She said she lives a frugal life and that’s how it works for her, unfortunately there is no magic wand.
forty five years ago, my husband was earning £6,000 a year, my income wasn’t included because apparently I was going to give up my job when we became a family according to the building society manager.
We didn’t have mobile phones, there was a pay phone up the road, and our phone was incoming calls only at about £10 a month I think it was.
I definitely remember gas and electric was like a hungry teenager although the credit meters were handy for buying new items in the electric showrooms.
in 1981 we bought a brand new XR3 as an impulse buy on extremely low interest 1.99%, couldn’t really afford to go anywhere, but we had it with child number 2 on the way, I was working for the local supermarket then, stacking shelves in the three nights a week, I used to walk in the building society every Friday and pay the mortgage out of my earnings, and put the change into the savings account.
it certainly wasn’t easy, my husband was sick to death of chick pea curry, but you could make buckets of the stuff for pennies, we were lucky we had an apple tree, a pear tree, plum tree and rhubarb in that garden and my grandfather had an allotment which he fed all the family from.
Our first house was £40,000, it was a beautiful two bedroom end of terrace with a lovely garden, thankfully we both saved hard and had two jobs before we settled down. Some of my friends are still renting and I was shocked one of my friends rent is £2,000 a month these days, that is a big chunk of salary.