Old Finances (back in the day)

mardatha

That's very similar to my childhood although I'm 10 yrs older than you. I wonder why just one brave politician can't make the decision to bring that domestic science sort of thing back to schools now...

suzybloo

We had quite a frugal upbringing as there were 5 kids, within a 8 year timespan (twins were the youngest). Dad was a brickie and mum worked in the fields on the local fruit farm from March unitl September then she gathered tatties over the autumn. We got a colour telly in about 1975, and it was a Friday night it was delivered - remember it so well it sat on the gateleg table that was angled in the corner of the room and the first thing we watched was John Craven on a programme called Screentest! Mum was a great cook, baker, sewer and fantastic at knitting, and I think thats where I have picked up a lot without realising it. There was the co-op divi as well, and you had to recite your divi number so the purchases were credited to your account. I remember vaguely the rolling power cuts but being born in '67 they are vague, but remember well the ice on the inside of the windows - we used to dare each other to stick our tongues on the glass! Mum use to sit with all the money divided up into envelopes, the electricity was read every week, 10p went in the gas meter, and she had a wee memo notebook that she kept all purchases and budgeting written down in.
I left school in 1983, and my first main job was in a local bakerhouse decorating cakes and making pies!! The wage then was £37. THis job done me until I was accepted into General Accidents head office in perth 6 months later and my first monthly salary was £199! Mum got £40 a month digs and travel was £7 a week shared lift.
When we married in 1985, our first house was £16,000. Furnishing it was all done off presents and we only had a small portable telly for our sitting room which had a dial that you had to move to tune the channels. In 1987 DD1 was born and I didnt go back to work, as it was 28 miles and there were no childminders in these days. I bought our first big telly off my maternity money that I received from the GA. I cant remember the wages but do recall that the mortgage was extortinate and was more than half our wage. DD2 was born in '89, and things were hard then, hubby got a new job as a lorry driver that year so wages did improve. Holidays were caravan holidays - for some reason I remember the cost of a Monday to Friday at Berwick Holiday Centre in 1991 was £74.
I took in ironing and made £15 a week then which covered the council tax - or poll tax as it was. I also did a cleaning job that brought in £8 a week which paid for the electricity. CLarks shoes were over £20 and I had grattan catalogue to buy things so I could pay them up. Cupboards never had any extra stocks as every penny was needed for week to week living. We had a garden so were lucky that we had a good stock of vegetables but I do remember filling the pram with turnips when out walking. We went out walking 4 miles everyday (after neighbours!). I had a big secondhand Tansad Pram and DD1 used to lie in the shopping basket when she got tired.
Being in the largest soft fruit area I took the kids berry picking from the end of June until the middle of August and made roughly £60 per week but this was used to buy winter clothing for the kids and ourselves. It was hard going with two under three, terry nappies and lugging this big pram up and down the fields but we needed the money. We started at 8 (after walking for half an hour) and finished at 4 - that half hour walk home at night was like climbing a mountain. The kids would get dumped in the bath while the twin tub was pulled out so they had clean clothes for the next day.
Would I change it??? No way!!! Wish I could go back to it - definately - things were so much simpler then although ,maybe harder - not as much competition between people - you had what you had and were thankful for it!

greenbee

mardatha wrote: »

That's very similar to my childhood although I'm 10 yrs older than you. I wonder why just one brave politician can't make the decision to bring that domestic science sort of thing back to schools now...

Because there's no one to teach it?

sandraroffey

i remember the housecraft lessons very well. i could cook a full sunday roast when i was about 12. and needlework?? i still have things i sewed and embroidered at school (im 64) and when i was still at junior school, all the girls had to make a skirt for themselves, all by hand. no sewing machines then.

and my mum taught me to cook as well. i always cooked with her. and helped with the housework.

up until i was around 13 or so, my mum didnt have any sort of washing machine, she had teh copper boiler that was in the house when we moved there (brand new council house in 1950) and a big mangle in the garden. even the blankets were washed and put through that then put away at the end of every winter.

only an open coal fire in front roon, and another sort of coal fire that was closed at the front, that heated the water. no heat up stairs at all. we had a parrafin heater (god, how dangerous now i look back, but everyone had them) and my dads old army coat on the bed, over the top of the blankets. mum changed the beds religiously every friday and the sheets were boiled in the boiler on monday. there was no credit...if you hadnt the cash, you didnt have. and yes, i remember ice on the insides of the windows too!!!

and no matter what the weather, we all walked to school.

motherkitty

Oh, I remember all of this stuff!
Ice on the insides of the windows, curtains blowing about in the wind even when the windows were closed, coal fire in the front room was changed to a gas fire eventually, but still the only heating in the whole house. No wall to wall carpets, mum doing her washing in the copper and the spin dryer jumping round the kitchen when it wasn't loaded properly!
My sister and I used to walk home from school, let ourselves in and light the coal fire and lay the table for tea, which would probably have been bread and jam as we all had eaten at lunch time.
Dad used to come home from work on a Thursday with his pay and give us our pocket money and we would walk over to the local sweet shop and get our ordered comics, Radio and TV Times and some sweets.
Although it all sounds so poor I remember it all with a smile and can't help but think it was better in those days.

greenbee

Some things haven't changed... My curtains still blow about in the wind, and I still get ice on the inside of the windows I also don't have wall-to-wall carpets (except in one room where I'm hoping to get rid of it). Luckily for me I do have a washing machine!

singlestep

Both my parents worked full-time for most of my childhood and, although we didn't live in the best of areas, they earned fairly good money. I'm not really convinced that they knew really how to put what they earned to good use e.g planning for the future and long-term saving. Once my mum went back to work, I went to nursery and my grandparents would pick me up and look after me. That said, I do remember: the brown and orange swirls, ice on the windows, no central heating and a great big hole in the wall of our bathroom! My parents had decided upon this flat because of its proximity to where my grandparents lived; it was where my dad had grown up. My mum still remembers, though, it only costing £500 less than a house that would now be valued at least four times more!

One set of grandparents lived, through life-long necessity, fairly frugally but no one ever lacked anything they needed. The others were at a stage where they suddenly had more money than they'd ever had before and it burned a hole in their pockets! Talk about mixed messages! Neither set of grandparents (one of my grandfathers was a lorry driver) ever had a car and even my parents never owned one until I was about six and so we walked everywhere.

Holidays were mostly spent in the UK in caravans or in a budget B&B. My parents saved for about three or four years and my first holiday abroad was to Australia to visit my uncle and aunt. The exchange rate and cost of things was good enough that we came back with enough to spare for my parents to buy: our first video recorder, duvets (sheets and blankets before) and a new TV. In the three or so years that followed there were two holidays to Spain before my dad died suddenly when I was 14.

It's strange to me now because I'm in my mid-30s and it isn't that long ago, but outside my immediate family the presumption seemed to have been that I should leave school and work from the age of 16 and wasn't that a shame because I was fairly bright? Even my mum's parents, who had refused to allow my mum and her older sister to 'stay on' at school and sit O levels while making sure my less 'academic' uncle did, were adamant that this wouldn't happen. However, my mum later had to give up work because of her own health problems and I have worked full-time since the age of 17 while finishing exams and going to university. There was no mortgage to pay by this point but my dad's work had only recently been taken over and his new employer had neglected to put through the admin on various insurance/pension plans. My mum was deemed too young for a Widow's Pension and had very little money and so from then I'd buy our groceries and pay towards our bills and save for books etc.

I don't regard this as particularly startling because I had a happy, fairly easy childhood in comparison to a lot of people but when I mention all of this to teenagers, they look horrified! Or maybe it's the part where I tell them I didn't have a computer until I was 21 (which I only bought because I was sick of waiting at the uni lab) or a mobile until I was 23...

papagray

i remeber i was 24 just moved to london living in a run down bedsitter being charged £50 per week, on lowest scale of pay on the railway it was a constant struggle everything was rented had no money sense, being single spent everything at the pub..never saved got in trouble with the bank constantly paying overdraft fees.. and letter fees.
still have not learned even today but still looking for savings..just enjoy spending and new gadgets..

valk_scot

Thirty years ago I was 23, had left uni with a good degree and landed a really remarkably good job by pure fluke. Looking back it was possibly the most money I've ever had to play with in my life...I had a rented flat which I shared with two friends and was saving towards buying one but I still had cash for going out and clothes, two holidays a year and all the rest. We weren't the least bit fussed about having new carpets or furniture in the flat though...all of it came from junk shops. We did have a telephone, washing machine, fridge and a colour telly. Thirty years ago was the 80's after all, not the Dark Ages! But there was less of a sense of having to have everything possession wise and more emphasis on getting out and spending your spare cash on doing things I think. I didn't have a car but one friend had an old banger and five of us used to go off to France for a couple of weeks with that and a tent till we ran out of money and had to come home. That sort of thing. Yes, as I say I had cash for holidays and clothes but they weren't like nowadays with must have designer gear and jetting off half way round the world. There wasn't quite such a sense of consumerism.

Angel_Jenny

recovering_spendaholic wrote: »

I went to an all girls secondary school and it had a large house in the grounds called the housecraft house. We would go there for housecraft lessons and also needlework and cookery. We learned how to make beds, clean and dust, lay the table, how to work out a seating plan if you were having guests (!), how to polish stuff and also how to change a lightbulb and do washing.

We also learned how to change a nappy, bath a baby, make basic clothes, knit and crochet, and do a budget for a house - electricity, gas, food etc. - it is funny to think that there would be an outcry today if schools tried to do this!

In cookery we learned how to plan meals and how to cook basic stuff and also some more adventurous stuff - I still have the Stork margarine and BeRo cookbooks which we were given in cookery class!

I would have loved classes like that at school! My school didn't have any house related classes at all so now I feel like I am playing catch up as I wasn't taught at home either.

I am just learning to knit now at 25 and to bake and garden. Those lessons would have been much more useful than computers or French.