Our attitude toward money

[JDgreen227]

What changes our attitude about money to a greater extent, getting older, or having more disposable income?

Yesterday morning I was thinking about the Christmas week of 1972, when I was earning about $3.45 per hour, and I had just won $30 in the office check pool. I was so excited about having the extra cash just before the holiday...:laughing:

And yesterday, I drove to my credit union, put my card into the ATM, and the machine spat out twenty $20 bills for me. Back in 1972, that same $400 would have been THREE WEEKS of work before taxes. And my balance left in my account was more than I earned in an entire year back in 1972.

Was I excited about getting $400...no, getting that $30 so many years ago was a much bigger deal.

Go figure !!

 

[GregbkH]

Being desensitized by inflation. Remember when gas was less than .20/gal? A pack of smokes was less than a buck? It's still basically the same, just the numbers have changed.

I figure the reason you weren't excited about the $400 is because it was already yours and you didn't win it. You actually had to remove it from your account. This never feels good to me. However, if I win money, nomatter the amount, I still get excited.

 

[JDgreen227]

Gas used to be less than twenty cents a gallon? Hey I am not THAT old...the lowest I remember is about 45 cents a gallon.

 

[GregbkH]

Gas used to be less than twenty cents a gallon? Hey I am not THAT old...the lowest I remember is about 45 cents a gallon.

You win! Unfortunately, I am that old!

 

[2LaneCruzer]

You win! Unfortunately, I am that old!

I can remember gas at 20 cents per gallon; I can also remember no running water, no central heat, no AC and the "facilities" consisting of a two-holer in the back. I can remember supplementing our table with squirrel, rabbit, quail, ducks and fresh caught fish. I can remember paying all my bills and having $25 left to buy food for the 3 of us. I can remember taking a job...any job...to keep from being thrown out on the street. It's tough being dirt poor in bad economic times...you work hurt, you work sick, or you don't get a paycheck.

Now to the original question; the economy, bad as it is, is much better than it was in my state in the 50's. My kids and grandkids have not experienced the hard times some of us older folks (and our parents even more so) have, and things have been so much better for so long, that we take it for granted. I can recall my daughter finding a $50 dollar bill right before Christmas (about 1975 I think) and it was a REALLY BIG DEAL! We are living a lot more comfortably today than we ever did, so $400 is not a big deal today, especially compared to $50 thirty or 40 years ago. In those days, our money was all spoken for; we couldn't even afford a telephone. Today, our dog eats better and more comfortably than we did then.

 

[Bird]

I can remember gas at 20 cents per gallon; I can also remember no running water, no central heat, no AC and the "facilities" consisting of a two-holer in the back. I can remember supplementing our table with squirrel, rabbit, quail, ducks and fresh caught fish.

Yep, I'm old enough, and lived out in the country until I was about 16, to have lived and remember all those things. Had to heat water on the cookstove to take a bath in a #2 washtub in the middle of the kitchen floor. Had to milk that cow twice a day no matter what the weather was or whether you were sick or not. I was 19 years old the first time I slept in a home with an air-conditioner (window unit) and we still turned off all the heat at night.

Now of course I started to work part time for the Post Office when the salary was $1.84 an hour and in 1959, it was up to $2.00 an hour. I had a pretty good paying part time job driving a cab back then that made about $1.50 an hour. In 1964, I started on the police department at $370 a month (got paid on the 9th and 24th). My first showroom new car cost about $2,200, our first house cost $12,250 (those $106.00 a month payments, including escrow for taxes and insurance, were tough).

But a dollar bill was a "silver certificate" instead of just a piece of paper.:laughing:

 

[ctbigman]

My first job after getting married and with a child was on a dairy farm. $100 a week, 4 room apartment w/ utilities and if I milked 50 cows alone during crop time I got an extra $5 per milking. Benefits were milk, potatoes and occasionally a little beef. Then again, I could fill my Volkswagon Bug for $1. That was 1972....

 

[2LaneCruzer]

Yep, I'm old enough, and lived out in the country until I was about 16, to have lived and remember all those things. Had to heat water on the cookstove to take a bath in a #2 washtub in the middle of the kitchen floor. Had to milk that cow twice a day no matter what the weather was or whether you were sick or not. I was 19 years old the first time I slept in a home with an air-conditioner (window unit) and we still turned off all the heat at night.

Now of course I started to work part time for the Post Office when the salary was $1.84 an hour and in 1959, it was up to $2.00 an hour. I had a pretty good paying part time job driving a cab back then that made about $1.50 an hour. In 1964, I started on the police department at $370 a month (got paid on the 9th and 24th). My first showroom new car cost about $2,200, our first house cost $12,250 (those $106.00 a month payments, including escrow for taxes and insurance, were tough).

But a dollar bill was a "silver certificate" instead of just a piece of paper.:laughing:

We heated our bathwater on a kerosene cook stove, and the #2 washtub sat next to a potbellied woodstove in the kitchen. I had a scar on my stomach the size of a half dollar for many years, the result of trying to get close to the stove after my bath. I also recall ice crystals in the waterbucket on winter mornings, and having to go to the creek to get water to prime the old water pump, when my brother forgot to fill the 1/2 gallon karo syrup can that held the priming water.

Nothing like crawling out from under a ton of quilts and hitting the ice cold linoleum early on a winter morning.

 

[sandman2234]

$0.119 was the cheapest I have ever seen gas. It was during the 60's with gas wars between stations. (11.9 cents per gallon).
I think that was cheaper than even my Dad had seen, because he filled up the tank on the car, completely, which is something we usually didn't do.
David from jax

 

[jmurray01]

Gas used to be less than twenty cents a gallon? Hey I am not THAT old...the lowest I remember is about 45 cents a gallon.

:laughing: