Old Finances (back in the day)

skintmumof3

jackieb wrote: »

There are old Argos catalogues from the 70s and 80s on Flickr.

Found them - they're from 1976 and 1985.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/38301877@N05/3589941642/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/38301877@N05/3593028702/

thanks for these links. i have just gone back to my childhood... amazing.
crazy to think you could buy bb guns and air pistols from argos in 1976.........

thanks for bringing back some lovely memories for me
xxx

MKS

Just started to read this thread and feel positively ancient! I am pre-decimal. School dinners were 5 shillings a week (25p). At school, you could buy saving stamps on a Monday at school for 6d (2.5p) which I think had a picture of Princess Anne on! We went blackberrying so Mum could make pies. Collected various plants for a local chemist. Picked potatoes with Mum got paid 10 shillings (50p) a sack of 56lb -quite a fortune at the time but backbreaking work. Logs were picked up in winter to eek out the coal fire. Provident cheques were taken out to buy school uniform - when all the 'pass me downs' had run out! Then it would be collected weekly on a Friday (payday). At the time, uniforms could only be bought at certain shops (expensive - I had to have House shoes at the Grammar school at a cost of £4.19.11 - equivilent to about £120 nowadays! School dresses were £3.19.11 each!), no cheapies at M&S, Asda etc. in those days. My first Saturday job, I earned £1.00 for working from 8.30-6.00 - excellent money at the time. My friends earned about half that. I would buy remnants of material for 15 shillings (75p) and make a shirt and a pair of trousers from a pattern and using Mum's old Singer.

Every Friday, Mum would get out the oxo tins and devide up Dads' wages into gas, electric, food, dinner money etc and put into the respective tins. Peter tin robbed Paul tin many times but each bill was always paid. Meals were always made from scratch with veg from the garden, lots of times there were veg, veg and veg for dinner as there wasn't much money for meat etc.

My first full time job paid £6.10.00 (£6.50) per week for 5.5 days - MTTFS - 8.30-6.00 and Wednesday 8.30-1.00 as it was half day closing! Again it was good pay compared to my friends' averaged £4.10.00. When I wanted a car, I worked from 6.00 to 6.00 M-F and got an evening job Fri, Sat and Monday at the local 'Mecca' - where I met my husband.

Sorry for the ramble - now to read the rest of the thread!

tiredwithtwins

mardatha wrote: »

What happened to the Pools ?

I imagine they went shop-based after too many incidents of peoples forms not being submitted on time so when they won, they found they hadnt! i know that happened to my dads pools man, pretty sure he ended up in jail too ...

now you can do them in betting shops and online.

Gigervamp

Also, I think the lottery took over.

Do they still do the Spot The Ball competition?

mardatha

MKS, I remember 5/- school dinners too. But I spent mine by Wednesday in the local chippie and then starved all week LOL! My mum went to the tatties as well and I went to the berry picking. It was hard work but good money and I ate most of it anyway. My first job was an office junior in a lawyers firm at £16 a month! I hated it LOL

Seraph123

Remember my dads wages going from weekly to monthly ( my mum thought that was very posh lol) and we lived for 4 weeks on one weeks pay. Think we ate potatoes every single night but we didn't go hungry. Mum knitted and sewed all our clothes and my first Saturday job at Littlewoods shop paid £1.12 6d for 10 hours!. I loved it. Pocket money stopped as soon as the Saturday job started and if I wanted anything I had to buy it myself. We did one shop on a week at Lennons supermarket....what happened to them.......and Mum cooked everything from scratch. We had roast every Sunday and always soup made from what the bones were left. Dad brewed beer which tasted like Carlsberg Export and kept exploding in the garden shed lol

Sorry for rambling but once you start remembering you can't stop can you!!:o

notatvstar

My Dad tried to make a 'still' once. We were living in Germany at the time so I think it wasn't too illegal. It did explode though - which was inevitable...

We used to go to the market every Saturday to buy our fruit and veg. Also we got cakes from the market stalls too!

Uniscots97

Seraph123 wrote: »

We did one shop on a week at Lennons supermarket....what happened to them.......:o

I think Lennons were bought over by Gateway, who were then bought over by Somerfield

Ida_Notion

jackieb wrote: »

There are old Argos catalogues from the 70s and 80s on Flickr.

Found them - they're from 1976 and 1985.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/38301877@N05/3589941642/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/38301877@N05/3593028702/

Thanks so much for these, especially the 1985 one. That was the year that I got married the first time round, when I was 21. It was weird to see so many of the wedding presents in there. My mum and dad bought us a wooden wall clock from Argos that's still going strong (which is more than can be said for the marriage!) and is ticking away on our front room wall as I write. 1985 was also the year that me and my ex bought our first home (3 bed semi for £25,000) and I can remember mentally furnishing it from that catalogue at least twice a week :rotfl:

I really enjoyed that blast from the past, although it was a weeny bit disturbing to see 1985 described by the Flickr poster as 'vintage' :eek: when in some ways it only seems like yesterday :rotfl:. Somewhere around here I have got a 1988 Mothercare catalogue from the year my oldest was born (I'll have to tell him he's only three years off being a 'vintage' model ) that I could never bring myself to chuck out. Just looking at the cover brought back the 'stunned with wonder' feeling that I experienced while staring cod-eyed at the cover of another copy in the hospital day room, hours after he was born. I'll have to dig it out and scan it some day, although this will probably be in the distant future. Naturally I'm even more vintage than my son, and us elderly 47 year-olds have got to conserve our energy :rotfl:

Gigervamp

1985 was the year my daughter was born. I don't think she'd take too kindly to being called vintage!
:rotfl: