Clutter curiosities

[altivo]

A discussion about clutter yesterday sent me to look at some of my own. Specifically, I was looking for a cancelled check from about 1969, which I didn't find. (Yes, I have stuff that old hanging around.) But I did flip through a box of cancelled checks from about 1972 to 1974. OK, so we are talking 30 years ago, and the thing that was interesting was the amounts of the payments. Inflation is a gradual thing, so slow and insidious that we rarely notice it. However, here are some rather shocking price quotes from 1972:

• My average telephone bill: $5.50 (included unlimited local calls, too)
• My monthly rent: $130 (two bedroom apartment)
• My monthly electric bill: $3.60
• Typical week's grocery bill: $18.50 (and no, I didn't eat out much)
• Cable television per month: $19.95 (100 channel CATV+60 FM stations)
• Gasoline credit card per month: $6 (Opel Kadett, probably two tankfulls)

You'll notice, of course that there are no internet subscription fees, DSL, or anything like that. Those hadn't even been dreamed of at the time. I didn't have a computer, the television was a 14 inch black and white on which I only watched Walter Cronkite, Star Trek, and Masterpiece Theatre anyway. I had cable for the FM stations because it gave a better selection of classical music than local reception allowed.

Oh, and a footnote: Lest you wax too nostalgic, I looked up my income tax form from 1972 as well. Adjusted Gross Income (line 15) was $4,971. That's from a full-time job that covered ten months of the year.

Comments

[avon-deer.livejournal.com]

With these prices in mind, would you say that the cost of living has gone up or down in real terms since the 70s? I wasn't alive then, so cannot comment myself. I would say from my point of view, since the 80s the price of luxuries in the UK have plumeted. The cost of essentials (overall cost of living) however, has rocketed.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

There's no simple answer, of course. Here the recommendation on housing cost has normally been that you should budget and spend no more than about a quarter of your income. That was more or less on target for me 30 years ago, and still is today, but I know for many people it is impossible. They spend half or more of their income on housing. This will vary a great deal by region, of course.

Medical care is outrageous here. Absolutely, incredibly unaffordable. Those who have private insurance plans paid for by their employer can manage as long as they don't have a serious sudden illness like a heart attack or cancer. Everyone else is pretty much up shit's creek with no paddle, regardless of the official line put out by the government. Compared to 30 years ago, that is a major deterioration. I found checks written to my physician. He charged me $15 for an office call, which is about the same as a week's groceries cost me at the time. Today, a week's groceries cost me about $85 for two people if I'm careful, but a visit to the doctor is going to run a minimum of $250 and can easily be $400.

*pulling up calculator window...*

I was earning about $100 a week then, as a new graduate with no experience, in an entry level job. So the phone or electric utilities cost me between 1% and 2% of my monthly income. The service was reliable, too. The basic phone service I have today (which is not as reliable) costs about 4% of my income. That's not cellular, which would be more. My electric bill (also not a reliable service, it flickers and goes off several times a week) is 15% of my income now. Petrol is 3% as opposed to 1.5% back then.

Because I own my home and it is paid for (no mortgage) I'm getting by for taxes plus maintenance and repairs. Most people are not so lucky. On the other hand, I rejected rat-race commuting and high pressure jobs, so I'm not earning anything like what I did ten years ago, and compared to many my age and with my experience and educational level, I'm living very cautiously. Medical care is the real scary issue for people my age and older. I think probably those of you who live in more enlightened countries where there is a real health plan really can't imagine the issues with medicine in the US, developed and wealthy nation or not.

[pioneer11.livejournal.com]

Wasn't the interest rates like 15 percent or so then on loans too?

c.c

[altivo.livejournal.com]

No. That was the 80s, not the 70s. The interest rate on my student loans (which I paid off completely and on time, by the way, and did not default) was between 3 and 6% depending on the age of the loan. When I started borrowing, the federal government was underwriting some of the interest cost, but by the time I was a junior in college that program had been cut and all they did was guarantee repayment of the principle should the borrower default. It also started getting much harder to qualify for a guaranteed loan.

The interest rate on my first new car loan, which I got in 1973, was 6.5% and I bought a new VW Beetle with it, $250 down on a purchase price of $2250 if I remember correctly.

By contrast, the interest rate on my first mortgage, which was issued in 1985, was 12.75% and we thought we got the best possible deal at the time.

[deffox]

I must be cheap. My weekly grocery bill is still in that range. My cell phone isn't much higher either.

I think that overall people have it better now adjusted for inflation. People just want more (bigger houses, internet, electronics).

[altivo.livejournal.com]

By "still in that range" you mean as a percentage of your income? I agree, the food and utility costs haven't changed much, though there's a little upward creep. On the other hand, if you are feeding yourself on just $18 a week, you must be eating a lot of rice and probably courting malnutrition.

Medical care, on the other hand, has gone through the roof, literally, and out the window. The fact that the quality has improved somewhat is immaterial in the face of the cost that is simply out of reach for many of us. I have insurance, but I still don't dare get sick. I was hauled to the hospital against my will a few years ago after falling from my horse and being unconscious for a couple of minutes. They insisted on keeping me overnight, and doing a huge number of diagnostics to cover their asses against malpractice suits. The total bill was nearly $5000, and the only diagnosis I got was "cracked ribs and slight concussion", the only treatment was a dose of ibuprofen the morning after (for which they charged $10). I hate to think what it would cost to really be hurt or sick. Oh, and my supposedly good insurance paid $3500 of it. I had to pay the rest out of my own pocket.

Cell phones generally cost more if you take into account all the expenses associated with them, including charges levied on incoming calls as well as outgoing, minimum monthly fees, etc. If you have a cell plan that costs the same as a simple landline would, either competition is fierce in your area or you are a shrewd shopper.

I agree that people seem to expect more luxuries today than they did in 1972, but many of those luxuries (cell phones, SUVs, the internet, personal computers, HDTV) didn't exist 30+ years ago. And today's 21 year old probably considers them to be necessities rather than luxuries, as far as that goes.

Big houses is a sore point with me. They are subdividing good farmland all around me to throw up those big houses and believe me, they are barf all right. How anyone in their right mind could spend those prices for a house built of chipboard and aluminum foil is simply beyond my understanding. The cost of heating or air conditioning those elephants is going to be out of sight within a few years, if it isn't already. Given the cheap and shoddy materials being used, I expect many of them will be crumbling badly in 20 years, but most buyers never seem to expect to stick around for more than five. There's no expectation of actually paying off a mortgage, and they take out loans at low rates that are good for only five years before they must be either paid off in full or refinanced at whatever terms can be obtained then.

[deffox]

By "still in that range" I do mean in dollar terms. I've been on a prolonged diet and lost 56 pounds.

I also never buy raw meat. I have an aversion to handling it. So even things like Hamburger Helper are out. If I cook eggs I usually wash my hands three times.

For the phone I do cheat a little. I have a VOIP phone for calling my mate. Otherwise the cell is one of those pre-paid ones and averages $7-10 a month.

I understand what you mean on medical care and large houses.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I looked for a phone deal like that for my mate, but we never found anything for less than $30 to start up and a $15/month minimum charge even if you never made or received a call. If you declined to pay the minimum just to stay connected, they would disconnect you and then you had to pay the $30 to reactivate the phone if you wanted to use it.

Not buying meat might reduce a food budget, but for adequate nutrition you still should have to spend more than that, even on a diet. Your minimum daily fruits and veggies would cost you at least that, leaving you protein starved and carb short. I think I could make do on $35 if I were just feeding myself and limiting or eliminating meats, but I'd spend a lot of time figuring out balanced menus and preparing them. I've done that in the past. Doing it for $18 at today's prices is incomprehensible to me. Either you're a wizard or you eat very unbalanced meals.

[deffox]

For the cell I use Virgin Mobile. They sell them at Best Buy and most retail stores. Their minimum is a $20 card every 90 days, or if you tie your credit card into it as low at $15 every 90 days. I have it tied to the credit card so I don't have to remember when 90 days are up.

But the trick is they are for low use. 25 cents a minute for the first ten minutes in a day, and 10 cents a minute after that. But without paying a monthly fee the rate isn't bad. Long international calls add up fast...

Biggest negative is they are locked into the Sprint system. Sprint is nationwide, but no roaming if away from their towers.

For the diet, I'll have to pay closer attention to it to see if $18 is really accurate. I do sometimes eat out which obviously isn't included in that. But I wouldn't call it very balanced. The largest part of my diet is from the grain food group. But I take a multivitamin at least so I won't end up like one of those college students who gets scurvy.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the cell phone details. Now that starts to sound like the other plans we looked at. My response to all of them was "No way." The deck is obviously stacked in their favor and against any kind of useful service for the consumer.

Don't mind my nutritional lectures. Somehow I seem to have become the self-appointed diet godmother or something. I'm truly horrified when I hear what folks your age and under are eating without thinking about it, but it's really none of my business. Once upon a time, nutrition was part of the school curriculum, but I guess it has been tossed out because it offended the big corporations who provide the schools with soft drink and candy machines and underwrite the school lunch program as long as it includes french fries and microwaved fast food.

[doco.livejournal.com]

Opel Kadett? In the United States? Okay, this _is_ ancient....
... though "cable television" and "credit card" makes it seem a lot more 80s in my book. Were there really 100 channels back in '72?

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Heh. Well, by some standards I suppose I am ancient. Yes, an Opel Kadett. Actually, you've remarked on that once before, I think, when I answered some meme about what the first car was that I owned.

My father worked for General Motors as an engineer. He got a discount on GM vehicles. In the 60s and 70s, the Opel was imported to the US and sold through Buick or Oldsmobile dealers. He wanted a very inexpensive, stripped down compact car that would get good gas mileage to use as a second car. He didn't trust anything Japanese, but he was willing to consider a German car. He looked at the VW products, but chose the Opel because he could apply his discount to get a better price. The car was made of string and cardboard when it came to quality, though. When I decided to look for a used car to replace my motorcycle, so I could drive to work in the winter, he offered it to me for $400 I think it was, and I accepted. Looking back at it, I think he was getting revenge on me for the motorcycle, which he had never wanted me to have, but my mother had prevailed on him to buy for me two years earlier. He had paid $400 for that. I never made this connection until just now. ;P

Yes, we had cable television in the 70s. It was a new concept at the time, and didn't work in quite the same way as it does now. The system in East Lansing, where I lived and worked, was a pilot and the city drove a hard bargain before granting the franchise. As a result, we had 104 channels plus the 60 FM radio stations included in the package. The system operator generated some of the content, running an old movie channel, a local news channel, a public access channel, and so forth out of their own studio. They also had a couple of channels that were just old reruns of things like "I Love Lucy" and "Leave it to Beaver". Most of the channels were just ordinary broadcast stations picked out of the air by using antennas on a high tower and amplifying the weak signal. There were no premium channels or any of that sort of thing. So out of that 104, probably 50 had the same thing on at the same time as each other.

Credit cards have been around for a long time. Individual stores had credit accounts that used cards at least as far back as the end of the war in 1946. My mother always had credit cards for Sears Roebuck and J. L. Hudson, the big department store in Detroit. Bank cards (the infamous MasterCard and Visa) arrived in the 1960s, and I got my own Visa card shortly after graduating from college. The banks were eager to get graduates hooked on the credit card idea, and made it very easy to get a card though the maximum amount you could charge was quite low. I think it was a $300 maximum or something like that at the time.

Bank cards were not widely accepted at first, nothing like the universal currency they are today. Grocery stores didn't start taking them until the 1980s around here, for instance. Debit cards are an even newer idea, and didn't really catch on until the mid 1990s.

[cats-haven.livejournal.com]

Damn! Inflation royally sucks!

I can remember my phone bill from about 10 years ago being about $50 with internet, now it's about $130. Something has got to be done about all this bloat; and I'm not talking about me. ;)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Well, generally speaking, incomes tend to rise at about the same rate as inflation. I don't see the phone bills here, but with two voice lines I think we still pay less than $130 on average. As I remarked above, the quality of the service is dubious, and internet is not included.

I ramble worse than Grampa Simpson :)

[wolfgrowl.livejournal.com]

Neat discussion. Makes me remember. The most aggravating thing about inflation was how huge those 10 cent chocolate bars were when I was a kid.
Income wise I earned about $5K per year starting in 1976 and rising to about 7.5K in 1983. I had an apartment that cost me $274 when my income was $212.50 every two weeks. I ended up living on a couch for 3 years so I could afford night school.

One year I had my food budget down to about $5 a week, lost 60 pounds and ended up with gallstones. I virtually ate the same thing daily. Each day I would have some hamburger, gravy from the fat, bread, lettuce and homemade dressing, two eggs in the morning with toast, and a sandwich made with condiments at lunch. Also had frozen peas and corn niblets. Made for a mundane diet. Oh and occasionally spagetti noodles instead of bread.

After I got my degree and my professional designation I finally started to be successful, did well, wanted a house really badly that I overextended myself, and ended up losing my house when interest rates went through the roof and the company I worked for went broke. Ended up in a sea of debt. *lol* Anyways I must have a good survival instinct since I've done pretty well since.

Well fortunately living in Canada I had health care so I eventually had laproscopic surgery for the gaulstones. There is no universal health care on the Cayman's where I work now but the company covers it.

Re: I ramble worse than Grampa Simpson :)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I can't even begin to try to top any of that for hardship stories unless I go back to my father's childhood. Other than being very, very cautious about not overextending myself, and almost always paying for things with cash rather than borrowing, I haven't suffered such deprivations. Just delayed gratification. You want a car? Save the money up and buy it. That was my approach, so I waited a long time to have things I wanted. Sometimes so long that they were obsolete before I got them, or I changed my mind and used the money for something else. ;) When my mate and I did decide to buy a house, we picked a 15 year mortgage and committed ourselves to stay until it was paid off. We actually stayed 14 years, and by then I had enough saved up to pay off the rest before we sold it. Real estate was on the rise those years, and we got so much more back than what we paid originally that the money from the sale paid for our new place outright. On the other hand, all that meant that we waited until we were nearly 50 before actually moving to the country where we had wanted to be. Anyway, we're here now.

Re: I ramble worse than Grampa Simpson :)

[wolfgrowl.livejournal.com]

Actually experience has made me usually pay cash for things. In fact I often overpay credit cards.
The hardship sounds awful in retrospect (In fact some things were even worse. Sort of like a bad novel. I had to support myself after my Dad gambled away the family fortune, sold our house and ran off with his girlfriend. :))
Actually it makes me chuckle now since I think a lot of what I have accomplished was created by trying to be as little like my father as possible.
I agree with you. One has to consider your ability to pay for things. Patience and time will win. Borrowing doesn't usually make sense for depreciable assets like a car or a TV but is OK for a home or investment.

[kaysho.livejournal.com]

Wow, cable was terribly expensive when it was new. I mean, nowadays the ratio between the cable bill and the electric bill is often about the reverse of that. :)

[altivo.livejournal.com]

Most high tech things are expensive when new. Look at the current prices of HDTV receivers, and what they were two years ago. Going down now, but still high.

An IBM PC in 1983 was about $2000. That's before correcting for inflation. Consider what you can buy today for $500, in today's dollars. :)

Yeah, it was pricy. But then they were just stringing the cables for the first time. Something had to underwrite the cost of all that physical plant. It's amazing, when you think about it, that the price was that low.

And amazing, when I think about it, that I was willing to go for it. I've never been a television watcher. But I was married back then, and if I remember correctly, my wife wanted to try it. I agreed to it because we got the FM stations along with.

[altivo.livejournal.com]

I should add that electric bill may not be a good comparison point. The electricity in Lansing and East Lansing at that time was Board of Water and Light, a municipally owned electric utility. They were cheap even at the time. I don't know if Lansing still operates its own generating plants.

They were so forward thinking when the utility was created (in the Depression, probably with NRA assistance) that they even ran steam pipes underground downtown, and circulated the waste steam from the generators to help people with their heating. In the 70s, I knew someone who lived in the area served that way, and he still had winter heat from the Board. He got a monthly electric bill, AND a monthly steam bill. Imagine winter heating for a five room house, in zone 5, for $3.50 a month!