Price differences

Some things are relatively cheaper. When I was 16, my wages as a trainee shorthand typist at the CWS were just over £3. A dress at C & A was £1. Now, I could get a dress at Matalan for not much more than a fiver and it is the same with shoes
The biggest difference in prices must surely be in housing. I got married in 1959 and we were able to buy a three-bedroomed semi near Bolton for £1,500 - the mortgage interest rate was still 6d. in the pound!

It isn't a good idea to work things out in old money or you'd never impulse buy any more chocolate!

isn't chocolate one of the things that is cheaper. Picture how small the bars were 50 years ago.

3d for a bar of Palm banana toffee is one I remember vividly..can't even work that out in 'new' money..

Greatnan I used to work at C & A and we had frocks at 19s11d, 29s11d etc etc.. and the expensive frocks were 69s11d , we sold knickers from 1s11d (less than 10p), those were the good old days..or were they?

We paid £3000 for our first Apple Mac (512k) and £600 for the printer in about 1983.

£3000 in 1983 Mamie that is amazing! And I bet it couldn't do 100th of the things a machine now costing less than a tenth of that in modern money can now do.

Sadly (look at the effects) one of the things I reckon is vastly cheaper is booze. A bottle of strong wine for £3.99. Until recently round you could buy 3 for £10.

That's very much cheaper relatively than I started drinking 50 or so years ago. Almost as true for cheap spirits. But not true at all for beer, especially pub draught beers.

tanith Banana toffee bars, I used to love them but my teeth must have been very strong!

round = round here

Beef was cheap - we did not have much money in the 1950s - but often had a big "H bone" sunday joint.
Chicken on the other hand was an expensive luxury, only Christmas really. Turkey never.

JessM Yes, an aitchbone of beef, leg of lamb or leg of pork were typical Sunday lunches in my childhood. The price of lamb is absolutely unreal these days and I still can't understand why imported New Zealand lamb is cheaper than English or Welsh in season. Chicken only became cheap because of battery farming. That also made it tasteless.

Maybe because the grass grows all the year round in NZ absent Hence the Anchor Butter cows etc not kept indoors half the year. Costs of less intensive style farming work out cheaper?

Oh this is such a sign of ageing - (one of the 7?) Don't go there!
But I disagree with jessM re the size of bars of chocolate - they used to be much bigger.
Did anybody see Nigel Slater in sweetshop heaven last night? That was a blast from the past [yum yum] emoticon

PS that mortgage rate of 6d in the pound is 2.5 %, which is not that much less than some mortgages available today.

Do you remember penny dainties? A huge chunk of creamy toffee that shut you up for ages because you couldn't speak with it in your mouth lol. Now they're just small bits of disappointingly oversweet confectionary that don't last a minute in the mouth.

I agree about the sizes, gracesmum - remember how huge Wagon Wheels and Mars Bars were? Not just because we were smaller ourselves - Mars admitted to reducing the size of their bars a few years ago! And Milky Ways are now tiny.

Take a good look at Penguins, they are so small and thin you can hardly see them anymore..

Ella46 I can remember biting and then pulling the banana toffee you'd end up with a long string of toffee before finally it broke free of the bar... strong teeth needed indeed.. maybe its not a bad thing you can't get them anymore

Some drinks might be cheaper, but not all. Much as I enjoy Coronation Street and Emmerdale, I have to smile when the factory workers buy a round of drinks. It must cost a day's wage!
At least in most European countries you get a good measure of spirits - in England a measure barely covers the bottom of the glass.

Sorry gracenan I wasn't clear. I meant drink to buy in shops and supermarkets, not in pubs.

isthis maybe in terms of wine, it's economies of scale. It's produced in industrial quantities now. I don't remember anyone drinking wine when I was young but then it wouldn't have been easy to buy outside of the cities I presume. There are two wine merchants within walking distance of me and of course multiple supermarkets.

I think the one thing that is tremendously cheaper is technology of any sort. I remember when very few people owned a TV; it was rented because that was affordable (I think too because they were constantly breaking down!)

Having a phone is surely cheaper now - I have free landline calls and international/long distance calls are a fraction of what they were. My brother emigrated to NZ in the 60s and a phone call was a Christmas treat.

Measuring Worth -i have it bookmarked to tell me the relative value of the pound.It's very useful when people say how cheap things were.I agree about the phone-it was a luxury.

I wait a couple of years before I buy any new electronic gadget. I may get an ipad next year - I will be happy to have one that is going cheap because of planned obsolescence. It is amusing to see how eagerly young people lap up the hype and change their phones, etc. on a yearly basis.

Jacobs Club biscuits used to have cream in the middle and were covered in really thick chocolate. Now the cream`s gone, and the chocolate`s only just thick enough to cover them, AND the biscuit`s not as nice.

Noooo! I used to be so good at biting off the chocolate without touching the biscuit!

Me too, Sel!