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. 😬

No I never heard them mention money but my dad worked lots of hours so my mum could stay at home to look after us 5 kids.
We didn't get much at birthdays or Christmas but we didn't expect much either.
We had lovely meals cooked from scratch and I remember all the fun times we had playing with all the other kids on the street.

My dads family were relatively wealthy and both his parents died before he met my mum so they got a mortgage when they got together. Apparently my gran phoned the day after they moved in and said she and grandad had been up all night worrying what would happen if they couldn’t pay. It caused a divide in the family because everyone else lived in council houses and felt we were getting above our station (I think). Even with that they both worked and took on extra seasonal work because of the fear of not having enough. When an uncle died, everyone had to scrape together enough to pay the widows bills, never mind an elaborate funeral.

I was just thinking that! I seem to be the only person on this thread whose family weren't short of money in the 70s. The 80s were even better.

No, but I was very conscious at primary school that my mum was the only one with a full time job (school teacher). I was slightly embarrassed about that. It meant we had more money although holidays were camping in the UK.

My parents were renting their flat, both working full time, my brother and I were 18 and 16 in 1970 so although still financially dependent, didn't need childcare. I don't remember parents seeming to be stressed about money and they did go on holiday - DB and I had stopped holidaying with them by then.

I was born in the late seventies in Ireland. I remember my dad had to go to England to work for a few months in 1986 because things were so tight. I was devastated because I was very close to him. My mother was left to run a farm, look after three children and my dad's parents and uncle who were elderly and lived with us. She did work but had to give it up when I was a baby as I was ill for a length of time in hospital. We did have a great childhood though apart from that, there wasn't spare money and we had hand me downs but on the whole things were ok. We grew a lot of our own food and lots of people we knew were similar.

@Peridot1

Yes, we had hot water bottles, and there was a storage heater in tbe hall - neither made a dent in the chill though.

Yes. 100%. Huge interest rates. One income family. My mother took in students.
We didn't holiday abroad but that was normal at the time.

I assume single mother must have worried as we grew up on the bones of our backsides, in a really bad slum, and I definitely worried about money to take down to the rent office or not as a kid.

TBF most around us weren't doing much better. Very racially mixed area and different ideas about what ought to get prioritized according to background.
(Irish and Caribbeans didn't let kids go too hungry.)

Sometimes there was money for a short while and the first thing that got brought was cigarettes, because it made life less stressful. Knowing how important they were, we never actually resented it. The rent or part would be paid off and it went downhill quite fast from there. We bounced in and out of care a bit and I suspect there was sometimes a financial rest involved.

We were a one meal a day family, and then it dwindled to not every day, but we were also a children speak only when spoken to family, so nothing ever said.
I have rickets and had clanky leg irons and was scrawny. Now and again someone else's mother would shout out of a window to tell their kid to give part of their 'slab' that they'd been sent out to play with. It didn't make me popular but I was deeply grateful to those women and still am, though it infuriated my mother who felt judged. I also have fond memories of various random older Caribbean men, who'd say very little, but just spill a share of their chips onto newspaper and hand it over and walk away. They wanted nothing back, they just got reality. An unspoken understanding between poor people and poorer people and the need for all to survive somehow. Kindnesses had a big impact on me.

In the end she got too ill, and we went out 'to sort ourselves.' She died in her 50's completely worn out, surrounded by rotting stuff she'd hoarded against stupid grinding poverty.It was appalling really.

I remember being sent Ron the shops to get bread and milk and not having enough money as prices had raised so much. I remember my mum's hysterical reaction nearly 50 years later.

I was born in 1969. We lived in a privately rented terrace with an outside toilet until I was two and we moved to a new build council house (which my parents bought with an inheritance via the Right To Buy scheme in the 1980s and still live in today).

My Dad was a factory worker and my Mom stayed at home until I was 10. They never mentioned a lack of money but I now realise that we didn’t have any money to spare. I have a sister who is 11 years older than me and before I was born they had annual UK holidays, she had music and dance lessons and Dad drove a Mini. That was sold before I was born and Dad hasn’t owned or driven a car since. I was 8 when I went on holiday for the first time, we went on a coach to Butlins for a week.

Ice on the inside of the windows was a regular feature in the Winters of my childhood and teens. Our 3 bedroom house only had three radiators. One in the living room, one in the hall and one in the main bedroom. I had a small fan heater in my bedroom which I’d switch on when I got up so that my room would warm up while I was in the bathroom. My mother would come in and turn it off after a few minutes though, mindful of how much it cost to run, so the room was never properly warm when I came back in to get dressed.
They didn’t get a radiator fitted in my bedroom until I’d left home.

My Mom made a lot of our clothes for me, my sister and herself, she never mastered shirts and trousers or I suppose she’d have made Dad’s too. She knitted jumpers and cardigans for all of us. I also used to get hand me down clothes from my cousin and every birthday my aunt would take me to a local clothes shop and buy me something lovely to wear, that was such a treat!

I believed in Father Christmas to a much older age than kids do nowadays as I couldn't believe my parents could afford all the gifts - and they certainly weren't the extravagant piles that are often the norm now!

I remember disagreeing with my sister about it as I was maybe more astutely aware that money was tight.

I don't remember my parents arguing about money but Mum certainly carefully matched her cheque stub book to her paper bank statement each month!

God the food was grim. Breakfast was good. Packed lunch was a sandwich and apple and a drink in a Tupperware beaker. Tea was salad on 3 days (one tomato, a few rings of cucumber, a piece of ham, some limp home grown lettuce and bread and Marg. ) Cold meat and fried mashed potatoes and grated carrot, chopped raw cabbage and baked beans. Rabbit stew with potatoes parsnips and carrots. Chips on Friday cooked at home in the chip pan. Roast on Sunday but that had to last the week. One glass of milk per day. If you were hungry it was bread and margarine and not much of that either.

We ate gone off food.

Clothes: home made party dress. Clothes handed down from my boy cousin, clothes bought in the sale after the shop caught fire and smoke damaged. I wore those skirts til they were almost indecently short.

They did own a house, bought when cheap. Mum went out to work, I was a latch key kid from age 7. Left home alone if poorly with parents popping in in lunch hour.

No central heating. Ice on the windows in winter. Just a heated living room. Baths once a week in the bathroom when we all shared one tank of hot water. Maybe a bath in the baby bath in the living room or sat on the draining board when really tiny and bathed in the sink.

Getting dressed downstairs.

Eiderdowns and sheets and woolly blankets. Dressing in lots of layers..

I had one school skirt all of secondary school. I started with two but one got a hole in. Crap shoes that mum got in a sale.

We did have a week's holiday per year though until things got really bad.

Portions of meat etc were very small. (Parents were rationed in the war. ) Sweets once a week. Three chews for a ha'penny.

We didn't get video recorder when they first came in. We did order one from the bonus catalogue that was a scheme at dad's work. We still have the microwave from the 80s.

Had salt and dripping sandwiches for lunches. (Bloody delicious they were too)

I'm really interested in those families where Dad had 2 or 3 jobs...where we lived there were no jobs to be had!

My Dad went to night school to help him find work. In the end it was the volunteering her did that got him a job.

My Mum would not have been able to work. So her going to work was never an option.

I remember well how my dad took on a second job and how my mother scrimped & scraped to make the housekeeping money stretch a bit further. Lots of arguments and me bring told we couldn't afford this or that. My parents have both remained very careful with money.

We never had pudding with our tea-time meal. We never had biscuits or treats in the house either.

We had a bare minimum of school uniform items and hardly any clothes for outside of school. Clothes, I remember, were way more expensive comparatively than they are now, though.

I was always conscious of how little we had but I guess my parents thought the security of buying their own home was worth the trade off.

Wow this cannot have been the 70's surely.

We wore hand me downs too, rented a TV from when I was 12 , (didn’t have one before that) . I didn’t know anyone who owned a TV and everything was bought ‘on tick’. My father got all our furniture from auctions. He did all the decorating and fixing things .

We ate very repetitive meals and there was no money for treats of any sort. My mother often complains that she couldn’t even afford a chocolate bar. My mother in law used to bulk out meals with porridge oats.

I remember that we would have to search the backs of the tv and every inch of the house for change. At times there was nothing to eat. My step Dad had borrowed money from everyone already. Noone would lend him anything any more. But one friend of his, a butcher would invite us round for dinner to make sure we got fed.He cooked some amazing pieces of meat he got cheap. I am vegetarian now but I can still remember his thick meaty stews fondly. I am a bit of a prepper now. My cupboards are over full probably because I know what it is to be hungry. To be honest this post is shaming myself. I should help others and donate the food bank.

Yes it was. She died in '73. It was a slum with lots of ww2 bomb damaged houses, bomb props, and bomb sites everyone dumped rubbish on and we played on, and derries that all metals were stripped from. Some bits further out had been cleared, but they were just left as rubble ground. Police only came in mob handed in vans and cars to take people out, never on foot, and didn't patrol.

The worse the condition of a house the cheaper it was, and we slowly drifted down the ranks, as 'fly by night' became the solution to not having the rent.

We were photographed for Shelters campaign a few years earlier and nothing had changed for the better a few years later. We'd just all got bigger and older people had come and gone and more babies had been born.
Like many, our whole house was rented rooms, with some families having more or less of them. Everyone used a cooker on a meter in the basement and a toilet in the yard. The water tap was out there too. The room the cooker was in was just a cellar room. Filthy, dank and wet, and everyone just carried heated up food upstairs. Everyone except the ground floor rear room (which was premium rent) had to go down the house stairs then down the cellar stairs, through the cellar and up the outside steps to access the toilet and tap.

There was an indoor sink and tap on the third floor landing, but it didn't work, and the fourth floor attic back room was not supposed to be lived in as it had a hole clean through the wall, but rent was collected on it, and blind eyes turned.

I don't like saying we were among the poorest on our street and our street was poor, but it's how it was. A lot of women were on the game, some full time and some casually. We all saw the one family in our street that had a coin operated rented tv as well off, but she also had a mini bar (with Spanish dolls holding little red lights) in the second room and we knew it was 'business' and they were a 'cut above.' I think because we weren't officially allowed to mix we generally did worse out of things than other kids. Most people relied on each other, the tally man, trickle down, and a communal understanding. My mother kept us to ourselves so we rarely benefited from the local economy.

Don't know if this will work 1971, little changed in the next few years for many.

Fascinating thread - similar story here, born in the 50's, I remember when we finally got an indoor toilet & a fridge, parents only got a phone when I was in my 30's, before that they had to go to the sweet shop, who had a pay phone in the corner.

Very few clothes- school uniform, trews (remember them?) and T-shirt to change into after school, and nice clothes to wear for church on Sundays.

One gas fire downstairs, ice on windows in winter, electric blankets and hot water bottles, freezing cold bathroom so getting washed in the morning in the kitchen sink cos it was warmer downstairs.

Beans on toast for tea on Thursdays (pay day) because when dad got home with the weekly brown envelope the shops were already shut (they all closed at 5pm). I remember my dad sitting up most of the night in the early 70's because the firm he worked for was going bust and he thought we might lose the little back to back house we lived in. Luckily he was only unemployed for a few months and got a factory job where he went on to become a foreman. My mother had a lunch time job doing playground duty in a primary school, she'd been a seamstress but the clothing industry in the North collapsed. I remember sitting at the top of the stairs listening to them talking about money worries (I was supposed to be in bed)

When I went to grammar school I finally saw how the other half lived - and I wanted that life, I worked incredibly hard and I made sure I got skills and qualifications that would mean I could always feed, house and clothe me and my dc.

I'm now retired, ok for money, but I can't shake off the worry that it will run out and / or I'll make the wrong decision and lose it. My exH, OTOH, grew up v comfortably (private school etc) and has an inner confidence about always having it that enables him to to take risks, borrow huge sums that he's sure he will be able to pay back etc.

All of my friends who grew up like me have that same worry - we all hate dealing with institutions like banks, utility companies, the tax office etc. I get knots in my stomach when a brown envelope arrives. That's one of the legacies of growing up in poverty, for me - fear that at any point "they" can take away your security.

These two pics were taken by Nick Hedges for Shelter in 71/2. It didn't all suddenly go away.
No 1'ss a typical cellar room. They'd have been considered quite respectable for having clean newspaper on the table. (or putting on 'airs 'n graces' by my mother)
No 2. The three eldest children were being put to bed sharing two single seat cushions and a raincoat, and the youngest had the cot.
He commented later that he was really bothered by her situation as it was winter and there was no heating or hot water and she had snow coming through a broken window. I'm afraid we would have just thought her slack for not shoving something in the hole like everyone else, and the kids doing ok to have a bed.

Concern rather than worry. Not wasting anything, Dad repairing things instead of buying new. No heating upstairs. Two gas fires downstairs by then, but I remember the earlier coal fires. In the winter, ice forming ferny patterns on the inside of the bedroom windows. Going for a walk after tea so it felt warmer coming in. My mother didn't work and of course mortgage interest rates were around 15%. Miners on strike so electricity was rationed, doing homework by candlelight, going to bed with a nightlight. It must have been so tough for my parents but it felt very cosy and safe too.

This thread has made me remember lots of things! I remember renting a tv from Rediffusion in the late 60s. It was black and white. We had no washing machine so my dad took the washing to the launderette once a week. There was also a bath full of clothes being washed every few days.

Ice on the windows. Very few clothes - I can specifically recall having 2 vests. My dad mended our shoes by gluing on soles and heels using a kit bought from Woolies. He wore the same suit to work every day for years. I thought that it was meant to be shiny!

We only started eating out in the very late 70s and that was only on special occasions so 2 or 3 times a year. My mum and dad never went out for say a drink or to the cinema for years.

My mum went to the hairdresser once a year probably for a perm. Dentist only in emergencies for the adults.

A special day out was getting the coach to the seaside. By the time we got there we had about 3 hours there with a 2 hour journey each way!

Yes it was. She died in '73. It was a slum with lots of ww2 bomb damaged houses, bomb props, and bomb sites everyone dumped rubbish on and we played on

I lived in a bomb damaged house opposite a bomb site when I was a student in the early 1980s. There was a massive crack in my bedroom wall that you could see daylight through.

On the plus side, the rent was only £12 a week.