Old Finances (back in the day)

Gigervamp

Ida_Notion wrote: »

When my eldest was about six, I cut his hair myself in an attempt to save money (couldn't afford clippers). I accidentally cut his fringe so far across his face that it ended over his ear, and the more I tried to make what I'd done look inconspicuous the worse it got. He looked like he'd had part of the side of his head shaved in preparation for brain surgery by the time I was done. I'm fully expecting him to make an appearance on a similar thread to this one a few years down the line - 'Our Primitive Nineties' Childhoods And How We Could Never Afford Every Power Ranger In The Argos Catalogue'

:rotfl: I did that to my son too! :rotfl:

bluetimone97

I have to join in to say, my dad was the seamstress in our house, I really wanted pedal pushers when I was about 9/10 and he made me them in tartan with a waist coat, he was very good at sewing....however; my brother(7 years older) tells a great story about the year he wanted a West Ham kit (or team tracksuit) for Christmas and my dad made it! ROFL

maganan

valentina wrote: »

Oh yes, I had a bed jacket, it was green and I think it was crochet...
I also had a crocheted poncho!!!!!!!

Oh god ponchos I'd fogotten about them we all had them as kids in the 70's

maganan

luxor4t wrote: »

The warm-up before PE was laughing at me as I tried to adjust my vest so that it didn't show under my PE skirt. When I told her about it, she laughed too - she was the type that thought bullying was good for you.

that's just reminded me of navy blue gym knickers, silly little skirts to go over the top for netball and hockey and gortex PE shirts! yuch at least something has changed for the better:D

ekroys17

30 years ago I was 8

Dad worked at the pit, mom was a housewife, didn't own a car and walked everywhere.
I remember my aunt worked for midland red buses and my mom and dad took in the national express bus drivers overnight on B&B basis.
My parents made many friends this way.

Dinner for my dad was pork chops or oxtail soup - my stomach turns over at the smell of oxtail now. Sunday dinner was never served until Dad came back from the pub at 3pm, usually tinned garden peas, chicken or beef, leftovers on Monday put into bubble and squeak.

Mom had a twin tub, 1 unit with the sink in the kitchen, solid fuel fire in the kitchen with demi johns on the go. Sage green bathroom suite.

Dad used to do the homebrew and homemade wine, in summer sitting out on the slabbed patio under a 70s flower power parasol getting sozzled with some of his brothers and mates from work.

I remember having shoes from Clarks, which I used to hate as they always used to be sh*t brown colour, nothing like they have today.

We used to have chickens and ducks, strawberry plants, potatoes, and marrows that were huge.

At primary school we had a competition to grow the biggest sunflowers, and I remember walking what felt like miles with a ruddy big sunflower through the town.

Nan used to have a tv from radio rentals, and you had to have 50p for the gas meter. Saturday mornings was watching chips on tv, wrestling with giant haystacks or big daddy and sports with dickie davies either darts, football or snooker, afternoons was the A team or knight rider.
Nan used to let us have a treat of a cream cake on the afternoon.

I remember going on a annual day trip to Blackpool in the summer holidays usually with the club Dad was a member of, loads of coaches in convoy full of excited kids and fun of singing and laughter, they used to give out crisps and pop, sometimes money or tickets for the pleasure beach. I looked forward to this for months.

We too had a dial phone in cream with a metal lock on so you couldn't use. Sunday after dinner we used to have betamax video rental and we all used to watch including my aunt and uncle and Nan, even if it was 18 film and at the naughty or horror bits mom used to put her hand over my eyes.

When the miner strike was on in 1983/4 Dad worked and I remember we had some windows smashed with bolts that had been catapulted through. It was this event that my Dad decided to send me to live with my Nan and Grandad who lived 4 doors down.

Dad wasn't afraid to go to work and arranged for coaches to pick up workers to go to work. I remember my mom sending me to town to change a jacket for dad and was told to run there and back as there was a striking miners march going past our house as it was on a main road from the pit. I did as my mom said but got caught up in it as it had already started, and I remember my Dad pushing his way through the march with a police escort to get me from the other side of the road, I was in tears as they must have known who I was and was taunting me. God I never felt to proud of my Dad as that day, I was sh*t scared.

GreyQueen

Oh my goodness, this is a fascinating thread. I'm slightly chastened to realise that I was a late-teen-just-left-home and living in a bedsit in a grotty house in a distant city, getting an Education, 30 years ago.

That was the last gasp of maintenance grants, got a princely £800 per year which would have been laughable for 1 term never mind 3 but we 1980s students failed in all our efforts to stop the Tories introducing student fees, and we collectively tried really hard. My folks have always said if they'd known how hard it would be to help me thru uni, I'd never have gone. And that was without paying fees. I felt at the time that as a working-class woman I was going thru doors of opportunity which were closing so quickly that they were slamming on my heels. I was one of the last grammar school girls; my school went private and has been fee-paying for 30 years now.

I can remember how it was the norm to have a SAHM mum, even on council estates where we grew up. My Mum went back to work, initially part-time, when we were 9 and 7. We didn't want to live high but the kind of money my Dad could earn made it very difficult to keep 2 growing kids fed and shod.

We'd moved in 1970 and carefully brought the scrappy bits of 1950s lino from our old house to the next one (they'd originated at Grandma's) and we kids had these in our bedrooms. They were overlapping small sections and I can recall catching my bare toes on them. We had those with a hooked home-made rug beside the bed. Boy, did we think we'd gone up in the world when Mum scored some carpet remants for the bedroom, nasty nylon things they were, must have been about 1978.

No central heating, a coal fire in the living room and a parafin heater. Can recall going with Mum and the parafin can up to the garage to buy it and carry it home on a little 2-wheeled trolley. We'd also go onto the adjacent industrial estate with sacks where a firm which made sheds used to let you pick up their scraps for kindling. No auto washing machines, we had a single tub and a separate spin-drier and they were often going wrong. It wasn't uncommon to come home from school and find them having surgery across two kitchen chairs with Mum replacing a drive belt or summat; the market had a stall which sold parts. Lots of people repaired their own appliances as they cost a lot to replace and were a mot simpler than their modern versions.

Phones? Nah, the parents got a landline when I left home and I was about 30 before I lived anywhere with my own phone. Mobiles were around but they were yuppie toys, semi-legendary. seldom seen, cost about a grand and were the size of a housebrick.

You paid cash for everything in the shops; can recall how we'd have to wait for Dad to bring his paypacket home on a Friday before Mum could shop for the groceries and standing in line at the Town Hall with one or other of them to pay the rent. I was embarrassed in shops sometimes as the groceries would add up to more cash than we had and something would have to be taken off and left behind.

Credit cards have been in the UK since 1966 but they didn't feature in the life of anyone I knew, never heard of them, almost. Got my firat one at aged 40 and still pay cash for nearly everything.

Clothes if bought new were usually from the catalogue book (Marshall Ward) and I remember the excitement of the packages coming and the let-down when you got them open; they always were a swizz, never as good as they looked in the photos. We also had jumble-sale stuff and lots of handknits and Mum used to make some of my dresses.

I was 20-odd before I went abroad and 35 before I ever went in an aeroplane. We never had a car until I was about 12. Cars were dearer then, terrible rust-buckets, but they were simple enough for amateur mechanics to fix up; the streets would be full of Dads and Lads fixing cars on the weekend. Holidays were rare; about 3 coach trips to the seaside in the course of the summer when we were small, then later a week at a static caravan at the nearest bit of coast. We also went to caravans in Wales and the Lake District, which I loved. We swam in the river in the summer although the town had a swimming pool; didn't have the price of it. Most of the play equiment I used as a child has now been banned under health and safety but we were a lot tougher than kids now, I find. Adults expected you to walk to school rain, snow or shine and not keep whimpering and whining for things.

My Dad had life insurance when we were dependant children in case he couldn't work but by the time he was 40 I was an adult and he cancelled the policy once my brother was 18. They bought their council house for £7k in the early 1980s, paid off the mortgage in 4 years and still live there.

Things were very much less stylish than they are now and there was much less choice in everything, a lot of things which we take for granted simply didn't exist. How I would have adored the internet as a kid! Lots of things are much cheaper in relation to income now and there wasn't so much good stuff to be had second-hand as there is now; charity shops and bootfairs hadn't really kicked off.

However, I think that society as a whole was a lot more stable. In my secondary-school class of 34 we had one girl who lived with just her Mum. People used to whisper about it behind her back. We didn't know if her Dad was dead or her parents divorced and no one felt able to ask; it was shocking to contemplate and completely alien to our experience of how the world worked. It never even occured to any of us that your parents might not be married to each other and might live apart. Such things might have gone on in London but they were alien to us in a market town in the sticks.

Gawd, how quaint that sounds now. Things had completely changed by the early 1990s.

I think we had a better time of it; society was slowly improving until the late 1970s, people were getting a bit better off in work, more interesting foods were appearing, chances to go abroad etc. I can recall the famous Winter of Discontent very well, and the 3 day week and the oil crisis, albeit not so clearly, but the overall sense was that things were getting better.

The 1979-1987 Tory administration set about wrecking a lot of the advances which had helped ordinary working people and the subsequent Labour crowd were no better than Tory Lite. I've spent my entire adult life lurching from recession to recession and am always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I'm glad I grew up when I did even though it had all gone sour by the time I was 16, economically speaking.

THIRZAH

maganan wrote: »

that's just reminded me of navy blue gym knickers, silly little skirts to go over the top for netball and hockey and gortex PE shirts! yuch at least something has changed for the better:D

We also had to wear navy blue knickers for school-with white ones underneath.

For gym we just wore the knickers and PE shirts. We only wore the pleated skirts if we went outside for hockey or netball.

Our school was quite strict about uniform. We had to wear "indoor" shoes-Clarks sandals .We also had to wear berets with the option of straw boaters in the summer.My Mum went to the same school so I inherited her school scarf. Fortunately for me the school had switched from gymslips to ordinary skirts sometime in the 1950s or I'm sure my Grandma would have produced half a dozen from a trunk somewear.

Thinking about my Grandma has reminded me-she made me a poncho in about 1970. When ponchos went out of fashion she "took" it back meaning to unravel it. When my daughter was born I was presented with the poncho and told to use the wool to made her a cardigan.

Justamum

maganan wrote: »

that's just reminded me of navy blue gym knickers, silly little skirts to go over the top for netball and hockey and gortex PE shirts! yuch at least something has changed for the better:D

Don't you mean aertex shirts?:D

We had red gyn knickers with a red wrap around skirt. My DD's school last year introduced a skort for PE which I suppose is just a modern up-date on it.

Justamum

Ida_Notion wrote: »

He looked like he'd had part of the side of his head shaved in preparation for brain surgery by the time I was done.

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

{I hope you don't mind:D}

Justamum

What about the horrors of the school dinner? Spam fritters [bleugh]. You could have drilled for oil on the ones we had.