Generation Skint

MissMoneypenny

BACKFRMTHEEDGE wrote: »

Hi all,

I'm sorry but I find the idea that we are worse off laughable:rotfl::rotfl:. I'm only 45 but I can remember my mum doing her washing (for a family of 7) with a soap board and mangle. And then they made the first commercial Hoover washing machine (they have one in the science museum) and she saved up like mad to buy one....no electric kettles, toasters, "hoovers"...

I'm only 53 (I like the only in your post so I am adopting it too) and as a child, we had a washing machine (my mother used a mangle for the spin part) and we had a tv which just had BBC1. I remember a vaccum cleaner too. The kettle would be one of the whistle types that went on the cooker and the toast was done on grill part of the cooker, unless it was a Sunday, when tea was toasting muffins on the open fire. We had home cooked meals every day. When we rang a doorbell and ran away, we were frightened of getting caught.

When I got my first car, if you did 70mph on the motorways, you passed the other cars, although you could drive miles and never see another car. And it was easy to blag your way onto planes for a holiday.

There was no pressure on parents to get branded goods for their children.

The biggest thing that has been lost now, is freedom. We made go-carts and raced them through the woods and if a child was injured playing, the parents didn't try to sue the parents of the other children. We played conkers. We were allowed to play with matches in wide games at the annual guide and scout camps.

Even when the IRA (and some americans) were bombing us in the 70s, we still kept our freedom. I was on a train with a bomb in the carriage (the timer was wrong and it went off when the carriage was empty and going out of Cannon Street) and just missed a car bomb going off seconds earlier in Westminster, on the way to work. Yet we kept our freedom.

I went to the Olympia Horse Show last year after years of not going and found we were prevented from certain areas, such as sitting with the show jumpers or from looking around the stables, or watching the horses being warmed up, because of security. When we use to go to Hickstead (show jumping ground) in the mid 70s we use to be able to walk the course. We could mingle with footballers at football matches too and no fences around us at matches.

There were lots of jobs about too and none of the easy credit and stress of trying to pay it back.

MissMoneypenny

abaxas wrote: »

1970 - !!!!!! is an ipod/computer

People knew what computers were in the early 70s as the banks branches came off their card systems and onto computers then.

I was part of the follow up team that put the Trust Companies onto computers in the mid 70s. We lived in hotels all week. Started work at midday on a Monday and finished by midday on Friday. About three time a year we worked weekends too for double money and two days off in lieu.

My employers bought a car for me, which they let me keep and paid me mileage. They paid for our hotel and lunch and evening meals out, in whatever restaurant we chose. My expenses equaled my salary.

Twice a year we had meetings for "those on the road" for "group bonding", which consisted of a week at a holiday Inn using the sports facilities and sauna and drinking everynight to the early hours. By the time we had the official meeting on the Friday morning, the hangvers were bad and those that did make it to the meeting never said anything and the boss would struggle to make his speech behind his dark glasses. Ahh yes, it was hard in those days.

neas

honestly tho this generation of credit bingers... is wrong... we've ultimately become poorer for it.

Buying anything on a credit card means you pay more for it (unless you pay off in full)... and the ones needing to use a credit are the ones who will be worst hit by interest charges.. the poor.

Its like a spiral of economic depression where the poor get poorer.

PasturesNew

MissMoneypenny wrote: »

People knew what computers were in the early 70s as the banks branches came off their card systems and onto computers then.

I was part of the follow up team that put the Trust Companies onto computers in the mid 70s. We lived in hotels all week. Started work at midday on a Monday and finished by midday on Friday. About three time a year we worked weekends too for double money and two days off in lieu.

My employers bought a car for me, which they let me keep and paid me mileage. They paid for our hotel and lunch and evening meals out, in whatever restaurant we chose. My expenses equaled my salary.

Twice a year we had meetings for "those on the road" for "group bonding", which consisted of a week at a holiday Inn using the sports facilities and sauna and drinking everynight to the early hours. By the time we had the official meeting on the Friday morning, the hangvers were bad and those that did make it to the meeting never said anything and the boss would struggle to make his speech behind his dark glasses. Ahh yes, it was hard in those days.

Blimey. My experience of working away for companies has been:
- booked into the cheapest KwalityHotel (I've stayed where asylum seekers/homeless were housed)
- £20 max/day to cover all meals and local travel, you only got this if you were away for the entire 24 hour period
- £10/day to cover all meals if you were getting up at 4am to travel to London and wouldn't get back home until 10.45pm the same night having done the trip in the one day.

I worked for a training company and they had food provided for delegates. So what I'd do is go out to a cheap sandwich shop and get a couple of sandwiches and a drink which I'd squirrel away for my evening meal, then go down to the servery area after lunch as staff could have a free meal from the leftovers. This left me the money to get a cab back to the station in time to catch the last train home (I didn't know the area/time was tight), eating the cheap sandwiches for my evening meal on the train. That'd be on a £10 day. For the £20 days, the money was often used getting to/from the hotel as the hotels were cheapest so not well placed.

Once they didn't even get me a ticket and I had to blag it all the way to London for free. Then got stuck there as I didn't have the money to get back so they HAD to buy me a ticket.

I once spoke to one of the trainers. Really posh voice he had, he was telling me how awful, but good, it was that: when the girls come down from the office it's nice that they get to stay in nice hotels. I think he thought we were in 5* luxury!

That company would also use one of their minimum wage staff to travel up to London and back in one day, just to cover the London receptionist's day off, rather than hiring a temp. Of course whoever went was never paid for their travel time and inconvenience.

It depends on your position in a company, but most people just get placed as cheaply as possible.

As for free events. Most companies don't even buy you a Xmas lunch in their own canteen (if there is one) or local pub (if there's not). And it's tax deductible too if they bothered!

EdInvestor

I think people also forget (if they ever knew) how expensive things were in the 1970s. For instance the prices of things like washing machines have barely changed over 30 years. Travel costs are the same - it cost around 500 quid for a long haul air ticket in the 1970s, and it's still much the same. Clothes are actually much cheaper now.

Partly this is to do with offshoring and partly with general global growth, with more proseperity meaning greater volumes of production, bringing economies of scale.

But meanwhile wages have tripled, and far more women work fulltime. So it's hard to see that the acquisition of cheap consumer goods as extravagant - rather it's just a visible sign of improved prosperity - and to some extent a more even distribution of it than was apparent 30 or 40 years ago, when less than half the population could afford to buy their own home.

SingleSue

!!!!!!? wrote: »

I think the real difference today is credit.

If people didn't have the ability to spend money that they didn't actually have and had to make do with only the cash they had from savings/monthly income then you wouldn't see anything like the proliferation of luxuries and gizmos that we currently see.

I spent a month visiting friends in a country that was officially 'third world' though actually pretty modern and you pretty soon see how much our society depends on credit. It just wasn't available there and as a result, people lived within their means.

If 'no cash in the wallet or the bank' really meant 'you have absolutely no spending power' then life in the UK would be very, very different.

You have to bear in mind that everything that is borrowed eventually has to be paid back with interest. We are now at the point where most people inclined to borrow have done so to the hilt. Their spending power is reduced by the need to pay back debt and they are horribly exposed to an economic recession. Prepare for things to get very much worse in the year or two ahead.

It certainly is....and it's the way I do things.

Mind you the kids seem to think that if you run out of money, you just go to the hole in the wall.....have to keep telling them that you need the money in there in the first place! :rotfl:

SingleSue

PasturesNew wrote: »

Blimey. My experience of working away for companies has been:
- booked into the cheapest KwalityHotel (I've stayed where asylum seekers/homeless were housed)
- £20 max/day to cover all meals and local travel, you only got this if you were away for the entire 24 hour period
- £10/day to cover all meals if you were getting up at 4am to travel to London and wouldn't get back home until 10.45pm the same night having done the trip in the one day.

I worked for a training company and they had food provided for delegates. So what I'd do is go out to a cheap sandwich shop and get a couple of sandwiches and a drink which I'd squirrel away for my evening meal, then go down to the servery area after lunch as staff could have a free meal from the leftovers. This left me the money to get a cab back to the station in time to catch the last train home (I didn't know the area/time was tight), eating the cheap sandwiches for my evening meal on the train. That'd be on a £10 day. For the £20 days, the money was often used getting to/from the hotel as the hotels were cheapest so not well placed.

Once they didn't even get me a ticket and I had to blag it all the way to London for free. Then got stuck there as I didn't have the money to get back so they HAD to buy me a ticket.

I once spoke to one of the trainers. Really posh voice he had, he was telling me how awful, but good, it was that: when the girls come down from the office it's nice that they get to stay in nice hotels. I think he thought we were in 5* luxury!

That company would also use one of their minimum wage staff to travel up to London and back in one day, just to cover the London receptionist's day off, rather than hiring a temp. Of course whoever went was never paid for their travel time and inconvenience.

It depends on your position in a company, but most people just get placed as cheaply as possible.

As for free events. Most companies don't even buy you a Xmas lunch in their own canteen (if there is one) or local pub (if there's not). And it's tax deductible too if they bothered!

Lol, my business trips were a hoot.

Late 80's early 90's, business class on the flights out, first class on the way back (Denmark) staying in a top hotel and a £450 expenses amount for a 3 day trip (hotel and flights already paid for so that amount was for meals and taxis)!

izzybusy23

PasturesNew wrote: »

When I was 15 I did LOADS of babysitting. 2-3 times a week. I did this for months ... aaages.

And I saved every penny to buy my first cassette player.

It was fab. It was mono and it was a radio-cassette player!! So I could record from the radio onto a casette. How great was that???

£70 it cost me!

Damned thing these days would be so cheap I could earn the money in just one half-a-night's babysitting

I did a paper round, morning and evening 6 days a week and the big sunday round for about £15 a week I think.. and I can't remember being able to buy much with that at all. I remember buying a stereo costing £500+ which in those days was a phenomenal amount of money (1980's).

The problem these days is that people have lost the 'worth' of money. Everything is too accessible and cheap. We are now sadly a throw away society. People chop and change their kitchen essentials every few months when they fancy a colour change. Terrible really isn't it?

posh*spice

clobber wrote: »

I feel a point has been missed about "labour-saving devices" such as washing machines, hoovers and so on.

50 years ago, women were expected to be housewives and had time to wash stuff by hand and light fires every day and sweep the floors daily.

I work full time plus on-call, as does my partner. I know how to handwash but if I had to rely on it I would never have anything clean to wear. The hoover makes keeping the flat clean a relatively easy and therefore acheivable job.

I could manage without my telly, ipod, kettle, coffee grinder etc but without a maid or a housewife I would find it hard to manage without the practical stuff.

Edit: My partner has just accused me of pontificating on things I know nothing about. Tis true, he does the hoovering.

Too right - I love my "time saving" devices. On her death bed Queen Elizabeth 1 was reported to have said " All my kindom for a moment of time". I'm afraid life is too short to be washing clothes in the bath and beating rugs on a washing line:eek::D

posh*spice

!!!!!!? wrote: »

You have to bear in mind that everything that is borrowed eventually has to be paid back with interest. We are now at the point where most people inclined to borrow have done so to the hilt. Their spending power is reduced by the need to pay back debt and they are horribly exposed to an economic recession. Prepare for things to get very much worse in the year or two ahead.

Hi !!!!!!,

I don't know if I move in funny social circles but I would say no-one I know uses credit nor do my family. Do most people really use large amounts of credit