Was £5 a lot of money in 1981?

[BertieBotts]

I was reading DS3 George's Marvellous Medicine and when George's dad the farmer sees what the medicine can do he says they are going to make more medicine and sell it for £5 a bottle and become rich. Obviously the amount was more when the book was published, which was 1981 (I suppose it could have been written in the 70s).

I was only born in the late 80s but this didn't sound very much to me so I put it into an inflation calculator and it came up as about £20. Which also seemed a bit too low - if you had a magic medicine that could create giant animals you'd charge more for it wouldn't you? I put it into Google and this is what the AI summary came up with which sounds bonkers to me. Translating all the items it could supposedly buy seems more like over £100 in today's money. Which TBF, sounds like a better price for a magic medicine. So I thought I'd ask some real people who were alive then which interpretation is true.

Based on inflation calculators, £5 in 1980 is equivalent to over £27 in 2026.
Here is what £5 could buy in the UK during the early-to-mid 1980s:
Pints of Beer: Around 40 pints of ordinary bitter.
Tobacco: About 20-25 packets of 20 cigarettes.
Entertainment: Around 20 Penguin paperback books.
Travel: A standard 2nd class return ticket from London to Liverpool or Manchester.
Food: Approximately 30 burgers from a burger bar.

Riches! I used to get a 10-shilling note, which is 50p now, from grandparents, and an uncle or two) in my birthday cards in the mid-sixties. No wonder it took me 8 years of saving my birthday money gifts until I could afford a dog but my parents decided it was safer to buy a pedigree one, so they paid - it cost 18 guineas (£18 and 18 shillings) in 1965. Unwanted puppies were available everywhere for under a pound but they were riddled with worms and parvo.

You could buy a house back then for 25k.

I earned £4 a day in 1977 doing a Saturday job. I remember a packet of crisps costing 2.5p and a mars bar was 4p.

My first Saturday job in 1984 paid £1.10 an hour.

1974 my school fees were £99 a term rising to £107 a term from 4 th year of senior school.
1981 I was getting 99p and hour in boots on a Saturday job.
1984 my husbands take home pay as a trainee solicitor was £250
1986 my take home pay as a junior doctor just graduated was £680 a month that was working between 80-120 a week.
1981 full student grant was high. About £1000 a term! (I think)
1981 I could get martini and lemonade for 50p and you could draw £1 notes out the cash line.
1986 bought a 1 bedroom flat in a good part of Edinburgh for £34000. Sold it in 1989 for £55000.

I'm having a lazy afternoon too

This has reminded me of a letter we found in my dad’s papers when DM moved house a few years ago. In the letter, DDad confirmed that he was sending his brother a cheque for £100 to cover his half of their mother’s nursing home fees for the year. Dated 1981.

I’m pretty sure that True Blue Madonna album (tape) was about a fiver and albums now are about £27-£30 (I was shocked to learn!)

I remember my dad telling me he won £30 on the grand national in the early 1980s and it was almost a weeks wages, so £5 probably was quite a lot, but not unaffordable for magic medicine.