Roughly when did one salary stop being enough to comfortably sustain an average family?

[keswickgirl]

I realise there won’t be one exact year of course. All I know is that my dad bought a very nice 4 bedroomed house on a headteacher’s salary in the early 90s, my mum didn't work and my sister and I had very comfortable childhoods. UK holiday every year and abroad every few years. Pets, dancing, swimming, piano, tennis lessons.

30 years later, it’s such a different story. Roughly when did things change?

I’d say mid to late 80s as we were priced out of houses on two salaries in about 1988 and all our friends needed dual incomes to buy before then. When we did finally manage to buy in 1995 we were paying around 14% on the mortgage and we were absolutely crippled financially. Funnily enough we both call it our happiest time

That’s a really interesting statistic that late 70s 49% of women were working. As my mother and lifelong friends mother both worked in the late 80s but were seen as quite unusual for doing so. Nearly all the other mothers were still SAHM in our first school.

we were in the north. Wonder if more women were already working in the south

When I was a small child in the 50s, women did not work but far fewer people bought houses and it was easier to get a Council house than now. My DF bought a 3 bed terrace house in the 50s with my DM as a housewife.
Women did not usually work but most people then did not have the "luxuries" we expect now. Far less people had cars or holidays. Those that could afford a holiday would go to a holiday camp, B&B or caravan, I was 5 when we got our first TV. My DM worked part time in the 60s and we then got a fridge, washing machine, phone, car and holidays.
I married in the 70s and there was huge inflation in house prices and interest rates. It was a struggle to find the cheapest small flat in our price range with two full time salaries. It was around then that the big disparity between prices in London and the south east and elsewhere started. Hence some people managed much better than others in the 80s and 90s with one salary.
I think in the 90s and early 2000s more single people could buy and it is rare now in the south east at least.

Mum worked all her life p/t .I think your lifestyle was quite MC TBH. Even today outside of London it would be possible I think,HT in some areas will earn upwards of 60 k /150k .Also then lifestyles were different ,less tech ,2nd cars and so on ,Less travelling.

Mid 1970s. My mum went back to work full time when my younger sibling started school. Before then it did not make financial sense for her to work and pay for nursery care for us. Things were tight financially although my parents were home owners. Mum had worked before having kids and had a career.

Just because someone's response resonates with your own experience doesn't mean theirs is the correct one.

I think your parents, OP , lived in a pretty affordable area if they could afford that on 1 teachers salary

i married in 1990. Late twenties, exh in his 30s. Both STEM graduates in STEM jobs. We paid £82k for a run down 2 up 2 down, in south east. But interest rates were at 17%. We never paid as much on monthly mortgage payments ever again as we did then. We nearly lost the house twice as unemployment was also high, and exh loses his job twice. We were lucky when we sold in 1994 not to be in negative equity. It was a massive stretch for us

I think two profound political/financial changes hit in 1960-/1980 to make house prices outstrip single earners.

1. the sale of council house stock under right to buy, coupled with mortgage tax relief to incentivise sales. First generation of council tenant bought their homes, then that stock merely moved back into tenanted rental accommodation, but this time as private landlords with no rental control or tenancy security. This was not anything but a cynical political move made by thatcher to brown property investment and financial insistiutes in this country. Moving money into hands of wealthy private landowners.
2. the introduction of joint mortgages to married couples when the ECOA was introduced in 1974.

it was not possible by mid 1980 and 1990s for most young people to buy a property on their own in their twenties, contrary to what majority of younger people think now. I was well paid graduate, in pharma. I was married and 29, and with older husband to be able to afford a two bedroom run down terrace.

However, it goes back earlier….because of the ECOA, My parents were teachers and moved from south to north in 1977, they utilised the rights for mums income as a teacher to be included in mortgage, they needed those two incomes even then to afford a four bed house for the 3 teens they had. And agian bought a fixer upper to afford that. If the ECOA hadn’t been bought in they’d not have been able to afford that.

Prices had already increased just in few years prior to that the ECOA had the reverse kickback, once wives wages were taken into account, married people could offer more to get house they wanted, and as a result house prices increased. They were held back in mid 1970s a bit due to recession factors, but by 1980s and thatcher governemnt, and sale of council stock, the housing market became hot and has never cooled- too many people rely on property as investments now. Including every single one of us who has a private pension fund - which is most working people now. The whole financial service industry is propped up by property investment.

I think there was a massive jump in house pricing at the end of the 90's...

I would say the 80s - parents bought a 4bed detached house with huge garden in 1983 - £56,000
Sold it in 2004 for £500,000 (it still only had 1 bathroom!)
DM worked p/t

House was sold recently for over £1m 🙄

I am old, over 70 and I have always worked.My mother always worked, part time before the youngest went to school then full time until 65. Both my grandmothers, (dead now over 50 years) worked. One grandmother was a hair dresser and took the youngest with her until they started school. The other was a manageress of a laundry.
Women were encouraged to give up work post war to give the returning men jobs. Before that working class women always worked.
It was much much harder then to find childcare back when my children were younger. I paid a mum from school to pick up my kids and look after them until I got there. I worked full time as a teacher until 63, part time until Covid. I did grandchild care the other two days when I went part time. I still do three full days of child care and a tiny bit of paid work at weekends.
It is a MN myth that paid work is new for women.
I worked as a teacher for ILEA ( Inner London Education Authority) back in the early seventies. ILEA gave 100% mortgages to teachers. It wasn't true that women could not get mortgages.
This idea that women sat on their bums at home before the 21st century simply wasn't true. Possibly upper middle class women didn't work but that was by choice. Women have always worked out of the home.

A headteachers salary is still enough to support a family.
People on low wages needed two incomes 30 years ago too. And 50 years ago and 100 years ago.

I was child in 80s/90s - dad worked full time, mum worked part time. They worked for NHS so can estimate what their salaries would be today - about £70k in total before tax/pensions etc. I don't think a household income of that would buy you the same standard of living as we had - particularly housing (we had nice semi-detached home in leafy, desirable area with excellent schools). But with hindsight that's what my parents prioritised - our lifestyles were modest - second hand car, holiday every summer but self-catering in UK, parents rarely socialised out of the home, they rarely bought clothes or anything for themselves really.

Mid 90s, DM (then 50something and working in an admin role) bought a house with a mortgage and 10% deposit. A similar admin role probably pays around 30% more today but you'd pay around 8 times more for the house.

The 100% mortgages deal for teachers in the 1970s also applied to nurses
(mostly women back then.) There was very much a feeling back then that women should work.

I think you only have to do a bit of research to realise that significantly more that half of mothers were working in the 1970s. It was harder because nurseries did not exist. Mothers had to find reliable child care on their own.
I am sure that significant numbers of women did not work but that was very much a personal choice.

I bought a 2 bed flat in Barnes, SW London in 1991 for 65k when I was earning 22k /first job post graduation. Flat completely suitable for a family of 3, (or 4 if kids same sex)

Exactly.

Gosh.
I wish I’d spotted that. I always wanted a place in Barnes. I was rowing for Thames Tradesmen then based at Barnes bridge.

I left school at 15, married and bought a house at 18, my husband was 20.
you could only get a mortgage if you had been saving with your building society for two years. The first time we tried to buy the building society manager told us we couldn’t afford it and to go away and save for another year.
Our son was born in1979, no one expected me to go back to work, it was just taken for granted that I would be at home caring for our child.
It was mid 80’s when the banking rules were changed and they started lending for mortgages in a big way, that, as well as credit cards and loans in general becoming more available lead to more people living on credit. Before then it was seen as shameful to have debt. If you didn’t have the money to buy something you didn’t have it. These days everyone wants everything now and some level of debt is the norm.

To be Devil’s advocate - it is still possible to run a house, go on holiday, have music lessons etc. on one salary. My sister is a single parent to one child and earns around £30,000 plus some CMS. She has purchased and renovated a 3 bed semi, has days out (zoos, theme parks etc), one foreign holiday per year, has a decent car, mobile phone etc. She claims child benefit but no other benefits. We’re in the north west so maybe it’s not possible in the south east but I’d say definitely still doable in the north.

As an adult, my childhood confuses me. I grew up in a 2 working parent household. My dad was a deputy head teacher, and my mum a nurse. Most of my friends mums were sahms as they would take me and my siblings to and from school almost everyday. But we lived in a 2 up 2 down terrace in a run down northern town, with one car they shared and not a good car (a metro) but both parents could walk to work, we never had holidays bar staying in a relatives caravan about 30 miles down the road twice a year, a lot of my clothes were hand me downs from a cousin, and they got passed down to my 2 sisters. I did get to do a few sporting hobbies, but other than that, we had no luxaries. This was mid 80s to mid 90's. From my understanding now, those two roles in the 80s/90s should have lead to a comfortable lifestyle, but we had very little. But maybe my understanding is wrong. Im also now a nurse, but a single parent, and obviously not rolling in it, but i feel combined with the salary of a deputy head these days, it would lead to a more comfortable lifestyle than i had as a child. But maybe im wrong...?

That’s an entirely different question, op!

I think there is a lot of things going on and a quick google search could point you in direction

1. interest rates have, until recently, have been at historically unprecedented low rates. Meaning mortgages have been cheap. Despite what others might think, mortgage rates are still only average/low historically. But if you’ve paid most of your mortgage when rates were low you’re not used to it
2. tax bands haven’t changed . Hence everyone paying more tax proportionally. Austerity .
3. fuel costs fell to historical low costs post North Sea gas discovery. For those not around at time, it is hard to remember what a massive change that had to most households. Central heating became an affordable thing, open plan living where doors could be left open. Cheap, clean fuel. We are surprisingly, still paying LESS % of household income on fuel than in 1980s and any period before that historically. Back to 1300. But again, if you’ve only ever known low fuel prices then this seems high
4. food costs have also been at unprecedented low costs in proportion to income in last 30 years …similar charts . There has been a massive industrialisation of food production and processing in last 40-50 years. Arguably in last 25 years the massive growth in HPF has made cheap food so ingrained in our diets, and yet improvised diets at same time. We have taken cheap poor quality high processed food for the norm. It wasn’t historically.
5. add to that wage stagnation. Austerity. And the general wage in- equality. One thing is for sure, you go back 30-50 years ago and people in WORK did not receive benefits. Not to make up wages. People got child allowance, yep. But sure as hell we didn’t need UC. why not? becuase we had employers paying a wage and not expecting to governemnt to subsidise so they could pocket the profits into the shareholders pockets, bonus and huge CEO salaries. Ultimately, you’re poor OP, despite all the above, not becuase there ain’t enough money,,,there is, it’s just all ending up in the hands of a smaller and smaller group of people getting richer and richer.

short answer…your feeling poorer not because of rising prices , but becuase of inequality. The rich aren’t feeling it’s more of a struggle.

I was married in 1980 and had my kids in 82 & 85 and I’ve always had to work.

I’m nearly 52

my mum went back to work part time in an office job when I started school and my sister was 2. She worked from 9 - 2 5 days a week. My gran watched us and then mum was home for school pick up.

my dad was a van driver

my parents moved from a 2 bed cottage flat to a 3 bed semi in an expensive area in time for me starting secondary

my mum had to go full time so they could afford it. This was mid 80s and my parents will have been mid 30s.

So since late 70s for us I guess, although my parents will have earned less than your dad OP

Nurseries did exist in the 70s. Not too many, but they existed

Once feminists insisted on working full time outside the home then house prices and the general cost of living adjusted to that. So about 20-30 years ago.