These posts all have the same issue, they completely don't understand how people lived. They see tv and the brady bunch all flying to hawaii and think everyone did that. I'm 51 and in my childhood eating out was rare, nobody flew anywhere on vacation and people drive the same cars for so long it's how you knew who was coming down the road. The only people I knew who "lived like rock stars" were single males who had no kids and had the boss job at the factory.
100%. I’m not a boomer but my parents are. They’re both university educated and worked their asses off to barely get by. We went out for supper or ordered in maybe 6 times a year. I got to go on an airplane for my first time when I was 15 to go to Disneyland and it was a once in a lifetime trip. I’m doing way better than my parents did and I don’t have a university degree.
you can't argue with these people. To them, everyone over 45 is a "Boomer" who lived a fairytale life. I'm 51, didn't have indoor bathrooms until 1980, chopped firewood for heat until 1991, my parents worked 6 days a week. We didn't have a family vacation until I was 38. Yet 8 people will reply that I had it "essy'compared to these days
No, I'm just allowing this Facist style bait and switch a boogeyman in to blame instead of trying to find the actual solution. A straw man Boomer is a great distraction from ever actually fixing anything
And you’re doing the same thing by characterizing young people as mindless spenders. The economic data is there. Older people unquestionably had an easier time economically when they were the same age as young people today. Whenever this topic comes up people always like to bring up personal stories as if it erases macroeconomic data.
What! My folks are boomers and went to college. Dad was a Lab Tech with his Associates degree and mom was a teacher with a Master's and we had a small business. We lived quite well. Vacations, cross country road trips in the family RV. A boat to go fishing on the ocean, money for mom and dad to have their own cars, a company car and dads sports car. I am far poorer than how I grew up.
Our vacations were literally driving someplace a little ways over and hoping the motel had a vacancy. I went on planes only to visit relatives maybe twice under 10. My mom did go to Hawaii with a guy once when I was 4ish (she was widowed) but she didn’t take me!
Also I think this ignores the fact that for some people of my generation (born late 70s/early 80s) our dads were Vietnam Vets, so I’d really like everyone to explain that privilege to me.
the truth is in the middle of that and this. My family was relatively poor. HOWEVER.. my single mom made ~12k in the mid-to-late 80s and my dad ~13k. Each had their own place.. we lived with my mom.. 4 kids. he sent money when he could.
So no it wasn't the rock star life.. but they each had a home in a different part of the state, supported 4 kids, and we did stuff like soccer, book fairs, etc. We had cable tv and a computer (used C64 from goodwill). And before someone says "umm that's not poor" we qualified for food stamps and free school lunches.. so yes, that's what poor was back then. "poor" now is basically destitute and border-line homeless.
I think people forget that we saw how our parents lived on their salaries and we grew up in those homes. We're not all relying on TV. Your comment is a great example of that.
Yup, same here. Have boomer parents. Ate out like 6 times a year. Vacations were roadtrips to the lake or extended family's house. Hand-me-downs for clothes. They were super frugal with their money.
But my parents owned a house, they must have been loaded!
Owning a house and doing the things you just listed are what a " loaded" person does today. The point isn't that your parents were rich the point is that you didn't need to be rich to live.
Yup I cant even imagine owning a home, and nobody under the age of 40 in my family owns a home either, so there are no "roadtrips to say at the families homes" unless we are visiting my geriatric grandma
This has nothing to do with me being bad with money lmao. The best job availible in this market pays 20 an hour, which is $800 a week.
The average apartment here costs $3000 a month just to rent a single bedroom. Assuming 4.5 weeks in a month, that leaves me $600 for food, car payments, insurance, collage fees, etc etc
Back in the 80s the cost of buying a house and paying it off over time would only cost you 30% of your income. Nowadays just renting a single bedroom costs 80% of your budget
I mean…it is true that has been a certain amount of lifestyle creep. That being said, a big part of the problem is that all of the cheap things that used to exist have become quite a bit more expensive. I’m sure many people have noticed that the grocery bills have gone way up. If you’re into DIY and crafts, things like a lumber, yarn, and so on are both more expensive and often worse quality. You mentioned road trips, but how many people are going to shell out the money for incredibly overpriced hotels and 4-6 dollar gas? Heck, how many middle and lower middle class Americans could actually get time off approved for a proper road trip?
One thing that’s been noted for quite some time is how we’ve managed to bring down the prices of a lot of things that used to be luxuries, things like televisions, cell phones, and computers, but a lot of the things that really have been crucial to keeping people, middle-class, things like education, housing, and healthcare, have all exploded in both price and necessity. While it may be the case, that younger generations could always be thriftier, what do you do about the fact that the cost of housing or healthcare basics have become incredibly large amount of ones budget? And again, what do you do about the fact that all of the things that used to make DIY cheap and preferable have slowly become expensive? What do we do about the fact that children need to be attended at all times now, and parents are scared into thinking that anyone wrong decision will completely derail their child’s future? Again, all of these things that are important and necessary for upward mobility have all become incredibly expensive.
Anyway, there definitely are people who need to reassess and downgrade their standards for what they can afford. That will always be true. But that being said, it’s just feels like classic division to distract us from the true problems that exist.
I can assure you that lower middle class and truly poor people are struggling just the same as they always have been. They are doing all of the things that you guys are saying that “no one does these nowadays and that’s why they can’t afford anything“, except for they probably don’t own a house (and don’t qualify for the financing), they probably have a health insurance plan that they can’t afford to use unless there’s a true emergency, and they certainly aren’t putting away enough for retirement. But hey, I guess at least they have phones and TVs, so they can’t truly be poor, right? (And yes, I remember when Fox News thought that people couldn’t truly be poor if they had microwaves and refrigerators.)
I agree on everything except for the age of the cars, the average age of which has been continually increasing and has never been higher. For passenger vehicles on the road, it’s currently 14.5 years and for light trucks, it’s 11.9. By 1990, a 1975 model would’ve been a rusted out piece of shit. I still can’t get over the notion of 100k miles as being some sort of red line beyond which there exists a no man’s land filled with breakdowns and expensive repair bills. Meanwhile, everybody else is out here not batting an eye at used cars w 80k miles.
But to your original point, interest rates in the 80’s were bananas. Imagine buying a house at 17%.
This is a big distinction. Cars back in the 70s and 80s were such crap. 100k was a milestone. Nowadays if you take care of your car it’s nothing and should still look brand new.
I bought my first house in 1982 at $77k with a 16% mortgage and $1050/mnth payment including taxes and insurance. I was making $12/hr, wife was making like $5-$6. So $2700/mnth gross
I agree. A bit younger than you but my parents are probably a bit older. We ate out about 3x per month. And 80% of the time that meal was pizza. My parents did all of their house maintenance and remodeling. My dad worked two jobs. We almost never went out of the house for entertainment. There weren’t fancy, expensive sports teams or fast fashion or door dash. There was no Amazon. I didn’t get on an airplane until after college. We took 1 vacation a year in the summer. Somewhere we could drive within 5-6 hours of home. No one I know was living like a king. We were mostly just home or out in our local neighborhood, having potluck gatherings, playing at the park, or having friends over.
A lot of unnecessary things got way cheaper (eating out, fast fashipn, door dash...).
And the very few essentials (cost of a home) got way more expensive.
It is a well-researched behavioural economics fact that people who have a hard time affording the big, important things in their lives love to at least splurge on little luxuries they can afford.
I'm not sure what is so hard to understand about this.
I'm in my mid 40s and was the first generation to have never had an outhouse at home. My kids have a much higher standard of living than my parents did.
My dad moved to a house with indoor plumbing pretty early on. That house is probably gone, I'm sure the land is quite valuable now as it is no longer rural at all.
This times 1000! Lifestyle creep is just as much to blame as anything. Previous generations struggled too. The luxuries and lifestyle of today didn't really exist 30 years ago. People just lived more frugally. Look up how much furniture or TVs cost in the 80s and 90s.
It's not exactly lifestyle creep. The things that are expensive have changed. "Luxury" is cheap - travel, electronics, and specialty goods have never been more accessible. Meanwhile, basic necessities like housing, education, and healthcare have outpaced salaries massively. That's why telling younger people to just live more frugally misses the point. The things actually eating most of their salaries are not things they can afford to cut back on.
I remember my dad in the 1980s, working as a police officer, with my mom working as basically a secretary, barely making ends meet with three kids. I still remember when my dad said that he had to buy used tires for his car because he couldn't afford new ones. It's both funny and embarassing for the posters of such nonsense to actually believe what they are spouting.
That same salary today would be renting and would certainly not support 3 kids. They had it better by a country mile, if they opened a saving account they would “only” get about 7 percent interest. If I open one now I get .3 percent. Used tires? That’s so tragic.
Seriously though everyone’s wants to play struggle olympics. People could afford homes and children on two sometimes one income and now my partner and I make over 100k a year after tax and we have almost no hope of buying a home. Spoiled generation
Entirely depends where. The cheapest home with half of an hour of me that doesn't require a teardown is $250k, for a 2 bed 1 bath. This is not a particularly high CoL area, and even with a 20% down payment you'd need to be making 80k to afford the mortgage+taxes+insurance.
I bought my place for $210k making 50k per year and I used the first time home buyer option so only needed 8k down. My mortgage was $1569 including taxes, mortgage insurance, and home insurance. I've had no problem at all making payments. Obviously, it wasn't ideal spending 35% of my income on my mortgage and I had to cut back on spending, but that's always been the reality of home ownership, and I certainly wasn't struggling. I make more money now, I was able to refinance to get the mortgage insurance off, and while rent continues going higher, my mortgage has gotten lower. So, the sacrifice was more than worth it. Now that I have equity, I can use that to get into a nicer home if I want. This has always been the way it works.
Yes, homes were more affordable in the past, but the interest rates were insane and you had to save up that 20%. It's not as big of a crisis as reddit will have you believe. The reason housing is up so much is because the homes in desirable areas have skyrocketed. The population continues to climb and there's no more room to build. There's still plenty of affordable housing in outer ring suburbs, people just think they deserve a penthouse in the cities and jobs starting at 100k per year straight out of college.
Hourly wages in early 1980s were around $7 per hour, while the minimum wage was $3.10 per hour. I remember making the minimum wage in 1980, and the company thought they did something when they gave me a $.25 per hour raise. Savings account interest rates were higher because interest rates to borrow money was higher, up to 19 percent for a used car loan. Morgage rates were as high as 16 percent in the early 1980s. When all your money went to survive, and you needed to drive every day to work, buying used tires was the only way to go. I lived through it. Did we have it better then? Doubtful. No AC in the house because the electric bill was so expensive; no vacations, other than riding up the road to Atlanta to Six Flags once. Three channels on a 19 inch TV. One phone on the wall. Fast food was a luxury, not an everyday meal.
I mean, that $0.25/h raise was an 8% raise. When I was working minimum about 10 years ago, a 25 cent raise was reserved for only the favorites and was only a 3.4% raise. Not even keeping up with average inflation. Most of my coworkers got 5-10 cents most years.
Well I can tell you that as a kid I had a savings account that got ~3.5% interest when the prime lending rate was around 11%. Today I have one that pays about ~3.5% when the prime lending rate is ~7%.
Mostly the economy is at least as good/bad today as it was then. The main thing that is fucked is housing and cars. Both are fucked for the same reason which comes down to government policy. Primarily with keeping interest rates at 0% or close enough to it for so long. Secondarily via regulatory requirements.
No. "housing is fucked" in terms of housing prices collapsing would mean the economy is fucked. What we have isn't going to suddenly put downward pressure on the economy unless we suddenly get a surplus of housing or the people needing it suddenly go somewhere.
Which is what makes the problem extra pernicious. What could be fixed with policy won't be because nobody wants to be in charge for the contraction in the economy you'd get from making the housing situation better. Kind of like how you are never going to see healthcare improve. I mean shit.. you reign in healthcare costs by 7% and you have pretty much created an ongoing recession that will likely last long enough to be a depression. Do you know what that would do to <fill in career politician's name here> legacy/chance for reelection?
Really? A google search tells me that in 1990 the average savings account had between 8-9 percent interest. In 1981 that number was 14 percent. I’m sorry you picked the wrong account. If you’re in your forties how the fuck did you have an account in the late 80s? You would be like 14 tops
Your google search is wrong and turned up a bad result, or you misinterpreted. HYSAs have only existed for 20 years, so I know it’s not that. In the mid, late 70s I got my first savings account as a little kid, and the rate was 5 1/4%. My dad later found that S&Ls were paying 5 3/4%, so we moved my account. I’ve had a savings account at various banks since then, and those rates were the best they ever were.
I think you’re talking about CDs and t-bills, which is not an average savings account.
Its true saving accounts got up to 7% in the 80s, but you're missing the part where inflation was 14%. A HYSA account today will actually beat inflation, those savings accounts did not.
If your using US Bank or Wells Fargo to store your cash, sure. Theres plenty of high yield savings accounts available that get you 3-5 percent and offer full online banking so location is irrelevant. Either way if your saving long term it should be in an IRA or 401k invested in index funds for a healthy 7-15 percent depending on the year.
Yep. Last half as long as new tires, which means you replace them sooner. It's like the poor tax. You need good workboots, but they cost $200, so you settle for Walmart boots for less than $100, but have to replace them more often costing you more money.
I looked up the guy who wrote this and he went to a prep school and lives in a high-rise in NYC. So I doubt he has much first-hand experience of struggle.
Yeah, and theyd be able to afford half of what they had with those same jobs today.
Fuck, if they bought the house they had then today, they probably could barely cover the mortgage with those jobs
Housing prices have almost doubled in the last 8 years, want to guess what hasn't even come close to doubling in that same time? Thats right, wages
In 2010 the average wage of my position was $25 an hour. The house my wife and I bought sold in 2019 for 117k. Estimated value in 2010 was around 100k.
We bought it last year for 250k, my jobs average wages have gone from $25 to $35.
Our buying power is dwindling and we have idiots telling us it was always like this
The 80s was bad for most with the recession, most boomers were just getting started then. The age range is 1946-1964. I was born in 1980 and yes my parents struggled a bit but by late 80s into 90s were thriving.
Priorities were just different. I don’t know what drove it really.
Houses were affordable.
But everyone naturally brought their lunch to work. (Not everyone but generally) and now it’s like you’re halfway obligated to go to lunch with coworkers. (You don’t have to, it’s just more of a social priority)
Old, ripped shoes were common and nobody judged. Now you’re judged for what brand you wear.
Beater cars were cool. Paint it yourself, mod it yourself. Now you’ve got to buy the newest model and take it to the car wash every week. Plenty of people rent their apartment so they can afford a flashy car.
A road trip to camping was an awesome vacation. Now if you don’t fly overseas does it even count?
Now we need to pay bills for internet, security, Disney, Netflix, cell phone, PlayStation, and soon ai agents. Back then basic cable was free and everyone watched the same shows and nobody judged you because everyone had the same access. Now you’re weird if you haven’t seen game of thrones 5x over.
Of course none of this is law, everyone could always do what they wanted, I’m just saying expectations I’ve noticed being different or at least valued in different ways that change the equation of how people generally prioritize their spending.
You realize we can just compare the median salary to what the shelter, food, transportation, education, childcare and healthcare cost right? TV's are cheap, but living is not. It's not complicated to see that for the things that matter, the essentials have all outpaced wages dramatically. Most people would need a 50% raise to have similar purchasing power to what we did in the 80's.
It's not nonsense at all. I could recommend half a dozen books on this topic, and it's very deep rooted and a real issue in the developed world.
Sure, in the 80s parents still had to scrape by. However, people scraped by and still owned their houses along with retirement pensions. The value of a dollar earned was also higher in the 80s (outside of the stock market meltdown).
Buying used tires instead of new ones is literally the norm. The fact that he considered that embarrassing shows that he was wealthy enough to have an entirely different standard of living.
Like even putting that aside he had a home and 3 kids. That shits not possible nowadays. He has to cherry pick data and be like "Oh it was a real struggle, I had to get DISCOUNT tires instead of buying ultra premium, woe is me"
This brought back a memory for me - when my dad got a flat tire on his truck we took moms car to the junkyard and picked through a huge stack of tires to find one in the right size with some decent tread on it. Then we went in the office and haggled a bit. But it was a very comfortable middle class upbringing - both parents were teachers and I have nothing but good memories. My only time on an airplane before college was to go to grandpa’s funeral and eating out at restaurants is something I don’t really remember at all other than a big family gathering maybe a couple times a year. When a Dairy Queen opened in our town it was a huge thing and every once in a while we’d get money to buy a cone and hang out with other kids outside the DQ.
I'm MSc and hold position on par with my degree and I've bought used tires, my car is 18 yo.. My dad on the other hand bought brand new Volvo in 90', he was a technician and my mom a baker. Neither were well paying jobs. They split up, finances 50-50, he bought his own place, a summer cabin and a new car shortly after. None of this is in my reach other than the divorce 😅
The truth is somewhere in between. Reality is most were not living like rockstars however every credible study of ‘affordability’ shows that it is substantially more difficult for the upcoming generation than it was for even mine (in my 50s) anyone who doesn’t recognise that just doesn’t understand economics.
My parents had a detached house 3 kids car and a comfortable life on a gas fitter salary. No uni education. Mum worked on and off (barmaid, debt collector, factory worker) that is completely and utterly impossible today.
I went to university which cost me ZERO and in fact the government gave me money to go (student grant)
I mean was raised in that period.... We ate out constantly went on multiple vacations a year my dad has a high-school diploma and my mom went to college for a few night classes"business studies" which was mostly highschool math and how to use Excel.
To get my dad's job it's now a 3 year college class and to get my mom's a university degree and master's.
They retired at 50 and make more from their pensions then the people currently doing their jobs.
Guess what grandma, people still rarely go out to eat, don’t have vacations and drive the same car til the wheels fall off (if they can afford one) and still can’t afford to eat, you ain’t special.
The sheer explosion of fast food restaurants, doordash, entertainment, video games, smartphones, average age of cars, and amazon purchases is proof you are wrong.
Some of the poorest in the 1980’s lived in absolute poverty, starving with no amenities. The poorest today have smartphones, tvs and massively obese from too much food. You realize how good your country has to be for the number one problem of our poor is they eat too much food?
As a kid my grandma had regular meals of “sugar bread”. 1 slice of bread with sugar sprinkled on top. And that was a regular family just down on their luck, no crazy circumstances or drugs/alcohol.
You are looking at the past with rose tinted glasses, completely ignorant of how they lived.
Nobody is saying people weren’t poor in the 80s or that everyone had it easy. That’s not the argument. The argument is that basic things like housing, healthcare, and education were more affordable compared to what people made.
Yeah, people have smartphones and TVs now. Those things have gotten cheaper. Houses haven’t. You can’t pay your mortgage with a cheap TV.
And being overweight doesn’t mean someone isn’t struggling to afford food. Cheap processed food is everywhere, and millions of Americans still struggle to put food on the table.
Also, since you brought up cars, Americans are actually driving older cars than ever.
I’m not saying life was perfect in the 80s. I’m saying that just because people have more stuff today doesn’t mean they’re better off financially. Your grandma struggling to afford food doesn’t change the fact that a house was much easier to afford on an average income back then. Both things can be true.
Such a boomer take. We all have cell phones and tvs. Old and young rich and poor. Im an older millennial whos had good times and bad. I dont and have never used door dash or any delivery services. I dont have an Amazon account. I dont drink Starbucks or eat avocado toast. Im old enough to have lived during the boomers prime and watch Gen z enter adulthood. Life was absolutely easier to afford in the 80s and 90s than it is today. Baby boomers are the only generation in modern history to have life better than their fathers and their sons. I dont hate or blame boomers for how things shook out, but this delusion that some of them have about how newer generations have an easier life than them is infuriating.
There are many bills that I simply cannot pay without an Internet connection or phone plan.
Connectivity is absolutely a utility now, and most jobs require you to have a phone number (mobile lines are usually cheaper than landlines now) and you have to have a reliable means of transportation (generally your own vehicle) to even be considered for the position.
Also, before the Internet, everyone ran on slightly different times. You could set your watch to the clock on the TV guide channel but it wasn't guaranteed that your boss or school has theirs synchronized so it wasn't really a ball-buster for people coming in a few minutes early or late.
This is a point they often miss, internet and phone cost are an added cost of being a member of society. Not only have starting salaries not kept up with inflation but our wages are garnished another 10-15% by student loan payments and technology payments.
Boomers deny or retcon reality because they think their upbringing was rough, and believe that legitimizing the struggle of younger generations diminishes their own. Boomers like to be the special snowflake that are the only ones that struggled ever because they used rotary phones, while buying a house one year after high school graduation for a bag of wood chips.
You cannot possibly believe that people don't eat out far more often in todays world than they did 40 years ago. If you do, you are truly clueless abot the realities of life in the 1980s
I think it's the duality of the k shaped economy. I know people who don't eat out, pretty much at all because of finances. Then we also know people who get takeout/door dash on the regular.
Thank you for saying this. I'm 48 and had a similar childhood experience: eating out was a treat and done maybe once a month, our house was three bedroom 1400 sqft (and there were six of us), mom and dad shared a car, we bought many of our clothes at K-Mart, vacations were road trips to Wisconsin. Dad was IT (before IT was called that) at US Steel and mom stayed at home with us.
We weren't "poor", we were pretty solidly working class but no one constantly bemoaned our situation. We had a solid neighborhood, lots of family, and plenty of close friends.
So your dad aforded a three bedroom house in a nice neighborhood, had four kids, and had the spare money to go out of state on vacations? All on a single parent income?
Our grandparents hated us tho. Ours said it. We were to be "seen and not heard." That wasnt the economy. Children were parasites until useful. Which is why we abandon our parents.
Travelling was domestic, and we sleeped usually in tents. Only one phonebill per household, no internet bills, no streaming services, monthly payments just for the house, electricity and water. Eating out at McDonalds was a feast and rare. In Finland we has no insurances for people or animals. No order-in dinners, no takeaway coffees. Much more frugal lifestyle in general.
In the 80's growing up, I made cornmeal pancakes for dinner every other night. Didn't have lunch or breakfast options to eat. I learned to fish, just to be able to eat some sort of protein. My first memory is flipping over rocks in the river to catch crawdads, and I wasn't tall enough to put them in the pot on the stove to cook, I had to get my sister's to cook them for me.
Was gonna say growing up eating out at Wendy’s was a special occasion. We rarely ate out and had a lot of essentially hamburger helper, casseroles, etc. Both parents worked full time jobs commuting between 30min and an hour each way to work. It did seem like there was a lot less of everything but that might just be the fact the internet was just getting going so we weren’t inundated with all the marketing and social media bs to perpetuate consumption.
Society has definitely normalized eating out, buying $10 coffees, subscription plans for everything, essentially anything to get money out of people. These aren’t necessities but I feel like society and especially social media has made it seem like it’s completely normal.
only......housing is different. Housing regulations and HOAs created mainly by boomers have definitely led to houses costing disproportionately high compared to salaries.
Also don't forget second jobs. As I recall pretty much everyone had a second job at that time. My mom after her work in the office was working at a child-daycare, my dad, besides his factory job was working at a local bagel shop on the weekends.
At 51, I can kind of see the point though? We didn't fly places or eat out, go on extravagant vacations (went to the beach with grandparents every year, they paid) but my parents bought their first house when they got married, then upgraded to a bigger house in a nice subdivision in 1975. The new house cost 37k. My mom didn't work and my dad made approx 15k a year at the time.
When I was born they had 3 cars. A vista crusier, a 66 chevelle and what ever his other car was. All paid off.
His 15k a year then = 99k now.
When I met my now wife, her dad thought we were rich because we had a house without wheels on it (seriously).
my dad supported a family of 4 on a truck driver's salary. We owned our home, we had new clothes at schooltime, we had vacations. We ate out once a month or so, we had it ok. We were children. We are not boomers.
It’s not that they literally lived like rock stars, I grew up in a working class family living largely as you describe. The thing is, my dad raised a family of 5 pretty much on a single income as a truck driver, we had a (modest) home, two (shit box) cars, and always had what we needed. Today this is undeniably impossible - laughably so, to the extent that it can barely be done on two good incomes, let alone a single modest income.
I'm about your age and we were able to live well. When didn't eat out all the time but when we did I was able to order a premium cut of steak and no one blinked <-> now as an adult I stopped going out for steak 15 years ago <--> Last 5 years I buy it bi-annually....
I understand how people lived and it was more cheaply - that we agree on.
where we don't agree is a mcdonalds cheeseburger was 39c on special /a 'value meal was 5$ supersized' > now it's 11 dollars... wages didn't double to match.
*** plus the 80's saw the indroduction of Reaganomics which launched the 'wage gap'
i.e. Executives made 35 times front line employees in 1980 NOW exec's make 400x front line employees.
Weddings were less, starter homes were the permanent homes with siblings sharing rooms, bachelor and bachelorette parties were at the local bar or at most nearest city no Vegas blowouts, kids borrowed parents cars, kids worked summers more often even if rich, picked colleges and careers based on earning not what fulfills me.
Yes they picked forklift because it’s a good union job with minimal education nearby so it’s good bang for your buck
Separately it is harder. Housing is more expensive relative to average income, inflation etc but both things are true
I'm younger than you but old enough to remember. I didn't grow up rich, and my first job was like 15 cents above minimum wage.
The median house used to be a lot smaller and a lot worse built, worse insulation and worse building standards. The median U.S. home didn't even have a dishwasher until 1996. https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=31692
They used to advertise stuff like "power steering" and "power windows," because it was a big deal to not, for example, have to manually roll down your window and be unable to control anyone else's remotely.
But it's not just products; services have massively increased in costs, most famously college tuition. In the early 1900s ~10% of adults had a 4-year degree or higher; now it's ~30%. What happened? The GI bill (WWII-era incentive for veterans to go to college) + Vietnam War (lots more people wanted to go to college as a life-preserving measure, and grade inflation got way worse and devalued college degrees, as professors knew that flunking people out meant they'd get sent to the front lines).
Also, part of the reason why everything costs so much more today is because of regulations.
Public services in general used to be less regulated. Think about the mountain of paperwork that police do these days compared to before; and how much more technology they carry around.
I'm not advocating for a rollback in safety/environmental/police/other regulations, btw, I'm just adding to your explaining how life was different back then.
Social standards have changed, too. Some people spend tens, or even hundreds of thousands per kid, on piano/ballet/sports/whatever lessons these days. Whereas back in the day, life as a kid was way more bare-bones and there were a lot more "free range" kids. It doesn't seem to have hurt them, either; the relatively free-range, agricultral town of Condon, Oregon produced 2 Nobel Laureates. https://cityofcondon.com/about-us/
As more and more people piled into cities, you got stuff like white flight and surburban sprawl and eventually our less-and-less efficient public transportation systems as streetcar funding got gutted, with the encouragement of car companies. This is when the very short-lived "American Dream" was a thing: owning a slice of property to exclude others from, while public transit turns into a joke. But sprawling infrastructure costs more to build and maintain.
Lastly single-earner households used to be the norm, but now 2-earner households are. 2 incomes is an advantage only if nobody else is doing it. If every household has nearly double the income, the prices for stuff like homes in good school districts gets bid up accordingly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Two-Income_Trap
Life feels harsher and less-secure when both people are working full time jobs AND housework, too. There's less financial security, because if one person loses their job it can be a disaster with the mortgage going unpaid, as there is no stay-at-home parent who can step up and take a job outside the home for a while.
(For those who don't know, Warren is a feminist and a Harvard Law prof and U.S. Senator who had a 2-year-old during law school, so this is not some caveman MAGA saying women should all be SAHMs nor is Warren herself saying everyone should be SAHMs. She's just pointing out the consequences.)
I think you’re missing the actual argument. Nobody is claiming everyone in the 80s was flying to Hawaii, eating at restaurants every night, or living like the Brady Bunch.
The argument is about affordability, not luxury. Housing was significantly more affordable relative to income, and it was much more common for a working class family to get by on one income. Today, plenty of families have two working parents, drive old cars, rarely eat out, and don’t take vacations, yet still struggle to afford the basics.
And ironically, flying is actually cheaper today when adjusted for inflation, while people are keeping their cars longer than ever.
Nobody is saying life in the 80s was perfect or that everyone was wealthy. But pointing out that you didn’t eat at restaurants or take fancy vacations doesn’t somehow disprove the fact that the cost of necessities has outpaced incomes in some pretty significant ways. The issue isn’t that younger generations expect to live like rock stars. It’s that many are struggling to afford the same ordinary working class stability previous generations had without living like rock stars.
We were real middle class and vacation was camping. I didn't stay in a hotel or motel until I paid for it as an adult! First flight was at 14 and didn't fly again until I was an adult.
Same, family of 5 with two working parents. We ate out maybe 5 or 6 times a year and a couple of those would have been trips to McDonald's.
My parents spent around two thirds of their take home pay on the mortgage after interest rates spiked to 15% in 1989 and ended up moving 50 odd miles to get a cheaper house (and admittedly a better job, but the reason they were looking for jobs there was became the houses were half the price).
Hell basically the entire family life of shows like Everybody Hates Chris is based around being too poor to do things. Like Chris even paid a bill for his dad as a birthday present.
The purchasing power of a median job has changed dramatically. Your memory doesn’t change that. The sheer wealth/income discrepancy in the US now needs to be addressed non-violently ASAP or we will have a bunch of young people with no money and access to guns in the not too distant future
Its not that we get those ideas from TV its that we hear it constantly from our older relatives. Who mention things like when i bought my 1st car cash while i worked part time as an Usher. Or when we bought our first home in Aspen with one salary as Ice delivery driver. Or seeing them gain 5x-10x their home value in 10 years working one job with three kids and a stay at home mom. This isnt fantasy television this is my in laws, my grandparents, my late elder boomers real lives. They had it different, arguably easier, and they tell us shit advice based on the true fantasy that the stuff they had is achievable nowadays and its NOT.
P.s. he was minimum wage at Sears to start and went to night school to get a degree that took 10 years, and is Mexican, when white collar jobs rarely hired a Mexican. But he made it happen.
I also remember a lot of people having around double the income of my parents but being unable afford the things that my parents had. They had lots of matter of fact reasons and excuses but never the hard math to explain why they couldn't afford completely attainable things. Being terrible with money was a thing.
Correct. I recently saw a throwback picture of the 80s where for lunch to keep your soda cold you wrapped your soda in tin foil. Now we have $50 Yeti Tumblers. I'm not saying it's any generations fault. The game is rigged against us now. You can't just buy a video game anymore, it's a "free" game and $15/month forever in bullshit charges. The subscription economy is insane.
eating out was rare, but eating in was AFFORDABLE. i’m spending so much money on groceries now. tuna is like $3 a can. TUNA! chicken is $12 for a pack of 3 breasts. ground beef is like $12 a pound.
we are not living in the same world you did back then.
Your dollar got you further.
Thats the point.
You own a house? Do most of your friends?
Im 40. Not a single person I know who works a job or two and has kids owns. They all rent.
Was your car payment half your weekly salary?
I get so tired of people pretending like the economy isnt fucked.
People like to romanticize some made up life many boomers never actually had. My grandparents are completely in awe of the life I live today. They cannot even comprehend how much I have traveled and what salary I make at 35 and the things I can afford living in the same region they raised their family in. I do not come from wealth. I come from blue collar midwest workers. I'm the first generation who went to college.
Thank you for because I feel like I’ve been gaslit into thinking I had a luxurious childhood.
When i I was at school in the eighties there were several kids in class without shoes because their parents couldn’t afford them and charities didn’t supply them. I also remember going without bread and milk at times because my parents had run out of money.
In the 70’s and 80’s, at least in my small working class town, being poor was normal. Going without was normal. There wasn’t technology and subscriptions to spend our money on. Majority of families only had one tv, some only a B&W tv. Some families didn’t have a phone connected because they couldn’t afford it. If the washing machine broke we all had to hand wash our clothes. Couldn’t afford the laundromat. Speaking of clothes, we all wore hand-me-downs all the time that were well worn or clothes sewn by mum. I got one brand new dress one time and I treated it as my most precious possession.
Absolutely house prices were more reasonable than now. But there definitely was no living it up in luxury. Interest rates were ridiculously high.
I’m trying to swear at people less online. I’m 31 making 125k a year, stay at home wife and two young children and our mortgage is over 3k, that’s the problem. My utilities and property taxes went up $600 a month last year. That’s the problem. Gas groceries diapers. You think millennials are flying to Hawaii because we saw it on the Brady bunch? 70%-80% of our income goes to our homes and utilities if we didn’t own a home pre pandemic. Just be quiet. that’s the most out of touch bullshit I’ve ever heard. “It’s all the avocado toast” you would be smoked if you had to graduate in 2015.
I’ll admit I’m frustrated by this sentiment because neither do we. I’m 31 and my friends are camping on the weekends or playing cards at each others houses. We go to the park with our kids not Disney. We are starting families and raising young kids nobody is taking vacations at all. My best friend and his wife and kid just moved back in with his parents to save $40k to get a home because their rent went from $2100 to $2600 in two years. It’s suffocating trying to plant roots at all right now. I made $80k when we had our first child in a two bedroom apartment four years ago, I’ve increased my income by 50% but getting a home to fit us could cost us everything. Nobody is mad we can’t travel constantly I’d really like to support a family on less than 60 hours per week when I make 90th percentile money in 40. Literally running a whole side plumbing business to afford groceries. One used car and one extra curricular for my oldest. Anyways not reason to hate on you, youve lived longer and are probably less emotionally charged than I am at present. All the best buddy
Also there was no streaming service bills or cell phone bills my father always changed the oil on his car himself and did the tuneup too. Much different times.
Yeah I remember McDonald’s being a once a year treat and never going on vacations as a kid. But I also remember my pops working almost every holiday in the early 80’s because he would get 3X pay rate. Godam I would work every holiday if that was the case but that’s not even an option anymore.
I'm the same age. I grew up dirt poor. My family went on maybe three vacations during my childhood. All were road trips that we took in a beat-up van. I got on my first airplane when I was maybe 27 years old.
Yeah I'm hearing OP and thinking like...sure some aspects mathed out better at some points of their life. My parents bought a used single wide trailer on a single retail income. But all I remember from my boomer parents was absolutely scrimping, crusty air dried laundry, never eating out or getting pizza except on the rarest of occasions, never getting brand name anything, busted ass used cars. I never had a video game console until i worked enough to get my own, and on and on.
We were solidly upper-middle class if not upper class. We took exactly 1 vacation that involved an airplane. We took exactly 3 vacations (plus the 1 that involved an airplane) that weren't visiting family. We were very fortunate that the grandparents had a vacation home for us to use, and that allowed Dad to buy us a boat that was 20 years old and required a summer of work to be able to use it.
We had plenty of luxuries and never wanted for anything. But we didn't get the beach vacations, we didn't get to go to Disney, we didn't get to go to water parks and amusement parks.
That part of the nostalgia doesn't exist because it didn't exist then.
Wanna know what pisses me off though? We never had to worry about money. Now I'm doing the same thing as my parents, and my wife and I have to have 4 jobs between us to live in a house that is smaller and worse in every way in a very similar neighborhood, with only 1 kid, and we do have to worry about money constantly. We can't afford dry cleaning, a cleaning lady, and I have to DIY a lot more around the house and with the cars because the budget just isn't there.
That is the difference. My parents did it on one salary, and eventually after 12 years mom went back to part time work, and the day to day was easier and less stressful. Every time I look at the budget, I'm just astounded at how much the housing and healthcare costs... And we're really lucky with public-sector healthcare and having gotten into our house 10 years ago and refinancing at a ridiculous Covid rate.
My parents were entry level engineers in the 80s. They comfortably afforded to buy a 4 bdrm house in an affluent suburb at a huge interest rate, they also owned a beach house before 30, and had new cars every few yeards. They also had purebred dogs. And they also were able to afford having me comfortably later in the decade.
This is a multi-millionaire's lifestyle today that they made happen comfortably on a combined income of under 100k.
They weren't on factory salaries, sure, but they certainly weren't making a ton. And they still had all of this.
We never went out anywhere. Had 1 tv in the house. Life was much different. We didn’t spend any money. My parents saved everything. Their parents lived through the depression they didn’t waste shit. My mom re used ziploc bags
I had the typical stay at home mom... who really didn't take on anything outside of the house ever, who taught me that cutting corners and scraping by was surviving. As a kid, I thought surviving was "living". Took me 30 years to figure that one out...
I got married, bought a house... and we were surviving. Wife and I making like 90k combined in 2009, but we were broke. I have always been anti-debt outside of house and car.
I was just about to ask how common it actually was that a man could raise a family with a car and a good house on a single salary, I never really believed it and always thought it was exxagerated, guess I wasn't wrong.
There were no $5 steak dinners in the 80s, and no, boomers en masse didn't drive drunk any more than any other age group, or retire at 60 with a pension. Most worked to 65 and only 25% of boomers had pensions. The main advantage boomers did have was much less expensive real estate, even after accounting for inflation. So, that's huge and it's the root of many economical problems today, IMO.
My grandparents survived off my grandpa’s income working as a laborer at a bus plant. They didn’t go on super extravagant, cross country vacations, but they would go several hours away. And from the way my dad talks, they had many different vehicles throughout his childhood.
Not everyone lived like rock stars, but they absolutely could live with a modicum of comfort off a single income.
Growing up in the 80s with just my dad working as a tech in a hospital we had two vacations for a week each year, flew for one drove for the other, both on different beach houses.
It's all about choices. Cars, streaming services, ride shares, coffee outside, blah blah...We lived humbly and were not trying to impress or keep up with the Joneses. Life was simple, sigh 😕
I think a lot of people would be way more ok with that than you realize if it meant affordable basic necessities. The root source of the compaints and resentment is the fact that necessities like housing are unaffordable to the millenial and gen z generations. Luxuries like travel have become significantly cheaper in real terms than they used to be which is why people do it more often.
Same. My father was the first of nine kids. All nine of them worked and eight of the spouses did. Nobody took vacations other than road trips to Boston or New York, but usually just camping in the Adirondacks (where we all lived). Someone was always at someone else's house fixing their car, borrowing their lawn mower (we were rural and nobody had a riding one - ours had three wheels for a couple of years). Hand me down clothes from older cousins - like going to Goodwill except no choice! Froze all winter because our houses were old, some predated real insulation (newspapers were common) and the price of heating was outlandish - well, NiMo still is.
My mother pulled me out Little League (all that we had back then) baseball because she thought the cost was becoming outlandish. Just looked it up now and it is $50 a season up to $150 depending on the level.
Life seems idyllic to some looking back, but it wasn't.
Funny how's many times we use Homer Simpson as a way to explain how life was so easy "back then". If people can't even divorce a fictional cartoon from reality, then we really have little hope on changing people's minds.
I’m 45 and the post describes my childhood perfectly. My wife, same age, had a childhood much like you, but her parents still had it better than most today. Cars could be repaired by the owner back then, much more difficult to do today. Parts can be insanely expensive and labor rate is insane. We have better interest rates on our homes, but the home value is disgustingly high. They may not have been rockstars but compared to today, it sure feels that way
I'm 41 so I'm at the elder end of the generation that "got had advice". But I remember my vacations as a kid, we flew once. And the only other trip out of the state my parents drove through the night. Most vacations were day trips so we could be back in time for evening farm chores.
Most complaints I see on housing all use studio, 1 bedroom apartments. That's not where I lived in my 20s. I split 3 bedroom houses with random strangers due moving half way across the country to find work. That's how I made room in my budget to start saving money and paying off student loan/car debt. And it snowballed from there.
its partial truths on both sides of the aisle. the average person DID just do road trips. but a ticket to an amusement park wasn't expensive. my dad made $12 an hour in the 80s and bought a 2 bedroom ranch for 35k. his wage then was equal to $50 an hour at a factory. you can't find a 2 bedroom ranch for twice the salary of a factory worker in today's market.
Driving drunk though was indeed much much more common and much less heavily enforced.
I drive uber on the side and just had a group of boomers wax nostalgic about how 20 years ago they didn’t need uber when going out cuz they just drove drunk everywhere.
Also a basic house was indeed much easier to afford. Part of the problem is inflation but part of the problem is also that they’re barely building basic homes anymore. People expect way too much today. A average house today is almost twice the size as a 80s house.
And If you want to live like someone from the 80s, you probably can for a good price. No cell phone just a home phone, no streaming subscriptions, 3 channels on your 20 inch tv, no internet bill, cheap car with no safety features
I'm 49 and we did fly some places but I guess we were upper middle class. But yeah didn't eat out all the time, it was kind of a special occasion thing. We drove our cars until they stopped working but that could be 100K miles back then whereas now you could get it to 300K. That's part of why they were cheaper.
We had one old car and had to do all the work on it ourselves, vacation once a year was driving some place and staying in a motel (not even a hotel or flying anywhere), cooked and ate at home or took bag lunches to school/work every single day with the exception of going out twice a MONTH, no DoorDash, no cell phones, no gaming consoles, no big screen tv, 1 small TV for the whole house, no concerts, and our house had one bathroom, a single car garage, and the most basic, cheapest finishes throughout the entire house.
And my parents relocated across the USA to a more affordable area in order to get this house.
And they were so appreciative and gladly did it without complaining.
And both my parents worked.
People today don't have a clue about how people truly lived back then.
Life was hard for just about everyone.
AND
You can still do this today, plenty of affordable areas to live with good jobs in the South and Midwest.
Both my Gen Z kids bought homes last year at 24 and 28, and my daughter, the 28 year old, only makes $50k a year and did it all on her own. If she can do it, anyone can as long as they are wiling to put in the effort and live in an affordable location.
So tired of all these whiners and complainers thinking everybody lived like kings on minimum wage.
I grew up then. Having two cars, air conditioned house, or any house over 800sqft, a travel trailer or fishing boat, more than one TV, traveling on an airplane, going out of the country, making long distance phone calls, these were all luxuries most people didn't have.
"Eating out" meant getting a burger at Wendy's, or when a relative came into town we go to Howard Johnsons or maybe the boy scout troop went to Pizza Hut.
You can say how much cheaper things were, but wages were much less too.
Plus the hand me down clothes.
My child hood in the 1970’s was no one had any money and all lived very frugally.
They may have had a house but little else.
My parents were boomers and lived poor for most of their lives. Food stamp work at the table after hours. Helping my dad cleanup after a storm.
Theres a kind if mindrot among younger Mills that just keeps spreading via social networking. It may be hard to believe but up until 10 years ago housing was pretty much on pace with wage growth.
Like i get it, it can be rough. But dont make life harder on yourself than it has to be with a constant victim mentality and unwillingness to hustle and adapt.
I think maybe our culture tried to convince everyone that it wasnt a zero sum game and that we can all just have everything as our society evolved but that clearly wasn't the case. It has always been a rat race. It may always be a rat race.
Every time someone complains about the price of buying a house today, check their Instagram, I bet they have been to Europe in the last 4 or 5 years.
Even the guy making the original tweet, I bet those are $300 sunglasses on his face.
My parents weren't going to Europe.
They didn't get together with their friends, and go to Coachella, or tomorrowland.
They were buying their first house, for way less, sure, at 8% mortgage rates, and having 2,3 kids by 27. They had different priorities.
And this is NOT me saying that things aren't ridiculously expensive today, because they are, and today's generation has a whole different set of challenges, but we cannot ignore the fact that it was a different time, and folks just lived differently.
My dad was one of these factory guys referenced in the post and going to Outback was a once or twice a year occasion. We always ate at home, didn’t spend money on much, and we went camping for vacations somewhere we could drive to in the summer. It wasn’t a struggle life situation but it wasn’t fancy and the work he did for it certainly wasn’t easy
Depends. My grandpa was a UAW worker in the 70s and 80s. He bought a house on his auto worker salary. Bought new cars. Bought a camper. Went in family vacations. Raised 6 kids. All on only 1 parent working. He wasn't rich but they lived pretty well. O yeah, and he only had an 8th grade education.
Good luck doing that today with such minimal education.
Also "eating out" was different back then. It's normalized for many people to go out frequently. And the huge variety of restaurants available shows that. Back then eating out was something you did after church or on special occasions. And it was normal for the wife to stay at home, which my Grandma did. She was free to make dinner every single night so it didn't make sense to spend money eating out often.
There is definitely some truth to this statement. You could absolutely make a decent living with very little prerequisites to get in your way. Be willing to work and have aptitude to learn and most places would be willing to hire and train you. Certainly not that easy today.
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u/big-williestyle 16h ago edited 15h ago
These posts all have the same issue, they completely don't understand how people lived. They see tv and the brady bunch all flying to hawaii and think everyone did that. I'm 51 and in my childhood eating out was rare, nobody flew anywhere on vacation and people drive the same cars for so long it's how you knew who was coming down the road. The only people I knew who "lived like rock stars" were single males who had no kids and had the boss job at the factory.