Old Finances (back in the day)

G6JPG

OK, it's a bit further back than you were asking, but: I was looking at some of my grandmother's papers yesterday; born 190x, widowed 1966. One document, if I read it right (I'm not sure which were "1" ans which were "/"), seemed to be saying she'd get a "widow's allowance" for 13 weeks, of 112/6 (£5 62½p); another document suggested that after that she'd get a widow's pension of 80s 0d (£4) a week.

suzitiger

Hi guys,
I just popped in to say that I think this is my favourite thread, EVER. I love reading about how thing used to be and how money was prioritised in households similar to mine today.
I have waaaaaay too much stuff that I am slowly trying to sell on ebay.
I was born in 1985, and I still remember parts of the 80s and early 90s being like how everyone is describing on here. I remember when one of my friend's parents had to sell up during the housing market crash and they would come round for moral support to ours because it was such an awful thing to happen. People had been encouraged to borrow loads against the value of their homes and then when the prices crashed it left them crippled. I also remember my mum making big batches of food and freezing the portions for other meals.
Thanks you everyone for keeping us grounded on here. It is easy for me to get drawn into consumerism and think that I need so much that I really don't. Me and my boyfriend are like big kids and we have so much fun without all the mod cons, we don't have sky tv or games consoles, although these days I don't think i could live without the internet we get most stuff 2nd hand and we shop at the local market or at asda for essentials. we make big batches of food like my mum used to and we enjoy the simple pleasures of life. That really is all you need

Justamum

suzitiger wrote: »

People had been encouraged to borrow loads against the value of their homes and then when the prices crashed it left them crippled.

Isn't that what's been happening recently too? Except this time house prices are being kept artificially high to stop the crash.

Spendless

suzybloo wrote: »

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!

I'm the same school year as you but one of the eldest being 45 tomorrow :shhh: and I do wonder how much our experiences are to do with how many kids there were and/or where we lived. My Secondary school year of 180 only had about 4 kids (including twins) where there was more than 3 children in the family and though the majority of my year group married far younger than they do today, early 20s being the most common, only around 3 (all female) got married in their teens. Some of the things stand out to me as being the same though, lack of childcare in the 80s and 90s and sahm doing jobs that could fit round the kids not only when they went to school but in hols too as holiday clubs didn't exist and I also have only fleeting memories of power strikes in the 70s.

katieowl_2

Been reading through this thread with interest over the last week or so - will add my recollections to the list. 30 years ago - 1981 - I'm 22.

Married to Mr Wrong. Been married two years. We got married in part because in those days you couldn't rent a flat easily if you weren't married. We lived at first in a mansion block in Balham, that I christened Freezingale Mansions. Top floor, no insulation, huge windows that rattled. huuge rooms. Bedsitting room was heated by a gas fire that made little impression, kitchen/dining room which had vast high ceiling, was heated by putting the oven on. I'm pretty sure we had a gas meter. It was so cold in bed in the winter that after putting all the blankets on I used to add my grannies old beaver lamb coat! We ate a lot of wholefoods, that were bought in a co-operative locally - nice and cheap. I remember being gutted when a field mouse found his way into my stores and I had to throw loads away. I've always cooked from scratch, and in those days I was a bit of a hippy, and I used to buy loads of clothes from jumble sales. We were close to Balham market too, where I bought all the fruit and veg.

We both worked. I managed to change jobs and get work just across the road which was brilliant, as I hated slogging up into central London. The OH had a better paid job than me, but it was a hike away. I can't remember how he got there, I think he must have driven. He had a Ford Anglia which was old even then.

The bathroom was shared with the flat across the landing, which for a time friends of mine from work lived in - that was fun - we had some good times. The bathroom had no heating and was cold beyond belief - if you managed to get 4" of hot water you were doing really well...Mostly I went home and availed myself of Mum's facilities.

There was a laundry across the road, a good place to get warm, and also a butchers shop that we used a bit - cheap cuts!

I've never been in the position to waste money. My mum was a single parent in the 60's and although I never starved or went naked, there were not many luxuries. We lived with my gran for a long time, and she never spend a penny she didn't have to. I guess a lot of that rubs off, without you realising it.

Mr Wrong and I bought a flat shortly after this, as his parents gave us the deposit. It was all starting to go a bit wrong between us though, and I moved out when I was 24. He'd gone really weird with money...amongst other things, he had a great trick that I didn't catch onto for a long time. Although he earned more than me, we both put in equally to the bills. He decided we'd take it in turns weekly to do the shopping, as it would 'all even out in the end' The weeks it was my turn he would come with me, and we bought everything....his weeks he would go alone, and come back with the bare essentials - meaning I had to do a mid week foray for more food...and guess who worked nearest the food shops? :mad:

Anyhow I left when I was 24, eventually we got divorced, and by this time I'd met the man who would be my kids dad, and he was Mr FRUGAL But he was a great cook himself and very good at DIY etc.

I lived alone for about three years in rooms in a shared house, also being very careful with my money, the women at the firm I worked for seemed to earn a lot less than the men! When I got pregnant with DD no 1 and we decided to buy a flat together - a do-er up-per using my divorce settlement as deposit. The new OH was self employed...so we got money in dollops, never regularly, and although I went back to work when DD was born (and it was my earning that we got the mortgage based on) things were very very tight. I remember trawling around Boots to see if there was any food we could buy on my Credit Card, as the supermarkets didn't take cards then, and we'd run out of cash. The mortgage rate started to go up and up, and added over £100 a month to what we had to find, and £100 was a LOT more believe me!

I got into the habit of stocking up my store cupboard when we had some money, which tided us over the lean bits, a habit I've kept. Four years later, I got pregnant with DD no. 2 and found out to my joy ( I hated my job so much) that I hadn't been there long enough to qualify for my job back :T So we did the sums, and worked out if we were very very careful, I could be a SAHM

That period in time was very tough financially, and at one point in the early 90's OH got investigated by the IR. As they didn't think he earned enough for us all to live on :mad: I still have the list I sent the stupid bi£ch of how we managed it, and we actually ended up on the BBC news in a story about how the IR were 'picking on' small traders. That was a bit like hitting the jackpot as they dropped the case and repaid all the money OH was owed. Vindicated in my frugalness

Somehow I think there must be a lot of families about now who are struggling like we were then, but my kids all tell me that they didn't really feel the squeeze we did, somehow we managed to make sure they got everything they needed, even if they didn't get everything they wanted. All three of them know money isn't easy to come by, and not to waste it.

Kate

valentina

sandraroffey wrote: »

...there was no credit...if you hadnt the cash, you didnt have.

I remember being told that my granny and grandad used to smoke cigarettes, but gave up when they simply couldn't afford to buy cigarettes any more. (this would have been probably around the time of the second world war) - this attitude stayed with them and they never had any sort of credit, and they passed the attitude onto my mum, and I think a bit of it onto me...

warbaby_2

I was born in 1940. Need I say more?

I have lived through lots of hard times, including a disastrous marriage to a man who drank every penny he could lay hands on, including the Family Allowance. The consolation is that I got three lovely children out of that marriage, all now around 50.

And I'm glad that I learned to live on very little money. It's born and bred in me to look twice at every ha'penny before I part with it.

My idea of Money Saving is not to spend anything if I can help it and not to throw anything away if I can use it elsewhere.

ska_lover

Born in 1975, I can remember how hard my parents struggled. No central heating, the twin tub washing machine, the bread strike, the power strikes,no fitted kitchens or bathrooms. When we got a wall to wall carpet in our lounge the neighbours came round to have a look hahaha. We had some pretty vile furniture, a green and brown striped sofa and a tv with a dial.

They worked so hard. Dad always had more than one job on the go. He would work all day, and then come home for his 'snap' and be off again collecting the pools coupons. Mum did the same, day job and was doing Avon. There was no such thing as 'working tax credits' back then, you lived off of what you earned. Meals were monotonous, we seemed to live on potatoes. Probably why now my favorite food is mashed spuds lol.

They used to work miracles at xmas with presents, they must have been squirrelling away all year. We had Xmas hampers off the milkman and getting exited opening the box. One christmas we had tomatoe soup as a 'starter' before our turkey and thought we were well posh sitting there in front of our calour gas fire.

Every friday night, they would sit and work out ''the weeks spends'' and they were always a couple of quid short, piling money up for gas, elec, rent etc so they would rob peter to pay paul. They would sit there talking about who they wouldn't pay on that particular week. Ahh hard times for my parents bless um. I thank them for everything. They still both work hard now, Id love to win the lottery and tell them to pack it in.

When I explain all this to my 19 year old son, he struggles to realise that all this was only in my lifetime, the changes we have seen. Microwaves, CD Players (and blueray), satallite tv and the internet, things he takes for granted had not even been invented when I was a kid and he thinks it must have been the dark ages!

JudyPolarBear

25 years ago I bought my first house it cost me £24,000 & interst rates were 12% & I also had a 100% mortgsge. 30 years I bought my first car - red mini & it cost £2,000. I started work in 1974 wit the Civil Service & my salary was £1,200 I remember getting my first Access card & not daring to use it - in the end my first purcashe was a pair of gloves & then I don't think I used it again for about a year. At one time I had an overdraft of £80 & I thought it was the end of the world & worked very hard to clear it by not spending unless it was completely necessary, I remeber asking my mortgage company for a months respite to not pay & it was like I'd asked them for the crown jewels - when I look back now & think how easy it would've been to add one month onto the term. I still save for things before I can buy them which is why I started out with second hand furniture borrowed form the family - it all seems so different nowadays!