$$$'s in Perspective

[imoldernu]

Our lives are filled with "Baselines"... Memories that serve to put our lives in perspective. First school, first love, first time away from home, first job etc...

We understand today, in the frame of our life experience, and relate to our past as a base for measuring where we are today.

Whether government, communications, mores, law, morality or any other measure of society, we can look back and see how our lives have changed.

One of the most basic baselines is money... directly measurable as inflation, and we have an easy tool to determine change.
Inflation Calculator | Find US Dollar's Value from 1913-2014

As I look back, one of my baselines was 1954, on entering college. We were relatively poor, with my dad earning about $2500/yr, which works out to about $22K today. Our house rent was $7/wk which is about $250/mo. today.

On entering College, I met up with my first millionaire, my fraternity brother Chauncey Alan Whitman III, whose dad was a banker type and thought to have an awesome net worth of over $1 Million. I was invited to a party at their mansion in Barrington RI, for a Christmas party, and as I recall, I was stunned with the trappings of wealth. Four bathrooms, a winding double staircase, a four car garage, and a boathouse on the ocean. "Millionaire" had a different meaning, but one that sticks in my mind as baseline.

Today, that "million+" would be about $10 million. A sixty year difference.

So today, a fun exercise in money reality check... going back to different times of my life to relate money then, to money today, inflation adjusted.
...........................................................................
1943- Weekly school patriotic buying of a $.10 savings (war) bond stamp. Now $1.37.
1946- Movie admission went up from $.12 to a shocking $.14... Mom was furious. That should equate to $1.70 today... Hard to equate with $7 though color and wide screen might justify.
1954- College tuition $700... inflation $6200... actual today...$46K... Wow!
1959- Rented house on Martha's Vineyard for $95/mo. Was offered for sale for (for me) an impossible $30K...inflation says today s/b $244K... actual sale in 2006 $1,400,000.
1960- Married, 2 kids, hamburg $.39/lb, chuck steak $.79/lb. Today$3.12 and $6.33... not too far off.
1967- Salary $15,000... today, inflation adjusted, $107,000. That was a jump of 50% over the previous salary of $10K in 1966, so a big milestone.
1976- Bought a 2 year old Lincoln for $3000 (over paid)... today $12,500..
1979- Home in Chicago Suburbs $75,000. Today, $240K (inflation), but on market for $340K.

Apropos of nothing except a sort of reality check.

 

[H2ODude]

Funny the things you remember. I recall being absolutely stunned when I first came across a soft drink vending machine that charged $0.25! Think that was late sixties. Also, getting first pay checked (as opposed to cutting grass etc) job paycheck at $2.00 an hour and being incensed that they took TAXES out and could not understand why they would quote the gross $2.00 per hour as the pay, not the net amount. Hey, I was only 16. And then there were $1.00 pitcher nights, and a case of beer for $4.00. Oh, and I think it was in the Nixon years there were jokes about how preposterous it would be that government was going to see to it that we'd see the day when a hamburger cost $8.00! Imagine that!

 

[W2R]

Books for 17 semester units of classes at the University of Hawaii, in 1966: $60. I remember because it was my first semester in college, and the cost was shockingly high.

This was for a stack of textbooks about 3 feet high, in a variety of subjects, more than I could carry easily. In fact, a handsome biochem grad student that I didn't even know helped me to carry them to my car after I dropped some of them in front of the bookstore. We dated for about a year after that.

Adjusted for inflation, that is $439. I seriously doubt that I could get that many textbooks for $439 today. And most of them were hardbound.

H2Odude, I remember being shocked the first time I saw a Coke machine that cost more than a nickel.

My first job paid $1.40/hour, which would have been $56/week or $2912 in a 52 week year. But I only had to work 40 hours a week back then, with no official or unofficial OT, something that seems pretty rare today. Also you could buy more with that $1.40 back then. You could get a fast food hamburger for a quarter.

 

[mickeyd]

College tuition $700

I ran out of cash in my senior year so I was forced to take a loan for the final semester @ FSU in 1966. As I recall it was $130 for about 15 hours. I think I paid it off in less than a year after graduating. Most of that time I was in the army making $93/month.

 

[W2R]

I ran out of cash in my senior year so I was forced to take a loan for the final semester @ FSU in 1966. As I recall it was $130 for about 15 hours. I think I paid it off in less than a year after graduating. Most of that time I was in the army making $93/month.

That brings back memories. I paid $128 for 12-18 units at the University of Hawaii in 1966. Figuring that I got to take home about 80% of the $1.40/hour that I made that year, a semester's tuition plus books only cost me the take-home pay for 168 hours of work. Easy peasy compared with the same today.