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?

So interesting, thank you @Vermin (sorry about your dad). It’s such a different life to me, even growing up in the 90s.
My parents also loved their parties in the 60s and when I was small in the late 70s I remember mums always being so dressed up - the only time my mum wore jeans was to potter in the garden.

Oh I will! That sounds great!

I bloody love To The Manor Born.

Old money was different - lots of ‘doing one’s bit’ for the community, being involved in the Church, running the hunt suppers, etc. I suppose a more rural existence.

But plenty of time to take coffee in the drawing room of an afternoon, and a game of Scrabble.

I’m not sure why I’m so fascinated really - I guess because it’s just before my time so feels almost in touching distance (unlike say the Victorian times) but is very different to life now and even my life as a child.

My great grandparents were relatively well off. They were business owning middle class.

Owned home outright- no mortgage.
Able to buy houses for their DCs.
Holiday home.
Owned car outright.
Holidays would be in UK.
Did do a transatlantic flight once in the 70s.
Fur coats!
Had a camera and took lots of photos.
Ate high quality food.
Went to the hairdresser a couple of times a month.

Our 1930s house (we’ve lived in it since 2000) isn’t huge but has an electric bell system for each room and one was clearly for live in maid/housekeeper. Big dining room which I imagine was used for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Huge garden so must have had full time gardener/odd job man. It’s a bit like a small Agatha Christie/Midsomer Murders house. Original owner had industrial company. I wish I’d grown up in a house like it.

My in-laws were wealthy in the 70s but there was very, very high income tax then. Someone in the same role now would be taking home minimum 6 figure pay every year and people would be amazed how low a salary or bonus the post paid then. He worked for a large multinational on the board and got a lot of benefits that weren’t income due to the high tax regime.

Their life:

She stopped work when she had children
Large detached house in a prestigious part of Surrey with a nice garden. Not a manor or Georgian rectory or anything though.

Gave birth in private nursing homes (more common then)

He drove Jaguars

Children at prestigious public schools

Gardener

Use by arrangement of a bungalow at Gleneagles owned by the company he worked for.

Good clothes from local good clothes shops that were worn and mended.

But:

They didn’t go on foreign holidays

They didn’t necessarily have what we would call a family holiday.

They didn’t have designer clothes or shoes, I just don’t think that was on the radar and it wasn’t an unfulfilled desire.

DH grandparents travelled a lot by plane and they had a FT housekeeper. This was the 1950’s.

It sounds lovely @Horses7

That’s pretty fancy for the 50s! Do you mind me asking what they did for work?

You might be interested in the History of Britain series by Dominic Sandbrook. There are 5 books and books 3 and 4 look at the early 70s and later 70s up to Thatcher, but the others give context to it. He’s easy to read and it’s fascinating. Highly recommended.

It’s interesting @LightDrizzle how money seemed to go much further - my closest friend’s dad was a bank manager in a regional town in SE England in the 90s and this paid well enough to have a non working wife and two children at private school. They weren’t super fancy (holidays in France in resorts, normal cars, nice normal 4 bed house etc) but still, I can’t imagine that job with that salary affording the same lifestyle today.

I’ll look out for that @TizerorFizz - I’m reading a fascinating history of Australia in the 60s and 70s at the moment so I’d love to compare the U.K.

I went to boarding school in the Home Counties in the 1980s. Most of my peers lived fairly locally and were weekly boarders and I spent weekends at many homes. Broadly speaking I observed: large country houses, traditionally decorated and furnished with antiques. Lovely grounds with landscaped gardens. Outdoor pools and tennis courts, often stables and ponies too. Lots of spaniels and labradors.

Cleaning ladies and part time gardeners.

Dad’s working in London and often staying through the week in an apartment. Mum not working but often involved with local Good Works. Sons educated at boarding prep and then well regarded public schools. Daughters educated at local day prep and then less academic boarding schools. I used to marvel at the leisure these women appeared to have with children boarding and not working. However, mostly these families did not appear to be high consumers. There were not endless new clothes or tech, houses were not renovated or decorated regularly. Holidays were generally annually, usually in France. The girls were able to go on the school annual ski trips.

it was another world to the one I inhabited, and it fascinated me.

No idea, we were broke, which was about as much fun as being broke is now!

We had friends who I guess were middle class, I just remember their house was warmer, central heating, and more cosy, thick carpets and expensive three piece suite, bigger TV and a nice hi-fi system in a big cabinet.

I remember men who were the sole earners in the family and their wives who might have been at the most part time workers giving up their jobs because although they were on a reasonable middle manager type income + a part time wage, with 3 or 4 children they got more on income support than going to work.

I remember struggling because my £80 per month only covered my rent and commute to and from work. Bills, food and anything else I needed wasn’t there without a 2nd job. The 3rd job was not a regular thing and I was running around not doing anything but work for several months

Then I discovered that giving up work and signing on meant my rent was paid, help with my bills, I also got free cinema and leisure centre entry and £11 per week and I didn’t have to pay for my commute.

I felt very rich

While not from a wealthy background, I came from an aspirational upwardly mobile family in the 60s. There was only one other child besides me in my class at school who had flown on holiday to a different country.

Or To the Manor Born? Nouveau riche businessman ousts old money Penelope Keith.
I did know one very rich family in the 70s-80s. Country house, butler, cook. Skiing holidays (though that was also fairly common upper middle class). College or finishing schools abroad.

My parents both had good jobs in the late 60s through to the 70s and were married 10 years before they had me so had quite a bit of disposable income. They went on holiday to Greece in around 1970/72 and said when the flight was announced people actually stopped and stared. They said Corfu was totally undeveloped and people would stop them on their moped and give them oranges and grapes.

I’m realising from a lot of posts here how I’ve never seen how privileged some of the things that we had were. I do want to give the flip side though - because my parents’ families weren’t well off, they were helped. Cousins lives with us & then had school fees paid by my dad, he bought one set of grandparents a home, helped his sisters financially and gave them lavish gifts, brought their families on holiday or had nieces / nephews from overseas come and spend summers with us. Again - something I wish I was in a position to do. That kind of help was very normal & lots of kids at our schools had family paying fees.

(more mad things - shag pile carpet that had to be raked regularly, frequent recovering of sofas, a lot of jewellery made / remodelled / re set - she had her “own” jeweller in Hatton garden who she commissioned and who then changed things as fashions changed. Lots of gold was a big thing in the 70s!)

My wealthy 70s childhood: country house, heated outdoor pool, day pupils at local boarding schools. Stay at home mum, dad was business man. They had a club lifestyle - and would attend and host dinner parties, pool parties, progressing suppers etc. According to my mother the fun stopped when the drink driving laws came in. In our family the girls rode ( we had ponies at home) and the boys played a lot of team sport. Mum had weekly help in the house and garden as they were pretty huge but did everything else. She grew most of the vegetables we ate, and there was never any waste of food. She grew up poor so she kept her frugal ways. Traditional posh fashion we had threadbare carpets and wore hand me downs. Sitting down during the day was frowned upon unless it was doing homework. Reading and tv were for evenings only. My dad did nothing in the house but mowed the lawn(s) and cleaned the pool to relax. They never really stopped.
It was a very privileged life but we didn't realise at the time as there were some really, really rich kids at school.
Oh we all had plumbed in wash basins in the bedrooms and we had four loos.

None of us live like that now. All brothers and sisters have normal jobs and live in terraced houses. Our kids went to the local schools. Father is no longer with us but he left my mother very comfortably off in the bungalow they moved to when they couldn't manage the house any more.

Father reckoned we would have classed as upper middle class.

One of my friends was very wealthy.
As a child on sleepovers I was amazed that their cars were always changing/new. (We sat in the back of bright, fast cars with small windows). We sometimes flew in their small plane to a beach house. We were always allowed an icecream of our choice (no budget). Fashion was affordable - newest trends worn by friend. They took a couple of holidays each year. The Dad worked long hours; the Mum planted lots of trees and drove her own cars. They often had visitors staying and we children had lots of freedom to do our own thing - taking risks riding bare back jumping channels, shooting rabbits, paddling old canoes. Meals were at the table and lovely. When there we saw the current films, watched the newest, largest colour TV. The family loved to be generous of spirit to guests and had generally a really great sense of humour and fun.

Mary Wesley's novels are all set in these sorts of families. Wealthy-ish with trips to France, private schools and cleaning ladies, but some money worries.

I guess worrying about mega wealthy is actually boring because they don't have really relatable worries. They need to be aspirational but recognisable. Even Jane Austin's characters are in that bucket

@Ozgirl75 your parents' experience of Mediterranean holidays very much chimes with my own childhood memories. How times change huh?

This is fascinating, my grandad was a industrialist and owned a steel works, grandma and grandad holidayed in America, went on world cruises etc, but I think you could only take £25 out of the country in the 1960s.