What was wealthy life like in the 1970s and before?

[Ozgirl75]

I was just pondering today, I can imagine and picture what it was like to be wealthy in the 1980s; a Porsche, holidays in Europe, gold fittings etc. But if you were quite wealthy (say earning 500k+ as a business owner, working in the city, banker etc) in the 1950s or 1970s, what was your life like? What did you spend your money on? What was your house like? Where did you live in fact?
i grew up in the 80s and 90s so it’s just hard to imagine proper wealth (not aristo inherited, more like earned money) earlier than that.
Anyone here grow up in wealth from the 40s onwards?

You can just read a few articles about post war Britain, but houses much the same, though central heating a lot less good. less foreign travel, maybe caught the back end of haute couture if really rich. Bit heavier on domestic help, lighter on appliances. Food duller and blander. Life more hierarchical. Rest of it not a whole bunch different.

Peter Sarstedt summed up what it was like to be wealthy in 1969… A Londoner living the high life in Paris

“You talk like Marlene Dietrich
And you dance like Zizi Jeanmaire
Your clothes are all made by Balmain
And there's diamonds and pearls in your hair, yes, there are
You live in a fancy apartment
Off the Boulevard St. Michel
Where you keep your Rolling Stones records
And a friend of Sacha Distel, yes, you do
But where do you go to, my lovely
When you're alone in your bed?
Tell me the thoughts that surround you
I want to look inside your head, yes, I do
I've seen all your qualifications
You got from the Sorbonne
And the painting you stole from Picasso
Your loveliness goes on and on, yes, it does
When you go on your summer vacation
You go to Juan-les-Pins
With your carefully designed topless swimsuit
You get an even suntan on your back, and on your legs
And when the snow falls you're found in St. Moritz
With the others of the jet set
And you sip your Napoleon brandy
But you never get your lips wet, no, you don't
But where do you go to, my lovely
When you're alone in your bed?
Won't you tell me the thoughts that surround you?
I want to look inside your head, yes, I do
Your name it is heard in high places
You know the Aga Khan
He sent you a race horse for Christmas
And you keep it just for fun, for a laugh, ha-ha-ha
They say that when you get married
It'll be to a millionaire
But they don't realize where you came from
And I wonder if they really care, or give a damn
Where do you go to, my lovely
When you're alone in your bed?
Tell me the thoughts that surround you
I want to look inside your head, yes, I do
I remember the back streets of Naples
Two children begging in rags
Both touched with a burning ambition
To shake off their lowly-born tags, they tried
So look into my face, Marie-Claire
And remember just who you are
Then go and forget me forever
But I know you still bear the scar, deep inside, yes, you do
I know where you go to, my lovely
When you're alone in your bed
I know the thoughts that surround you
'Cause I can look inside your head”

I think everything was an a smaller scale. My s-in-law went to Graceland and came back saying she found Elvis's house a bit small and drab. Having grown up with it as a byword for luxurious excess! I think people had so much more leisure time. Even bankers etc worked normal hours.

You mention 80's then 50's and 70's then you say 40's.

which do you want ?

what is wealthy ?

Also things lasted longer.
Rich people bought shoes, furniture etc which would last and not be updated for years and years. No need for constant home renovations.

Just the same as it is for the very wealthy nowadays except no Internet or mobile phones and much more pollution!

As always better food, clothes, housing, holidays, cars, education, choices.

In fact you could say its unchanged throughout history. Money just gets you a much more comfortable life with options.

Ummm the song wasn’t me - have you been drinking?
I left it broad because I thought people who had grown up in the different eras could answer.

I was hoping for specifics!
People who actually grew up with high earning parents, or were high earners themselves, I wondered what their life was like.

Margot & Jerry from The Good Life are probably at the bottom end of the bracket you mean. Junior executive class. That was set in the 70s, you can stream it somewhere or other.

Yes I remember watching that but they weren’t wealthy though.
I was thinking of America - it seems easier to picture wealth there because of the houses etc but I find it harder to picture what a rich business person’s life was like in the U.K. between 1945-1980.

Big house, nice garden, new big Rover or Jaguar every couple of years. Man going to work in London on the train, wife not working at all. Children at private schools, boarding or day. Restaurant meals once or twice a week, lobster bisque not prawn cocktail, fillet steak not rump, crêpes suzette not BFG. Whisky from decanters. Cigars for man, cigarettes in holders for wife. Biggish dog whose shit you didn't pick up when you walked it, maybe a cat as well. Someone who came in to collect and do the laundry, if you weren't quite well enough off for servants. Several shops delivering groceries in vans (we weren't rich or posh at all and I remember the Empson's van delivering tea in 1960s Birmingham). A charge account at the department store before anyone had heard of credit cards.

500k in the 50s is like earning 14m today so not sure many will have experienced that!

Large houses in leafy suburbs of Dublin.
Lived in architect-designed homes (newer money but also some old money).
All kids sent to private, fee-paying schools where their fellow students were all being channeled toward medicine, law, and stock brokering (boys). Expectation of becoming leading lights in their professions. Serious pressure to perform academically (boys).
Schools: Clongowes, Belvedere, Loreto Stephen's Green, Mount Anville, Ursulines (various locations), Holy Child Killiney, Alexandra College, Catholic University School, St Louis Monaghan...
Rugby, hockey (no expectations of fantastic feats of athleticism for the girls).
Girls sent to university (some with academic expectations (medicine, library/ archive studies, languages), some for their M.R.S.
Sailing - families had boats, went out often.
Racing - families owned or part owned horses.
Holiday homes in Cork, Kerry or Mayo; long holidays.
Owned private beaches and lots of land around the holiday houses.
Fly fishing in private stretches of remote rivers.
Holidays in the south of France, Cyprus, Morocco (for the more boho).
Skiing in France and Switzerland.
Familiarity with 'exotic' cuisines, knew about wine, bought wine from a merchant, not an off license.
Had studied or worked in the US, in many cases, and taste was influenced by 50s and 60s California (newer money).
Old money - interested in architecture and conservation (swimming against the tide in 60s Dublin).
Lots of antique furniture, Persian rugs, portraits of ancestors, original art collections, old Waterford glass, silver. Biedermeier couches, Ming vases, etc.
Newer money - post-war Scandi style furnishings and more avant garde taste in decor.
Books, books, books, books...
Drove Saabs, Volvo station wagons, Mercedes, Jaguars, MGs, Triumphs, VW convertibles, Peugeot station wagons... Fun cars in general, and they had IRL stickers on the bumpers because they drove on 'the Continent'.
Mixed with certain 'sets' - old boys/ girls networks very strong.
Members of tennis clubs and golf clubs.
Clothes and shoes very sensible, long lasting, and expensive. Older generations never followed fashion, but younger generations born in the 60s and 70s very early adopters of American styles (denim jeans, frisbee-playing, etc).

A gardener, a mother's help, a woman who does(ie,a cleaner and general houseworker), milk delivered, groceries ordered by phone and delivered, husband driving to work and wife using taxis, dressing for dinner. Men wore suits and women wore long flowy dresses.

A heated swimming pool was probably the most obvious sign of money.
That was the 1970s.

Don't forget that incredibly high taxes and rationing curbed luxury spending to a certain degree until the mid 1950s, so even the comfortable middle classes had less ostentatious wealth.

Earning £500,000 wasn’t really that rich in the UK as the tax would have been 97.5%

We visited a lot of rich peoples houses when the house and contents went up for sale and they all looked like the family had done a moonlight flit, stopping on their way to the airport to drop the keys to their house car etc through the letterbox of the local estate agents together with a note to sell the lot

If they stayed they were in for paying a huge tax bill

It wasn’t great in the UK

I do that now - and I've never been rich!

I imagine it like Mary Poppins. Dad a banker, mum a housewife. A nanny for the kids and a housekeeper and a cook. Boarding school once old enough

Always with the nanny looking after the kids in the nursery. The parents seeing them for an hour or so in the evening then going out for dinner somewhere or having dinner parties

I read a whole lot of old fashioned books and they always seems to have this sort of set up.

Very good description of life then. Because there were a lot less people, massive amount of jobs for all and plenty of social housing. Almost immediate attention from GP and police if needed. Money went a long way and people were living in ignorant bliss because world events were only seen via BBC.

i wasn’t wealth myself but saw wealthy in 1970s

chdren being given £5 a day to get the bus home & some treat, lunch was paid for already.

MG was a fun car of the time

keeping horses

holidays in south if France for a month

1980s used to do some work for a very wealthy family. They drove Mercedes and Porsche, had a large Victorian house. Boiling water tap and ate avocado. Those things weren’t the norm back then

they would holiday in Portugal or Italy

there weren’t “designer” clothing back then but people just was Jäger, Bally, Chanel, Churchill etc but not as an advertisement but that was the clothes they wore or bags they had

Do you mean the equivalent of £500k today or actually £500k? £500k in 1970 was over £6m in today’s money.

I grew up fairly rich in the 80s (though more like £500k now than £6m!!) . Private school, ponies etc. Dogs, big 4wd cars. We went on holiday every year but not lots of holidays, and holidays might be eg a month in Scotland rather than two weeks AI in the Seychelles. I don’t think much would have been different 10 years earlier.. Think of the scene when John Cleese goes home to his family in the country in A Fish Called Wanda (I’m nothing like that daughter although my mum is a bit like that wife 😂) We didnt have a house in London but lots of my friends did and generally the wife and kids lived the country, the husband lived in London in the week and the country at weekends.

Going back, I suspect that would have been more normal including the cost of having a few staff at each house- and not like these days when a second home is often a holiday home you can Airbnb but two permanent establishments with wife and kids mainly in the country. Multiple children at boarding school. That’s just imagining one way of being fairly rich though- very middle class, banker or similar. I’m sure Liz Taylor was doing more exciting things with her money.

Read something like the Cazalets to give you an idea of life for a wealthy (but not super-rich) upper middle class family in the 1940s.

A lot less people so more jobs - there was 3 million unemployed and that was considered high. Compare that to 2024 and there is 1.5m unemployed - it’s double!

inflation in the 1970s was terrible and meant money wasn’t going anywhere. When you did your weekly job price rose every week

Thanks @NoSleepNo thats fascinating. And what were your rooms like? Like, did you follow the fashions of the day or was your bedroom more gingham and traditional?
And for birthdays and Christmas was it lots of toys or only a few things?
Id sort of forgotten that the population was a lot smaller.
What were your weekends like when you were at home? Did you do things like go to the shops, or more cultural things, museums, National Trust etc?

Thanks @MikeRafone that’s so interesting!

I wasn't wealthy but from my parents upwardly mobile aspirations, this is how I imagined 1970s wealthy. Club memberships, tennis golf, or better still yacht club. Good car changed every few years. Eating out a lot, with kids and as a couple. Average wage people never ate out so this itself was a distinguishing factor. Expensive clothing for children, in particular shoes.