Current Events > Did a minimum-wage job back in the old days really afford this much?

(+) Yeah! (+)

1. Support a family up to 4
2. Buy a house
3. Buy 2 cars
4. Afford family vacations
5. Have a nice retirement plan

I've seen here and there that minimum wage jobs back then was able to afford all of this comfortably. How true is this?

One person on Minimum wage? No.

But here's the difference. Back in the 50s and 60s, even into the 70's, there were a lot more jobs that were paying above minimum wage that now pay minimum wage.

You need to consider that costs were different as well. You had one landline and that was like a dollar a month, and you most likely only had public access television, so in some cases that's a couple hundred dollars less per month in modern money that you would have to pay. Without a data plan or home internet you're probably saving another $100 a month or so right there. Things were also generally second hand, hand me down, or home repair. That one car that the entire family would share would most likely break down and require personal maintenance to have any chance of repairing it, and depending on where you were in the country you might have to leave your old broken down car around for spare parts.

Dinner was prepared every night, so you're saving a lot on delivery and restaurant prices, and the meals were probably much more oriented around common Staples that were cheap and affordable and probably purchased with a coupon.

Which is not to say that the cost of some things like mortgage or rent and the availability of mid-range jobs compared to minimum wage has not drastically changed over time, but it's actually quite a bit of work to try and do an apples to apples comparison about what was affordable back then versus what is affordable now because of all the additional recurring costs that we have made mandatory in our lives and the degree to which we're willing to buy something new rather than walk around with a jacket with a patch on it because it'll be another year before we can afford another jacket.

I dont know about that, but it used to be enough to rent a studio apartment (no roommates), pay your bills, and afford to have a modest car to get to work.

Ummm, no. People seem to think that because fictional TV shows showed shit like that. It was probably easier to support all that with one good, above minimum wage job but the teenager working at Chicken Shack wasn't buying homes and cars and supporting a family.

VeggetaX posted...

1. Support a family up to 4
2. Buy a house
3. Buy 2 cars
4. Afford family vacations
5. Have a nice retirement plan
I've seen here and there that minimum wage jobs back then was able to afford all of this comfortably. How true is this?

where?

$200 in 1970 is equivalent to $1,500 today.
A home in a major city near me was about $40,000 in 1970.
So someone making $10/hr was making roughly $20,000/year.
Half the cost of a home in yearly salary.

Not only was qualifying for a mortgage easier, but maintaining a lifestyle was easier.
Today's minimum wage (in my area) would be considered absolutely upper middle class.

LukaDoncic77 posted...

where?

Trust me bro

Up until a bit before Nixon abandoned the gold standard, the US was about only country wasn't still on fire from WW2. That's what happened.

VeggetaX posted...

Trust me bro

nah, id like some sort of evidence to back up what youre saying lol. im also really curious to know more so here and there doesnt really cut it

meestermj posted...

$200 in 1970 is equivalent to $1,500 today.
A home in a major city near me was about $40,000 in 1970.
So someone making $10/hr was making roughly $20,000/year.
Half the cost of a home in yearly salary.

Not only was qualifying for a mortgage easier, but maintaining a lifestyle was easier.
Today's minimum wage (in my area) would be considered absolutely upper middle class.

Except someone making 20k a year would have been earning 2.5x median income in 1970.

LukaDoncic77 posted...

nah, id like some sort of evidence to back up what youre saying lol. im also really curious to know more so here and there doesnt really cut it

You have people TT posting about it right now.

s0nicfan posted...

Dinner was prepared every night, so you're saving a lot on delivery and restaurant prices, and the meals were probably much more oriented around common Staples that were cheap and affordable and probably purchased with a coupon.

I think this is a huge money sink people take for granted.. Back in those days AFAIK grocery stores didnt have pre-prepped oven ready meals for like ~$15-20 for families, and obviously delivery services didnt exist, so you HAD to either make your own meals or starve. Im not sure how much headway the frozen foods industry even had by like the 60-70s.

And realistically an average homemade meal was probably equivalent to like $5 a night by todays standards.

I cant imagine spending ~$150 a month on groceries today. More like $250-300 today which really adds up.