What was a decent wage when you were younger

I left school in 1964 and I earned £30 per month. My weekly season ticket on the train was £1, half of the rest went to my mum for housekeeping and the rest was mine. I felt quite rich, I managed to save towards our first house, bought all the clothes I wanted and could dtill go out most nights. Different times.

shysal

I am 80 this year. When I started work for the NHS at 18, I earned £4 a week and dreamed of owning a £1,000 house in Oxford. When I married at 20 we bought an old terraced house for £1,200 and spent £1,000 modernising it. When we bought our first car, a Morris Minor, for £40 we considered ourselves fortunate, and didn't worry about having no carpets and sitting on deck chairs until we had saved enough to buy furniture. It seems that the young starting out today want it all and get into debt to achieve all the appliances and technology they think they need.

Shysal - "the young" may "want it all" but most of them - in the south east UK anyway - know that sadly they can't even dream of owning a home of their own. If they can stay at the parental home it could take years to save the deposit. If they want to lead independent adult lives they'll have to rent and the cost of rent (where we live anyway) rules out their chance of saving. Not much social housing left now. Forget owning a car. The lucky ones get some help from parents who sometimes downsize to free up the funds for this. Young people don't have it as easy as some think and being hard on them tends to fuel the generational resentment between us.

In 1986 we bought a 3 bed semi for 30k in Suffolk. We lived in London and 3 bed semi in our area was 90k . We moved more for lifestyle but savings were not to be sniffed at. I can't remember what wages were then, but my husband was starting his own business. I think he might have been earning 12k before that in a skilled manual job. I wasn't working as we had two little ones.

I left school in 1966 and went to work for the Britannia Assurance company. £4.19s 6d per week. Mum had £2.00 and I had the rest. Off to C&A for a blouse and skirt 19s 11d each.

I always remember my husband saying, when we moved into a bungalow in half an acre " I never thought that I would live in a £10,000 house". It was sold 40 years later for £375,000. That's inflation for you. ( Sorry slightly off piste from the original post)

I started work as a teacher in 1979 on £3000 a year and my journalist other half earned £4000 as a journalist. We had moved up to East Anglia from the South Coast in order to afford to buy a house and found a doer upper in a not attractive village for £16,000. Our mortgage rate was 16 per cent. We had handmedown furniture and bought second hand cheap bits and pieces for peanuts to do up. We bought our Arts and Crafts bed for a tenner and carried it home through the streets. Happy days.

I remember starting my nurse training in 1982 and my first monthly wage was £199! I thought I was so rich 😂

In 1968 we allowed £7 per week for housekeeping-food, utilities etc. We both had fares to pay to work so that was a further £3 each per week. Rent was £35 a month & we thought we were doing ok. No trips out, no pub, no real furniture but we were happy just to have what we had!

This thread reminded me that when I got a Saturday job, aged 15 in 1969, my wage was 39/11d (one penny off £2).

Training to be a nurse in a London teaching hospital we earned £17 a month in 1969. But we did get food and accommodation and I think our laundry done. Certainly our uniform including the starched hat, collars and aprons!

In 1967 I worked in an office 5days a week and was paid £3.17s.6p with lunch vouchers

I worked in Debenhams head office in Taunton for 9 months in 1967 as a typist, I was 16 and I earned £5 2s 6d a week.

I then moved to the Far East and didn’t work again until I was 38. I was then a very poorly paid doctors receptionist in the welsh valleys, I loved it.

Student work at Kodak in the early 1960’ s £5 a week.
DH first salary cheque £ 34 a month. We lived in a council house and in 1969 we offered it for £3,000. We couldn’t afford it.
Bought a 3 bed semi in 1975 for £14,000.

I'm not sure what a decent wage was when I was younger. I remember, quite vividly, in 1975 my new estate car cost £2,400.

Not much reference.

Indigo8

Allira

Elusivebutterfly

In 1986, the date the OP quoted, I was on around £10,000 as a medical secretary. We had recently sold a flat for £25,000 and bought a terraced house for £36,000. Semis were around £45,000, in outer London.
My grandmother's bungalow in Lancashire had recently sold for £6,000. House prices were much more expensive in the south east than the north even back then.

Semis were around £45,000, in outer London.

They were, as I know, nearly double that in Outer London. As I said, we sold in 1985, a small semi but with an extension of kitchen-diner for nearly £80,000.

Of course, moving there from a cheaper area six years previously was extremely difficult financially.

It is impossible to generalise about house prices in outer London at any time. It depends on so many factors, for instance, how far from central London they are, rail, bus and underground links, how urbanised or simply how popular or fashionable the area is.

Yes, one thing I didn't realise was, moving from a rural area far away, that the nearer the property is to a railway station, the more expensive it is in Outer London. Ours was further away from the railway station so it was cheaper than some houses in that area. But still expensive.
The area was too far out for the Tube.

1972 4usa dollars boss was female and said they were treated bad so she pay above the males doing the same

Allira

Elusivebutterfly

In 1986, the date the OP quoted, I was on around £10,000 as a medical secretary. We had recently sold a flat for £25,000 and bought a terraced house for £36,000. Semis were around £45,000, in outer London.
My grandmother's bungalow in Lancashire had recently sold for £6,000. House prices were much more expensive in the south east than the north even back then.

Semis were around £45,000, in outer London.

They were, as I know, nearly double that in Outer London. As I said, we sold in 1985, a small semi but with an extension of kitchen-diner for nearly £80,000.

Of course, moving there from a cheaper area six years previously was extremely difficult financially.

It is impossible to generalise about house prices in outer London at any time. It depends on so many factors, for instance, how far from central London they are, rail, bus and underground links, how urbanised or simply how popular or fashionable the area is.

In 1985 we bought a 3 bed detached in a quarter acre of ground for £30 k .
In 1969 when I left school at 15 my wage was £4 .15/ for a 40 hour week as a trainee photographic printer
In 1975 when we got married we were very lucky to be given a council semi detached new 2 bed and box room house with a lock up garage which cost us £10 a month and included central heating from a community boiler .We lived there for 8 years before buying a flat in the town.We only lived in the flat for 18 months ,hated having neighbours to both sides and below.

In the late sixties I was a student nurse. I earned £4 a week as I lived in the Nurses Home. We also got a ration of butter and sugar weekly.

When we married in 1973 the Bodach’s wage as an electrician was £38. I have no idea what mine was, possibly about the same. I also remember our wedding reception bill for 50 lunches was £170!

I left school in 1953 and started work in an office for £2 per week.
We bought a house in 1963 for £2,400.
Our mortgage was £13 per month.
It seems amazing now, but it was all relative at that time.

I remember the late 1970s getting a noticeable payrise when I swopped a "female" job for a "male" one with similar skills and got £3,500pa and it was a noticeable improvement. That didnt last long - as I went off with the same "male" skill to a (large) firm and had to take a paycut to around £2,800 pa. But the deal was that that was just the start of a payscale and I'd come in on the understanding I'd climb to not that much different at the top of the payscale and they gave cheap mortgages to their employees.

I began to realise they hadnt been "telling it like it is" when I found the job included another skill (one I didnt have!) that they hadnt said about at the interview. Followed by definite realisation they hadnt exactly told me the truth about it when a year passed and I was due to rise to the next point on the scale - and they didnt do so! and I got the feeling they were being a bit "backward in coming forward" re the provision of that cheap mortgage I'd been promised. Cue for I swopped jobs.

I know pretty much what I'd be on if I were still working now in my last job - as I'm aware they pay very little more than National Minimum Wage - even though it's not an NMW type of job so to say (ie it's supposed to be reasonable level and reasonably paid). I know what their argument about that would be though - "Ah but ah - you all get job pension come retirement and other NMW level jobs don't do that. So you are getting more....." . Yeah right....

Elusivebutterfly

In 1986, the date the OP quoted, I was on around £10,000 as a medical secretary. We had recently sold a flat for £25,000 and bought a terraced house for £36,000. Semis were around £45,000, in outer London.
My grandmother's bungalow in Lancashire had recently sold for £6,000. House prices were much more expensive in the south east than the north even back then.

Semis were around £45,000, in outer London.

They were, as I know, nearly double that in Outer London. As I said, we sold in 1985, a small semi but with an extension of kitchen-diner for nearly £80,000.

Of course, moving there from a cheaper area six years previously was extremely difficult financially.

In 1986, the date the OP quoted, I was on around £10,000 as a medical secretary. We had recently sold a flat for £25,000 and bought a terraced house for £36,000. Semis were around £45,000, in outer London.
My grandmother's bungalow in Lancashire had recently sold for £6,000. House prices were much more expensive in the south east than the north even back then.

My first job was in 1964, with a vet in fashionable Hampstead. I got £7 per week and a room. Hard work, including weekends and evenings.