st washing machine and hoover lasted years, unlike todays appliances. It was just a different world. Weddings weren't the masively expensive production people demand today, many honeymoons were in the uk in a bnb unless you had a good career and any hen or stag do was a few pints down the local or a trip to the local night club not a weekend/ week of major expense. For me given the choice between spending £20k on hen, stag and wedding productions, or putting it to a house deposit there'd be no contest. Not that either was an option for us anyway. Everyone has the right to set their own priorities but I can't be overly sympathetic when people blow so much cash on such things but moan they can't save for a house deposit.

I see it like this. In the late 90s/ early 2000s you could buy an average size house for say 70-80k.
The average wage then was probably 21 k per year.
Let’s go forward 20 years. The average house is over £250 k and the average wage is 26k per year.
I know a house that cost £70 k in 1998.
It’s worth over £500 k today.

@Hearwego

I see it like this. In the late 90s/ early 2000s you could buy an average size house for say 70-80k. The average wage then was probably 21 k per year. Let’s go forward 20 years. The average house is over £250 k and the average wage is 26k per year. I know a house that cost £70 k in 1998. It’s worth over £500 k today.

Yep...I remember job hunting in the early 2000s. Admin jobs paid about 25k....the same jobs today still pay that .

Contrary to popular belief, I'm a millennial and I love a fixer upper (I'm on my second). My parents on the other hand are aghast I won't live in a new-build with all mod-cons and drive space for two (new) cars.

That being said, house prices have risen out of control. My parents bought their house in 1989 for £128k and it's now worth north of £500k. No way they could afford that on a teacher and a barman's salary these days.

Private education is the same. I went to a private school...a standard one, not one of the big public schools. There were a couple of girls from wealthy families but there were so many girls there from very average backgrounds. So let's say a dad in middle management and mum was a secretary. Or dad was a cabbie, mum was a teacher. People doing those jobs today couldn't afford private school

@Exhausteddog

It's not just coffees - we worked out we were spending £5k a year on coffees, pastries, lunches and takeaways (due to not bothering to cook rather than special treat) add £120 a month for sky, £10 each for Netflix and Spotify, £70 for gym... huge amounts of discretionary spending because we could afford it but meant we never saved

@SMabbutt - what a great post, and so true.

Yes white goods and electrical stuff were very expensive then . However they were expected to last a LONG time. Clothes lasted much longer and were much better made . People just didn’t expect loads of disposable stuff.
My parents didn’t have a fridge or washing machine until the late 1970s. We didn’t have central heating either for a long time. We never went out to eat. Just fish and chips occasionally.
TV was rented until sometime in the 1980’s!
Things were on HP or people did without.
My parents were obsessed with saving electricity, turning off lights, wearing jumpers , not boiling more water than needed . Life has changed so much.

I never went to a restaurant until I was 18. The only takeaway food I had was fish and chips on holiday. Never bought food out, always picnics.
We bought our house in the late 80s. Our mortgage interest was 15% at one point. We furnished the house with my grandparents furniture. I took packed lunches to work.
Now we are comfortably off but some old habits die hard, can't imagine buying coffee to take out though obviously I would buy coffee in a cafe if meeting friends.

I know people don't magically afford hours by giving up Costa but yes, it's amazing how much people can "fritter" on stuff that just wasn't a thing 50 years ago.

DH works for a small charity so not particularly well paid. He takes a packed lunch and his colleagues tease him.about it (in a nice way) as they all go and buy lunches out - sandwiches, cake, coffee etc. Dh just doesn't see the point if spending £30- £40 each week when he can make himself a sandwich at home.

@Comedycook

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.

Yes, and there's a reason for that. Economies of scale and technological advances make goods cheaper. Land is a finite resource and, crucially, is priced accordingly as people recognise this very explicitly. The true cost of goods in terms of natural resources has not been factored into other items so companies could still profit by selling them cheaply. This is however, starting to change. For example the increasing energy prices; it is dawning on markets that these resources are also finite. In short, don't rely on energy or food or any other goods remaining cheap for much longer.

@EmmaGrundyForPM

I know people don't magically afford hours by giving up Costa but yes, it's amazing how much people can "fritter" on stuff that just wasn't a thing 50 years ago.

DH works for a small charity so not particularly well paid. He takes a packed lunch and his colleagues tease him.about it (in a nice way) as they all go and buy lunches out - sandwiches, cake, coffee etc. Dh just doesn't see the point if spending £30- £40 each week when he can make himself a sandwich at home.

Yes and what’s the thing with walking around with take away coffee in the street? I just don’t get it. Wait till you get home!

Have to admit trying to compare confuses me. White goods, tv's, cars, etc use to last decades and now they're not built to last. As a child of the 70's we were hella poor, a rare single parent family - father deceased leaving nothing, according to my mum he tried to get life insurance before I was born but was told he was too old (older parent). Yet we had a holiday each year (butlins or similar), mum smoked and went out once a week with her friends, second hand clothes though except underwear and shoes (one pair for school and home) we eventually got a small TV then a larger one and the little one went in my Mum's bedroom. At 13 we got a computer (commodore 64, the posh kids had and an amega, lol).

Then looking back at my grandparents generation many families successfully raised a family on one wage with no state top ups. Couldn't do that now! My grandad worked for the council, granny worked part time. Both smoked, went out once a week, had a TV, holidayed once a year and had some savings. Feels like people got more quality of life for less hours at work back then, but maybe just less frivolous!

@BareGrylls: you sound like me (and at the age of 60 I still have some of my grandparents' furniture)!

Somewhere on the internet there are all the previous Argos catalogues. They are fascinating, some goods seem really expensive in comparison to what they would be now. I think a lot of it is due to the fact that many more goods were made here but now most things come from countries such as China. If anyone can find a link it will give you a nostalgic few minutes.

My children were born in the 80s, I used to make their clothes like knitted jumpers and coats because it was cheaper, not so now its dearer to buy wool than go to primark. Their first computer, when eldest was 7, cost us nearly £2000, we were not well off, that took three years to pay off. I'm fed up of hearing that younger people are not able to afford to buy a house whilst off on skiing holidays, 2 cars, expensive pets/hobbies & latest technology. All of my single adult children are in a position to buy as they have been brought up watching us budget carefully, they don't all have cars or multiple holidays abroad but they are able to afford what is important to them on pretty average wages. We struggled to buy our first house on two full time wages in 1980, we couldn't afford cheapest two bedroomed terrace so had to buy a near derelict one and do it up. Prices in comparison to wages haven't really changed that much, somethings are cheaper some dearer, it's just expectations that have changed!

What nonsense. The price of housing compared to salaries has increased enormously. That is most people's major outgoing. And because of the price of housing, most households require two working adults to support them which means children in childcare ane guess what? We have the most expensive childcare in the developed world and some of the lowest quality. Go UK! 👏👏👏

The idea that not drinking takeaway coffee or having cheaper fridges or TVs will counteract this - at the present time - is economically illiterate. It's not even in the same ballpark. Rent/ mortgage must be paid each month. How often is a new TV or washing machine needed?

All decent economists are clear that this generation is poorer than their parents on average so to say "oh no it's fine because Costa and Primark" is ignorant in the extreme. Did you ever look at maths and economics at school?

£42000 mortgage at 15.5% and compulsory life insurance cost over £600 PCM.
You’d get a lot larger mortgage for £600 now.

Our mortgage interest was 15% at one point

When I bought my flat in the 1980s mortgage interest was over 20% (in NZ)