Wow! What a difference

Mrs_pbradley936

The consumer magazine Which? Is 50 years old and it has been looking back at how spending patterns have changed over that time. A few examples:

• In 1957 housing costs were 8.7% of average income by 2004 it was 22%
• In 1957 more than 33% of average income went on food now it is less than 10%

A typical shopping basket contained lard, condensed milk and beetroot. This has been replaced by olive oil, dishwasher tablets and muesli.

Banks would open at 10.00am and close at 3.30pm You would get your mortgage from a Building Society and you had to have been saving with them for 2 years minimum. A woman would only be given a mortgage if she was over 40 and professionally qualified.

The average house price was £2,030 in 2007 it had risen to £184,070

Fairly liquid went on sale in 1960 and has always come out as best in tests and sales since that date!

DebtphobicDeirdre

My Mum got married that year, just after my Dad finished his National Service. They were able to move straight into a new 3 bed semi but couldn't afford a fridge or TV. We do things a different way round now.

THIRZAH

When we got our first mortgage you had to have been a customer of the building Society for two years. They would only lend us two and a half times my DH's salary plus 10% because I was working. I was earning more than DH at the time but they wouldn't base the mortgage on my salary.

Poet_2

when my mum got married, around that time, she got a dowry from the company she worked for which paid the deposit on their house. The house was £3000, it sold recently for £180,000.

Amazing that you can use dishwasher tablets instead of condensed milk

Sola

My parents married in 1956 and got a lot of flak from family and friends for getting a £2k mortgage when everyone else rented (mortgage paid off in 1985; house now worth £300k). My Mum couldn't have got a mortgage on her own - she had to be married. My Dad never earned a high salary, even as a skilled instrument-maker; my first job in an office was for the same salary that he earned after 40 years of working. I'd go out in my teens and spend £10 a night in a pub, and he thought I was absolutely insane.

One of the reasons I bought property young was because they instilled in me the idea that rent money is lost money, but even now I'd struggle to get on the property ladder on my own as a FTB and I earn a good salary.

The only furniture they had when they moved in after the wedding was a double bed, a couple of saucepans and a frying pan, 2 plates, 2 sets of cutlery etc. They sat on furniture crates covered with blankets and cooked on an old Primus stove; they had no TV until the late Sixties so listened to the radio, played cards or board games (my Mum is an expert Snap player still, and I've never once beaten her at daughts). Laundry was done in the bath and wrung out with a mangle to be hung out on the line.

From the word go they grew their own food in the garden and on an allotment and supplemented with stuff from the butcher and fishmonger. My Mum was expert at making a little meat go a long way (Sunday dinner was a small roast, and a couple of evening teas were bread and dripping and cup of tea), and my Dad took the same packed lunch to work every day for decades (cheese sandwich and an apple). We never had processed food because for them eating basic homecooked stuff was the norm; when my friends were eating stuff with packet sauces and exotic things like pasta, we had nothing like that. A slice of homemade meat pie with the end of the roast was a treat we always looked forward to. Once in a while we had fish and chips on a Friday night from the local chippie but it was very much a treat. Often teas were a few lettuce leaves, sliced cucumber, a tomato cut in half, some beetroot from a jar and some grated cheese, with salad cream. Only now in her retirement does she occasionally branch out and treat herself to a spag bol and treacle sponge at the local cafe.

Social life was going next door to put on a long dress or suit, drink homemade wine and dance to the recordplayer, and later all of us playing Monopoly or Scrabble. Most of our toys were homemade and they were better than any fancy talking doll or electronic gadget. The Saturday treat was going to the library to choose books for the week. Dad built our first record player from scratch.

My Mum still banks with her local Natwest from the account they set up when they married; my Dad never wrote a cheque or handled a bank card. He handed his wages in cash to Mum and she'd give him back a little pocket money, and it was all he wanted, for a daily paper and a tin of boiled sweets. Even now she cashes a cheque once a week in Tesco and pays cash for everything; she's never used a cashpoint or paid by Switch.

Call me nostalgic, but life has changed beyond recognition for people of that era. That's the pull of OldStyle for me; acknowledging the wisdom of people who've been there and done it AND didn't fret about the complexities of the material lifestyle. I don't recognise the lifestyle that my stepchildren live, and I guess that puts me firmly in the older generation now.

PasturesNew

Sola wrote: »

Often teas were a few lettuce leaves, sliced cucumber, a tomato cut in half, some beetroot from a jar and some grated cheese, with salad cream.

LOL ... bless.
Same at our house ... and it still is if my sister's visiting! It's what mum does to "put a spread on".

"What's for tea mum?" "Salad... I've got lettuce, cucumber, tomato..." then she's a bit stuck after that, then remembers the cheese and the jar of pickled beetroot and out comes the salad cream. And a few slices of marg on bread.

PasturesNew

At Xmas we would have the treat of going to Woolworths to buy 1lb of broken biscuits. And we'd get 2 bottles of Corona.

No central heating - just one coal fire in the living room. Ice on the inside of windows every morning - and the bathroom run in the freezing cold. No fitted carpets. No video/DVD/stereo.

There was less to pay for back then. No phone lines - so no phone bill. No internet, so no PC to buy/fix, no broadband to pay for.

We used to have ropey old bangers for cars. £40 was the max my dad spent on motoring until he was nearly 50. Each car he'd keep well and sell for about what he paid for it, which was usually £40.

My father heard that they were going to tax building land in the early 70s, so went out of his way to buy his own house. £4,600. He only just scraped together a mortgage for that and he was 40. Mum used to work part-time, term-time only - to provide food and an annual holiday taken in a crappy caravan in a farmer's field with a chemical loo in a dodgy shed next to it. Luckily we had a big garden with good soil and mum liked gardening so most food was from the garden - and my uncle would shoot the occasional rabbit and drop it over. I LOVE rabbit pie!!

In 2007 a house identical to my parents house is selliing at about £270k, but that one has: good insultation, double glazing, central heating, posh new kitchen, posh new fireplaces, a large conservatory, a garage, new roof, further extension.

Whereas my dad bought his house aged 40 having been a prudent saver all his life, the new people buying those houses are professional couples in their early 30s who have good careers going.

It's easy to forget the upgrades that have happened to the houses over the years and how much they cost too.