If you were a child in the 1970s do you remember your parents worrying about money?

[gordonsntonic]

I do. They used to argue about it at night, and I remember asking my mum what "in the red" meant. Then I remember my mum getting a part time job, so I had to go to friends houses or my Nan's after school. I just thought my dad was bad with money, but with hindsight, this would have been around the time that the UK had huge interest rates. We got through it, but there was one key difference to now - back then, mortgage affordability was calculated on the basis of one income, not two, so my mum going out to work would have helped to bridge the gap. Things are obviously different now. 😬

We didn't have much money but my DM was very good at managing what little we had so I never really had an notion of it being a problem. We had food, and clothing, the house was warm enough and we got gifts at birthdays and Christmas etc. It is only now as an adult talking to my DM that I realise quite how good she was at juggling the family finances and quite how little we actually had.

I have to disagree about that. All the things you mention are lovely in the hands of a good cook, and I have the good fortune to come from a long line of excellent plain cooks. My mother's stews, mince and tatties, soups and steamed puddings were wonderful. The extensive choice we have now involves huge food miles and packaging waste so is not good for the environment. Also, far too many foods on sale now are ultra-high processed and really poor as a result from a nutritional point of view. There was nothing like the obesity problem in the 1970s that there is now, and the food on sale in supermarkets and fast food outlets has a lot to do with that.

I remember money being an issue - we were a single parent family- free school meals /clothing vouchers etc- i knew not to ask for things. I was very conscious of not wanting to put my mum in a position of having to say no.
No idea how my mum managed really - we had a council house but i don't know if bills were an issue at all. That said we didn't have a car , holiday's in a friends caravan etc

Late 70’s born. No, not poor exactly compared to some of the grinding poverty where I lived, but every penny was counted and we never got any gifts or treats (other than occasional sweets from Woolworths picknmix from my gran) outside of Christmas and birthday. I remember being desperate to buy a copy of Twinkle from the newsagent - never happened. DM was effectively a single mum and worked FT from when youngest sibling went to school. But she was a teacher locally with holidays off and earned enough to bring up 3 kids in a tiny semi. My aunt and gran helped with childcare. We always had clean shoes and a coat and went to the library, but there was nothing left at the end of the week and we had hardly any clothes. I know DM ate her free staff meals at lunchtime and skipped dinner. DM and gran made a lot of our clothes. Knitted in the evening.

DF was terrible with money and when he left he’d run up debts in DMs name. He paid maintenance erratically, so I can remember bailiffs coming to turn off the electricity even though DM was scrupulously careful with money. I was made to answer the door and say I was alone and refuse entry. He always had a car 🙄

Born late 60s and we had very little money. I don't remember my parents really talking about it, but I knew. I used to help my mum divide my dad's paypacket up for bills etc - metal tin with labelled slots for eg gas etc. We had no car, no telephone an old twin tub and no freezer.
All my clothes were 'second' hand although most came from my cousin's (there were 4of them with the eldest 10years older than me, so they were definitely well-worn and horribly out of fashion). I used to get teased terribly at school because of my clothes - no school uniform! The only new clothes I had were school shoes which my mum saved all her children's allowance to buy. I had wellies as my other shoes.
Free school meals - which all my classmates knew about because of the way the school collected the dinner money.

We only ever holidayed in a caravan - no car so couldn't camp. It was always early spring, not in the summer - cheaper (and colder and wetter)

We never ate out or had a takeaway. All meals were made from scratch, involved using up leftovers and lots of veg. We lived in a flat, but did have out own little flower bed. All the other patches were full of roses etc, ours had lettuces and runner beans!

I remember hiding letters from school about trips because I knew I wouldn't be able to go and it was just easier not to ask.

I don't remember my friends being so hard up. My dad worked in the arts which was very poorly paid even then.

I remember we didn’t have any extra money at all. We camped a lot, but on farms that charged about 25- 50p a night! No posh loo blocks!

My grandparents always bought our school uniforms, and Dad’s car. I think they may have also helped with the mortgage. The rest of my clothes were handed down from my grandparents’ neighbours, and my uncle, who wasn’t much older than me. I wore a lot of boy’s clothes.

My parents grew veg. We had a chicken on a Sunday, but I don’t remember a lot of meat. Potatoes figured heavily in our diet. Dad used to buy fresh bread on the way home from work, when the bakers had reduced it.

If we went to visit my grandparents, they always gave Dad money for petrol. He still does this with us now.

Yes, it was a major issue for my parents and they argued about it constantly. A bill or unexpected expense would cause huge stress. Mum had to stretch a very small food budget to make our meals. We didn’t have luxuries.

Not the 70s or 80s, we were fine then. Had all sorts of gadgets like a dishwasher and microwave long before anyone else did. My mum worked full time in an office and drove - we had two cars - I went to full time nursery then school, then to various child minders up to about age 9, which was unusual in my (very) little circle of friends.

In early nineties my dad left his good job and started a business. We had a last hurrah holiday somewhere hot (only time we ever holidayed abroad and not camping) and then it was debt all the way to bankruptcy and repossession the late nineties. But it was debt and not deprivation. A choice, I suppose. I didn’t really notice, because I had a job and bought my own clothes and lots of my own food (out and about) in the name of ‘independence’ (did all my own washing and ironing once at secondary school, and cooked for the family twice a week) and we had a new build house in 1980, so CH and good (for the time) windows and insulation. Mostly I remember things being chaotic because my parents weren’t home very much and no one really organised things. By the time the house was repossessed I was at university managing my own money and housing. Self absorbed little shit that I was! Mind you, I’d have done the same to shield my child so I suppose that was the point.

Can't help feeling this thread is all a bit 'Four Yorkshiremen'

Born in the early 70s. My dad worked, mum stayed at home. I don't remember ever worrying about money. I vaguely remember the strikes as my dad worked in the power industry. My mum made all our clothes and dad made a lot of our toys (doll's furniture). We were probably relatively well off, but not ponies and private school rich. We did live in a detached house and have holidays, but not abroad. We definitely had a lot less 'stuff' than we do now.

Yes, my dad was made redundant twice and I remember mum going back to work full time (rather than supply teaching).

Holidays were staying with friends / family and a lot less 'treats' in the house

There was a lot of talk of 'tightening our belts', lots more buses as the car broke down, clothes were mostly hand me downs.

My dad was in the RAF, but when I was very young in the mid 70s, he also worked as a taxi driver. He was also a market researcher for many years (how he met my step mum!) Back in the day, this meant going door to door with very long tedious questionnaires. I don't imagine he did that for fun times so money must have been an issue even though he had what seemed to me like a 'good' job.
He never expressed any worries about it, but then he wouldn't have in front of me. I suspect that he had spent so many years (two decades) being posted abroad and being single and fancy free and not having to worry about anything other than pocket money, financially it was quite a shocker having to buy a house and fund a wife and child back in the UK. Then the wife left and he still had to support the child (me) who had to go live with nanna.

Yes, my dad was always being made redundant and my parents would constantly argue about money. Looking back I feel desperately sorry for my mum who was always the one sorting everything out. It put her under an enormous amount of stress.

Yes. I was born in 1961 and although nothing was said became aware in the 70s that things were a bit tight. We lived in a large 4-bedroom house with a big garden, but it was largely unheated and in the winter we spent most of our time in the breakfast room off the kitchen, where there was a coal Baxi stove with a back boiler that was kept on much of the time. No phone in the house: we had to use a public call box. We had a very limited range of clothing and much of that was hand-me-downs or home-sewn. One pair of shoes at a time. Dad grew a lot of veg and so we had lots of soups and stews and porridge.

I became aware of Mum going to the Post Office to withdraw money every few weeks and I presume she was dipping into savings. My parents had been young teens in the war and knew how to get by on nothing, so were very careful with money. Mum got a job in admin in the LA Education department once we were capable of getting ourselves to and from school.

I can remember the three day week, sitting round the stove with my mum reading us stories by candlelight when the electricity went out. I went to university in 1980 and graduated into another recession. Lived in bedsits and shared houses. Worked two jobs and managed to save the deposit for a little flat in a grim area of London in 1986 with an interest rate of 7%. Four years later interest rates were 12%+ and I had to choose between heating and eating.

I've now reached the age where young people used to central heating and en suites glare at me and accuse me of stealing their future and I think they have no idea how most of us started off in the 70s and 80s, when boom and bust were regular occurrences. I know two people whose fathers killed themselves in the late 80s because they were on the verge of being bankrupted.

Born in 1960. Some squabbles, usually after we were in bed. Often heard the word “economise” I remember making a list with my little sister about ways we could save money, including not having our weekly comics. My dad worked FT then taught at a local college in the evenings until my little sis went to school, when mum went back to work. The biggest difference with nowadays IMO was the cost of housing. House prices are a much greater multiple of average annual salary than was the case in 1970.

I can’t agree with the “we had it tough and it never did us any harm” school of thought, and would rather my kids/grandkids had an easier time.

My dad's business failed at end of 80s when rival firms moved their production to far East and undercut them. My parents were quite worried then and money was tight, and they put the house on the market looking to downsize. I only realised much later that we didn't move because my grandfather bailed us out by downsizing themselves and giving the money to my parents. I never heard parents argue about it, but my mum was careful to explain to us things would be a bit lean for a while.

@Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g
Everything you wrote is true but once you start using herbs and spices that weren't available then, the food we had seems so bland and unappealing.
Also rice wasn't really used until the 80's. I couldn't go back to just eating potatoes!

My parents were terrible with money. They had a lot of credit card debt. I was worried for a large part of my childhood as I didn't understand really - they always argued at the end of the month before pay day.

I clearly remember thinking when I was about 10 that you got paid once a year (I'd heard something about annual salaries) and They were arguing about running out of money and I thought... they'd spent the year's money. It must have been October time as I know I decided not to ask for anything for christmas because I knew they didn't have any more money.

Dad had a good job, and mum went back to work full time when I was 11, she had been working nights in a supermarket for a while, then nights in a bank. But they were terrible at managing their money. Both grew up in working class households, and I think they must have been hit by a whammy of high interest rates, desire to do better and not sure how to budget. They definitely approached money and credit cards as something to spend ASAP and not budget.

I grew up with a gut wrenching fear of having no money. And of debt. I didn't get a credit card until I was 38. I had the odd year at uni when I scrabbled for money. I worked part time, they gave me £120 a month "allowance" but my rent was £180 and I had bus fare, books, bills, food... i couldn't move home, couldn't ask for more financial help and I just racked up student loan debt to pay for uni fees (they refused to help with that) and an overdraft so I could manage.

Anyway, their lack of financial knowledge terrified me. I learnt from it, took me till mid 20s to be on an even keel. But I won't forget the worry.

They still aren't great with money. Both retired on ridiculously good pensions. My oven broke two years ago, DH and I could cover cost of a new one but my dad came up and gave me £300 and said "we can't even spend our money at the moment, we have more than we know what to do with".

Ooft.

Totally remember this.

Massive rows, most clothes second hand, no holidays or holidays done as cheap as possible. Dad doing all the work on the house, most of which is illegal now and requires qualified tradespeople. They only got a washing machine when they had a win on the pools.

It was a major factor in my choice of career - I wanted something with a guaranteed job and a salary of over £50K, a slightly random figure I had identified as 'a lot'.

I started living with 1st DH in 1974 (I was19) in a double room in a shared house. We bought a book called 500 Recipes for Cooking for Two from Woolworths and adapted them to what we could afford. I remember always stopping at the butchers on the way home from work and buying a quarter of mince (4oz), or 4 sausages, one chicken quarter or one pork chop and we’d make a meal out of it.

Saturday night takeaway was 2 rolls and a bag of chips on the way home from a gig (DH was in a band). If it was a good night and he actually got paid we’d buy a bottle of Dubonnet and some lemonade 😂.

We didn’t care too much about power cuts (young and in love 😉) but Winters were tough, we spent most of our time in bed or on a small rug in front of a 2 bar electric fire, we truly did have ice on the inside of the windows.

We never even thought about buying a house because it was so far beyond us. It was a big decision when we moved from one room to two (one room and a kitchen but still with shared bathroom) in a slightly better area.

Thing was though that we never expected any different. ‘Lifestyle’ wasn’t rammed down your throat 24/7, TV programmes were mostly pretty realistic and it was OK to just be who you were and not worry about whether it would look good on Instagram!

Inspired by this thread I remembered that old Cookbook and Googled it…..just bought one second hand on eBay 😃….current DH could be in for a bit of a shock 😂😂

I was born in the mid-sixties and a lot of this is familiar to me as well - no money, parents working additional jobs at the weekend to cover the basics. It was not nice. One-parent family (dad had left after draining the savings account) and we ended up living in one room of our house after a problem with the electrics which we couldn't afford to fix, outside toilet in the yard, no bathroom. Always very aware that there was no money, don't remember seeing/hearing any arguments but we knew that asking for stuff was hopeless! My husband's family were not as badly off as mine but no spare money there either.

Might sound like the four yorkshiremen to some, but that's what life was like for a lot of people grumpyoldpersonwithcats

@ChicCroissant
I know - you may wish to look at my previous post at 09:28

Nope, I think my (foster) parents were more than happy with the fact that in 1969 we all moved into a brand new 3 bedroom council house. The level of indebtedness today and for many years has been off the scale, compared to the 1970s and 80s.

I'm not talking never never debt etc, I'm talking about rents, council tax, utility bills, unavoidable bills that are absolutely off the scale, by comparison to back then, for ordinary people and families.

We wore hand me downs, we occasionally hid behind the sofa, a mars bar was cut in four. Nothing compared to what's happening these days and has been happening since 2010, many folks just cannot live any less, there's nothing left to cut back on.

I think there are two main responses to these experiences as children. People can either grow up to say ‘It never did me any harm’ or they can use whatever small influence or money they have to say, ‘Not on my watch’. We can’t all be Marcus Rashford, but on a small scale most of us can do something - even if it’s just ticking a box on a ballot paper.

Agree with you Gaspo: I too was lucky to have been raised by a good cook who could turn out lovely food. Her pastry (made with lard) was to die for. Suet dumplings on top of fabulous beef stew, lambs or calves liver (classic Italian dish on the menu of most good Italian restaurants) and a dish I've tried to recreate because I loved it so much — savoury white sauce containing lots of leeks and small cubes of corned beef from a tin. Served over floury boiled potatoes. Very comforting. Fantastic classic food, not '1970s' food.