"the good ol days"

United States
August 22, 2018 6:14pm CST
I am the first to admit that I am up in age, I have been around for a very long time. You probable have heard people say or said it yourself if your older, "When I was young such and such only cost this much". I used to do that to my kids. You always hear people talk about the "good ol days" , how things were so much better, and prices were so much cheaper. Both of these things are true to a certain extent. When I was growing up in the sixties, I got .50 cents allowance a week, some kids today get around $5.00 a week allowance if not more. I know .50 cents isn't hardly nothing now, but back then us kids could buy a lot of things with this money. Each weekend when my sisters, brother, and I would get out allowance we would head to the convenience store, we would buy such things as a cold drink, potato chips candy bars and penny candy. A lot of times we would have change left over. We saved our extra money to go to the theater. the price of the things we bought ranged from a penny to 10 cents at the store and it cost .50 cent to go see a movie and .25 cent for popcorn and a drink. All this sounds real good don't it. Yes, the prices were low back then, but so was minimum wages. The minimum wage in 1965 was only $1.25 an hr.compared to $7.25 an hr now in many parts of the country. I went on the Bureau of Labor Statistics website and used the inflation calculator to see what the buying power of 1 dollar is today as compared to them. According to the BOLS, the buying power of a dollar in 1965 has the same buying power as $8.08 in 2018. So according to that, it equals out to almost the same thing today as it does today as for as how far a dollar will go.
2 responses
@lynnief (1203)
• Australia
23 Aug 18
Some things, particularly white goods and technology, are comparatively cheaper now than when we were growing up, other things are more expensive. I guess it is all about supply and demand, and balances out in the long run.
1 person likes this
• United States
23 Aug 18
That's the way I see it, yes things were cheaper, but you had less money.
• United States
23 Aug 18
Oh yes, I forgot to say, some things are cheaper now, you remember how much a tv cost or even when computers first came out. You had to be well off to buy somethings.
1 person likes this
@chiyosan (30183)
• Philippines
23 Aug 18
this is so timely i think with prices all going up especially here for our country. but i always hear my mom say that colas are only 10cents during her time, and its about 0.75 now if computed to dollars. But the thing is, their salaries are lower those days too so as you said the value of money from before is almost the same as now because the salaries keep up with the rising value of a dollar. I think though before, there are fewer products to buy and that meant, we do not crave for as much. Nowadays we see a lot of goods, may it be food, restaurants, items, like toys, etc and there is just so much we want to have that we feel we do not have enough money for all those.
1 person likes this
• United States
23 Aug 18
I think technology is what takes most people's money anymore. look at how much it costs for some of these items. Back when I was growing up, we didn't have any of that. I remember only paying 10 cents for a cold drink, I also remember around that time I was making .50 cent an hour plus tips were I worked as a teenager.