How We Used To Live

We got married in 1975 and bought our first house, a three bed semi, at the same time. I lived with my parents and put almost all my salary into our joint building society account even though the account name was "Mr Popbottle and another"! I was the "other"! ? Our only debt was our mortgage. I made my wedding dress and the two bridesmaid dresses. My dad paid for our pretty modest wedding. Our honeymoon was two nights in London. We saw a show! My mother's wedding present to us was a built in cooker that she paid for by saving what I paid to her for my keep. We had a second hand settee. I can't remember if our TV was new or not but I think the automatic washing machine was new. Our bed was new.

We had no car (neither of us could drive), we didn't smoke, hardly had a drink, didn't eat out, recreational drugs were unheard of, there were no computers or mobile phones and we had no foreign holidays. We were married seven years before we started a family.

The average cost of a wedding, this year, is £30,000 if you include the dress, morning suits, wedding venue, food, cars and honeymoon.

I think maybe some/many people want everything all at once these days.

We got married in 1978. By 1981 when I was no longer was offered supply work teaching because I was pregnant, the interest rate went up to over 17%. Only one of us employed. Hardly easy times.
Caravan holidays only for the next 10 plus years and not every year.
We had no 'gadgets'.

Thinking back to the 50s /60s before I married, I too remember my mum plugging the iron into a ceiling light, and she didn't have a 'fridge until I started work and bought one. She never ever had a washing machine (kitchen just wasn't big enough) so I had to make weekly trips to the launderette. I remember her putting money into separate compartments in a cashbox every Friday when she was paid - in cash of course, she never had a bank account in those days, they were only for wealthy people. She put money aside towards Christmas and a summer holiday, and she always paid every bill as soon as she got it. The first time I bought something on credit she was horrified.

When I married in the late 70's we saved hard for a year to pay for the wedding and put a deposit on a house. My mum couldn't understand why we wanted to buy a house at all, it wasn't for the 'likes of us' she said and we'd be in debt for years.

We bought a small 2-up, 2-down terrace in reasonable repair, but no central heating, a cooker and one old cupboard in the kitchen and very old threadbare carpets. But we loved it and were prepared to do any work & decorating ourselves. We were happy as Larry! All our furniture was second hand (even our bed), and when someone gave us a working washing machine they were replacing I was in seventh heaven! We tried to afford one new thing each month but it was still 2 years before we got a refurbished colour TV.

But it wasn't long before interest rates and mortgages were rising almost weekly. We both earned fairly good money and had allowed for some possible increases but we were now having to constantly 'rob Peter to pay Paul'. We would never have asked our parents for help. My mum couldn't help and my FIL simply wouldn't.

I still remember the day our electricity was disconnected. I wasn't aware the bill hadn't been paid, DH had kept it from me so as not to worry me because I was pregnant. Two burly men hammered on the door and barged into the house, pushing me aside and shoving a piece of paper at me. I ran to the back door and let our dogs in (two barking, snarling GSDs), that stopped them in their tracks. I told them I knew I couldn't stop them turning the power off but they didn't need to be so aggressive about it. When they were leaving one of them asked snearingly why we had dogs like ours when we were going to have a kid. I told him because of people like you. When they'd gone I sat down and cried. I felt we had reached rock bottom. Could it get any worse? Yes it could, we were soon getting threatening letters and eviction notices from the Bldg.Soc. I got quite adept at dodging debt collectors and bailiffs! But somehow we got through it all. We were still together, we still loved each other and our family was growing and healthy. We would be OK.

We encountered a few problems when we wanted to move to a larger house (third child on the way), we were considered a bad risk. But we got it sorted out and moved to a house where we stayed for 27 years. We only went on holiday every 3 years or so, I made some of our clothes and all soft furnishings, we didn't buy takeaways, expensive coffees or processed foods. We were as frugal as we could be. There was a slight glitch when DH retrained for a new job and his income dropped by 50% for a year while he was training.
I made sure he and the kids were well fed and I survived on sandwiches and snacks. Eventually when all the children were in school I was able to go back to work.

I think we were pretty lucky really, we were a loving, happy healthy family and we tackled any problems head-on. And it would appear that our AC have learned that from us and do exactly the same. God willing all of us will get through the current economic and world crisises (is that a word) and be stronger for it.

Sorry for such a long response, I'm rambling again!

I rented a TV and used the local phone box (no checking texts in those days). I did washing by hand, not as clean as I can be today as there was no hot water, and cooked on an old baby belling in a freezing cold flat with one open fire. I rode an old BSA motorcycle to work as I couldn't afford a car and worked shifts, and it took several months to afford a helmet and waterproof gear. For long distances I used to hitch. Everything seemed very much more expensive then except the rent which was under £5 a week and no limit on how many of us could live in the flat and people were always coming and going, sharing the cost and topping up the meter. I had to do overtime if I needed anything more than the basics. I remember being so cold all winter. Those were NOT the days, prefer a nice car, warm house, good food, decent shoes and a mobile phone. Looking back, what would have made life better would have been an electric blanket but people didn't have them back then.

My friend from uni put EVERYTHING that a house might need on her wedding gift list ( they were just coming in as ‘a thing’ at the time) . The only thing I could possibly afford was a stainless steel tea service and tray from a John Lewis but , as a newly qualified teacher , this would have cost more than a month’s salary so I settled fora cheaper but still very nice one. Another guest at the wedding told me that the bride was furious with me and other guests who hadn’t been able or willing to buy items off the proscribed list which included - washing machine, fridge, freezer. Entitled or what ?

Married in 1968 after saving for three years for a deposit on a house and a modest wedding. We bought a bed and a second hand three ring electric cooker. My dad bought us a fridge and my mother-in-law gave us a very old twin tub with the knobs missing, which I had to operate with a pair of pliers to turn the spindles where the knobs had been!!! But we were very happy. We also bought a sofa and bed. When our first child arrived in 1971 we bought a Burco boiler for the nappies. They were lovely and white! We didn't owe a penny (apart from mortgage) and didn't buy anything until we had saved up enough. We have had three children and now live in a lovely house, have a second home in Italy and a good life style. All due to the fact that we worked very hard and saved up, didn't borrow and didn't expect anything from anyone. If we couldn't afford it, we didn't buy it. I remember the day, when I got my first new washing machine. My first baby was 10 months old. Got rid of the boiler soooo quick. Such happy days even though we didn't have much money and even less gadgets. Seems archaic now doesn't it?

I can remember parents bought there first house in 1969 as my dad worked at the Westminster Bank (later Nat West) and was eligible for a cheap mortgage. Previously had lived in council accommodation.
Anyway, the previous owners of the house took everything, and I mean everything, on moving day, including the washing line, light bulbs and even the front doorbell !
Consequently they struggled to furnish the basics. The carpets had all been taken and I was name called at school as we had no carpets in the house - these days would be extremely fashionable but not then.
Parents went without for ages to save and replace the missing items. As said, properties these days have everything in.

As soon as we’d got a mortgage-which we saved hard for, the mortgage rates soared. DH walked miles to and from work and I was a SAHM. All our furniture except the bed was second hand from various family members. After mortgage, rates and fuel, I had £6 to feed us for the week.
BUT
There weren’t all the things that seem essential now, phones, manicures, holidays etc. even if we could have afforded them.

Mine is a similar story to other posters. We lived with my gran so we could save for a deposit for our first home. And we were prepared to ‘rough it’ when we finally bought somewhere. I remember over-hearing “what used to be the product of a marriage is now the prerequisite” - this was in 1975 - as relevant today as it was as then!

When we got. Married in 1966 we bought one bedroom flat. The kitchen area was the size of a bed recess. We has a sink, no hot running water. We bought a cooker and my parents in law gave us a single tub washing machine with an electric wringer. We had a coal fire for heating and had to buy an electric fire because there was no coal storage. We were married for almost a year before we could afford to rent a TV.

I remember buying an Arts and Crafts style wooden bed for a tenner in 1979 and the DH and I carrying it home ourselves through the streets. I am sitting propped up in it now writing this and it’s still beautiful.

We didn’t have a stick of new furniture when we started out but we were as happy as Larry.

Our first house / old cottage which we bought just before marrying was £350. Ramshackle and had mice. Acquired a lovely cat from husbands brother who was emigrating so that was solved. Had a loan from relations that we paid back quite quickly. Did it up the best we could and sold it three years later and had enough for a big deposit on a nearly new two bed bungalow and progressed from there.
Do remember scrimping and saving. Being cold as no CH in either of them.
Most furniture was second hand. Makedo and mend.

I married in 1965 and our first home was a studio flat rented from the Council. Nicer than it sounds as thus was one side of a large former Mansion house, converted into flats. We had a living room/bedroom, a separate large kitchen, which contained a gas cooker, a sink and some cupboards built into the alcoves on either side of the fireplace (open fires, both rooms) plus a small bathroom. All our furniture was second hand (a bed Settee and a Table and Chairs). We washed and ironed our clothes and towels etc. at the Launderette, and kept them in our suitcases. I bought a second hand washing machine later ( a single tub with a wringer) and we rented a TV.

I first bought a house in 1971 when I had worked for an Insurance Company for 12 months, and became eligible for a staff Mortgage. The house cost £12,500 (a two bedroomed terrace) and my Mortgage offer was only £9,000. Despite saving up the deposit, I had to borrow money for all the extra costs such as Solicitors fees and so on.

We, like many on here, struggled when mortgage rate hit 17% the week after we married. All second hand furniture but were given a fridge by my husband’s bosses and a spin dryer from my mum. All washing done by hand. Awful cooker that took an age to heat up.
It was 25 years before we bought our own three piece suite, had made do with second hand until then.
My friend always complains that her daughter can’t afford to buy a house but when I see her on Facebook she is always ‘off to an event’, buying specialist gin, going abroad for hen parties and eating out. We did none of that, camping holidays in Britain and maybe twice yearly meal out. Another friend offered her daughter her own 3 piece suite but was looked at as if she’d gone quite mad. Only new furniture was good enough for her.

When we married in 1978 my Dad asked me if we would like a 'big wedding' or a freezer, fridge, dishwasher, and washing machine instead; you can imagine my reply..Dad figured we would have none otherwise! I made my own dress, I didn't have bridesmaids, and DH sister was our Best Woman ! Dad drove us to church for 1pm Mum made the buffet and we'd gone by 3pm to Devon in December!! Happy day thoses )

We married in 1975. We had saved every penny we could during our 3-year engagement, also green and pink stamps, garage glasses etc. We managed to buy our house, originally a three-bed semi. It had central heating fueled by a back boiler behind the coal fire in the lounge that often went out overnight.
My DH's parents bought us the lounge carpet as a wedding present and my parents bought us an automatic washing machine. Other presents (many bought with Embassy coupons- a lot of my DH's family smoked heavily!) were bedding, curtains and kitchen stuff, including an iron. The only other new furniture we had was the double bed that we bought with our pink stamps.
Just before we moved in my aunt's MIL died and left a house full of furniture. We managed to borrow a small van and brought back dining chairs, a coffee table, bedside tables, a standard lamp and a plant stand. We stripped the chairs, painted them white and recovered the seats with black PVC. Later we bought a white circular dining table from MFI and felt very proud.
We rented a black and white TV, but at Christmas the shop owner, a friend of my parents, said he had a colour TV that he wanted 'minding' while the shop was closed. When Christmas was over we couldn't bear to go back to b & w.
We considered ourselves very lucky then, we both had good jobs and bit-by-bit could afford new things, but the worst time came around Christmas 1984/5 when I was home with a 3-year-old, pregnant again and my DH had no work. The mortgage had gone up so much, we were paying for food on a credit card and if it hadn't been for a relative dying and leaving us some money we could have lost the house.

We were married early 1975 and bought our 3 bedroom Wimpy terrace house (4 yrs old) late 1974 for £8,500 with an interest only mortgage at just under 10% interest rate - we couldn't afford a repayment mortgage. We were leant an old wooden Ercol suite from my BiL and his wife who married the year earlier and just bought a new suite. My MiL kept reminding us how they only had deck chairs when they were married! We had a twin tub washing machine and a small fridge. I think it was some years before we bought a microwave and I remember making sure I never stood in front of it when it was on in case I absorbed any rays!!

Almost all of us oldies had to make do, mend and save up when we were young but there's no moral rule that says it was the right way to be. I want the present and the future to be better than scrimping and saving. Or having benefits cut or the NHS sold off by the Tories.

We married in 1970: my OH was still a student (he had done one degree and was starting out in medicine) and I was a post-grad trainee. I had a grant from the Home Office and could name him as a dependent on my grant - he was very happy about this - not proud!

Everything we bought for our rented flat cost £28 - pure coincidence, but there we are: cottage suite, large rug, coffee table, bed. No washing machine of course.

When we finally bought a little bungalow the interest rates were eye-watering! But we managed to get a second hand twin tub.

Ah my mother's Hoover twin washing machine; purchased when we moved house in the early 60's. It was still running in the mid 80's with a second-hand replacement water pump. When my mother bought a front loader in the late 80's, she'd had the twin tub for over 25 years and it had been used regularly for most of that time apart from when the water pump died; however, my father soon found a replacement pump. My brother took the old machine and used it until the late 90's. It was still working after over 35 years of use when he bought his first new washing machine just before the turn of the century.

I can remember our milk used to be kept in the kitchen sink in cold water over the summer months because we didn't have a fridge until we moved house in 1961. The hot water in the kitchen was from a baby Burko. We used to have a large tub that my parents would put in front of the fire, and we'd have our weekly bath in that, sharing the water between my sister me and my brother. The oldest went first. when we moved house in 1961 the water was heated via a boiler at the back of the fire. In summer we used to heat the water via an immersion heater as we didn't use the fire during the summer months.

The first dishwasher I ever used was while I was at university. My then girlfriends' mother had given her a tabletop dishwasher. I didn't buy my first dishwasher until buying my third home in Poynton back in 1993 (the house cost me £70 000 back then and is now apparently worth over £400 000); crazy prices. The houses that have recently been built at the bottom of our garden four x four bedroomed detached houses with postage stamp sized gardens were sold for between £750 000 to £850 000 two years ago. I dread to think what mortgages those people had especially considering the mortage interest rate rises that are imminent. The first house I purchased back in Burnley after leaving the army in 1978 a two-bed terrace with no garden cost me £4000, which I sold five years later for $6000 (with no improvements apart from redecorating) and the second home, a substantial 3 bed terrace with front and rear garden cost me £12000 in 1983 (I got the mortgage while a university student, because I'd never faulted on my first mortgage)

We got married in the late 70’s we had scrimped & saved to by our first two bed semi. We had a little portable tv, no telephone & hardly any furniture in the middle room for ages, We refitted the kitchen with my mums old orange & white Hygiena kitchen units as she was having a new kitchen. I brought the electric cooker off the previous owner & also brought some curtains & carpets off her separately (imagine youngsters doing that now, they just rip everything out) We were happy with what we had though and when I drive past our first house I have only fond memories of those times. We moved to a 3 bed semi a couple of years later when I was expecting our first baby, I was working for a building society and was lucky to have a staff mortgage, because I didn’t go back to work our mortgage shot up to 15%. Luckily my husband got a promotion which helped & I was pretty good at managing. I used to get up early, do my jobs, including pegging out a line of terry towelling nappies then I’d walk into town with the baby in his lovely big pram and get a few bargains and then come back and bake or rustle something up for tea. Although we didn’t have much money I was very content with my lot.
We rarely went out for meals, maybe on our wedding anniversary or for my DH Christmas works do. Very different now, people seem to eat out several times a week plus they’re buying expensive take out coffees all week which must cost a fortune. As for getting my nails done, that never happened, just couldn’t have afforded it. We worked hard, didn’t get in debt and lived within our means and were pretty happy.

We married in 1975, lived with my in-laws for 18months whilst we bought and completely renovated our first house. My husband was self-employed and didn’t have many years accounts, so the mortgage was based on my earnings - therefore needed to be relatively cheap property. My husband was a builder, so luckily he was able to do a lot of the work himself, my Dad was a electrican so he rewired the house for us. All our furniture was second hand, apart from a bedroom suite, comprising of 2 wardrobes and a dressing table which was a wedding present along with a new fridge. We didn’t have a washing machine, I took our laundry to my mothers on a weekly basis and used her twin tub. My Dad acquired a second electric cooker for us. We sold that house 5 years after we moved in and went to a larger property, where we still live. We didn’t go out, my husband worked very long hours, we were extremely careful with money and I counted myself lucky that we had a property and lived on our own.
We were both taught to be very careful with money, we scrimped and saved to be where we are now.
All generations are different and todays youngsters seem to have been brought up differently to us as there is little regard for money in alot of circumstances. For example, they don’t get receipts so can’t tell whether they have been overcharged for goods. I can’t tell whether that is a generation thing ie peer pressure or what however I feel that a lot of them want, want, want whereas we did without until we could afford it.

I left home to study abroad when I was 16, in 1968, living in student accommodation where furniture was provided, so I only needed to take my clothes, some books, three sets of bed linen, a pillow and a duvet, plus 3 bathtowels, hand towels and face flannels, provided new by my parents.

In 1975 I got my first flat, a small two room flat with kitchen and toilet but no bathroom, which was still quite common in the poorer districts of Copenhagen then. You went to a public bath-house or to the swimming baths, where you either bought a combined ticket which allowed you to use the swimming-bath after you had showered, or bought a ticket for the showers, with or without one for the sauna depending on how rich you were feeling.

All my furniture was what my parents and maternal aunt could spare, except a bed, I bought new in the cheapest department store in the city, and a chest of drawers I had bought while studying.

Pots, pans and other kitchen equipment were likewise hand-me-downs from the family, or bought as cheaply as possible.

I was thrilled to bits when my mother gave me a re-conditioned Singer Sewing machine (1926 model) with electric motor added to it, as a house-warming present. It is still in commission, I may say.

Laundry was done down in the flat's old-fashioned wash-cellar that contained a sink with only cold water and a gas-fired wash-copper. Clothes were dried in the back-yard, or during the winter by lugging a laundry basket up six flights of steep back stairs to the drying loft in the attic.

We hardly knew what had hit us when some enterprising chap opened a laundrette with washing machines, spin-dryers and tumbler-dryers further down the street!

But most young people lived like that in the 1970s and we were happy.

I think we were both happier and more carefree than the present generation of 20 year olds.

So many memories. Thank you for this thread.
Going back before marriage to just post war. I remember crawling under floor boards pulling wires through when my Dad, an electrician was wiring a house. A neighbour taking out a light bulb to plug an iron into the light socket. The sweet tin with a light bulb inside and holes punched out to make a bed warmer. I was the best dressed kid in the street as my mum had an electric sewing machine and was a good dressmaker. I always wanted a shop bought dress.

Remember interest rates of 14%, virtually all our furniture was 2nd hand…put Plumbs covers over it. Had a car but was old and a bit temperamental. Had Hoover Spinarinse in the kitchen, no tumble drier or dishwasher, 2 nd hand fridge from in laws, record player my husband already had. We didn’t have much money, but we’re happy in our little house….oh yes, no central heating.