cincywahine asked:
My grandparents on both sides (maternal and paternal) only had 1 income as both of my grandmothers stayed home. My maternal grandmother had 9 children and my paternal grandmother had 6.
My grandparents on both sides (maternal and paternal) only had 1 income as both of my grandmothers stayed home. My maternal grandmother had 9 children and my paternal grandmother had 6.
My husband and I only have 1 and both of us have decent jobs, but still don’t have the quality of life that they did.
If things are so great, why does it take twice the money to even try to have the same standard of living that my grandparents had?
Just me #1…
If my husband and I did what you stated, then I would agree…
But, we don’t. We very rarely go out and I **** to shop. My car is about paid off and his already is.
money.cnn.com
i think its mostly due to the way we have becoome accustomed to living. I would be willing to bet your grand parents went out to eat less, didt always rush out to buy the latest new gadget on the market, didnt expect to have a new car every few years. They were much happier with less. And were able to save and put away more money so in later years they had something to show for their hard work. which is why lots of grand children think their grandparents “have money”
It’s sad isn’t it? One thing you can depend upon, everything changes and nothing stays the same. Bear this in mind – seriously – in 25 years time, compare your life with your children’s.
Who said our Economy is great? We have a huge budget deficit, trade deficit…. and China owns most of our bonds. Our economy is doing better than it was a few years ago… but it’s still bad.
And maybe your grandparents were more frugal with their money. Today we spend a lot on living. From mortgages, gas, food, car payments, insurance, internet, cell phone bills, etc…. We have a lot more things to take care of (in terms of bills) than what our grandparents had to take care of. And it also depends on where you live bc the cost of living varies in different places. In other words… if you want to in a single income family home now-a-days…. You might as well move to south dakota lol.
Jessica
When you hear that the economy is great, look who is talking. A multimillionaire that is getting richer and richer from the high prices.
because there are more people and less jobs and illegal immigrants and people abusing welfare
It is tough, isn’t it? I completely understand. I don’t think they had the taxes then like me have today. The economy standards seem to be built on the qualities of the rich! There is no middle class today, you’re either rich or poor. But! Depending on how you look at your life is where you see if you’re rich or poor, it doesn’t have everything to do with money. Even rich people are living poorly (drugs, depression, alcoholism, unhappiness). When you look at your life and see the quality, not the quantity, that’s where your riches are!
In the US, indeed your economy is great but problem is, together with a good economy comes an increase in the standard of living.
Maybe what you can do is plan for retirement, check out other states where you can maximize your money, or even other countries. Believe me how far your money can go in other countries, live like prince and princess even.
I promise if you want to live exactly as your grandparents did, then you could do it on one income. That means giving up cable, internet, good cars, nice houses, college (probably), DVDs, microwaves, dishwashers, and everything else that people seem to take for granted in today’s world that was not around back then. People that dream about the good ole days can still like that for very cheap but they don’t really want to
The economy isn’t doing that great, they just don’t want to alarm us
The dollar has gone down in value, you do better off investing in the Euro.
Also, due to this and other factors the “cost of living” has continued to go up, while the dollar continues to go down.
See the problem here?
The cost of living index shows the need for 2 incomes. You can view a pdf which lists all states individually at the first link below. Cost of living index has increased dramatically since 1960. Yet, average income has not even doubled in the same time frame.
At the second link, there are a variety of pdf format reports comparing wages and impact over a number of year ranges. The pdf “Real hourly wage for all by education, 1973-2005 (2005 dollars) [pdf] [xls]” reflects wage averages by education levels from years 1973 to 2005 in numbers based on 2005 income. In 1973, figured on current wages, the real hourly income in 1973 was higher than 2005 for less than high school ed and high school ed levels. College levels show a slight increase in real income in 2005 over 1973.
Income increases have not kept up with consumer price index.