What was a decent wage when you were younger

Of course the professions you quote- teacher, army officer,etc would not have had a wage but a salary.

RosiesMawagain

Of course the professions you quote- teacher, army officer,etc would not have had a wage but a salary.

Yes, they would have been salaried, but the principle is the same. The average wage/ salary in 1986 was 10k a year and 16k was considered a decent salary for someone in a professional role or who was a highly skilled worker. Also house prices in 1986 were vastly lower, which meant someone on 16k a year could afford a decent property, particularly in the North.

At 17/18 my first pint of beer cost 1/6p back in 1966 which was about the same price as fish and chips, my wages back then was about £7.50 a week, living at home that was OK.

I was working in a library about 50/60 miles from home in 1962 my first job
My wage was £8 a week, I rented a flat, bought a weeks worth of food, bought coke for heating, paid for electricity and gas and went home on the train every weekend.
My to be husband was in the RAF and got £6 a week

I remember my brother starting work as a laboratory technician at the age of 18 in 1963 for £6 a week.

I started work when I was 15,my first wage in a factory was £2.7/6d my mum got the £2 for my keep and I got 7/6d. That was 1960, when I was married 8 years later my wage was £7 or £8...

I’ve a short memory and can’t remember prices or what DH earned in the ‘80’s although we had already moved into our second home - mortgaged, of course. I was a SAHM then, but in 1987, I was 36 and as DH had a company car and often had to be away from home, I got a brand new Vauxhall Astra Club. It was white with a grey and yellow stripe and was £5995. It’s the only new car I’ve ever had!

When I left art school in 1967 we were told that a job in a studio would probably pay about £9 a week (nearly double my £5 a week grant as a student) In fact I got a job with EMI records which paid £15 a week. After a few months my boss suggested I should change from a designer to a draughtsman, because then I would get a man's wage of £20.

1986 locally a flat cost £15,000, with a semi costing £22,000. 16k a year then would have afforded you quite a comfortable lifestyle.
I don't know where locally means because in 1985 we sold a small semi-detached house for £78,500. We were offered more but didn't think it was fair to let down the first prospective purchaser. The mortgage rate was 12%.

I was an apprentice hairdresser in 1970 and my first wage was £3 6s. I may be wrong but I think there were stoppages, what is now national insurance. All tips went into a tip tin, which the apprentices never saw again.

Early 1970’s I remember being very excited when my net salary actually hit £100

£17,500 in 1985.

Allira

1986 locally a flat cost £15,000, with a semi costing £22,000. 16k a year then would have afforded you quite a comfortable lifestyle.
I don't know where locally means because in 1985 we sold a small semi-detached house for £78,500. We were offered more but didn't think it was fair to let down the first prospective purchaser. The mortgage rate was 12%.

We bought a 3-bed semi, with a garage, in 1986 for £22,000.
We moved in 1991 to a 3-bed detached on the same estate for £63,000.
This is in the Midlands.

In 1967, I earned £1 a day for working 3 hours. £28 a month. I was rich!

When I started work at a bank in 1969, aged 16, I was told at 21 I would be earning £10 a week.

My dad couldn’t believe how much it would be!

I would have to dig out old diaries to check how much I was paid. What I do know for sure is that in 1977 our weekly grocery bill was £12. That was all our food and toiletries for the two of us plus dog food for one large dog. We shopped at Tesco.

My Saturday job in a local shop in 1955 paid me 15 shillings for 9.00 - 5.30 pm. In 1956 I became an apprentice hairdresser and receiived two pounds for a five and half day week.

Later, in the early 1970's I can remember being very excited when hubbie (chartered secretary), was getting close to being salaried at £12,000 per year!!!!!

Our first car (Mini Traveller), could be completely filled up with petrol and we received change when paying for it with a one pound note!!!!

It is all very relative though. Mortgage interest rates were very high, although (looking at them from now) purchase prices for property seems low. Our first house in 1964 - an end of terrace victorian (not updated) property in Walthamstow, East London cost us £3,950 - and with both of us working we really struggled to keep our heads above water -let out the garage (we had no car), and took in a lodger.

Those same houses now sell in the six figure bracket - or as two flats each around three quarters of a million!!!!

I know that when I had my current flat's en-suite all completely re-done a couple of years ago I commented that it cost nearly double what we paid in 1964 of our house!!!!!

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.

In 1973, outside London, a newly qualified staff nurse was paid a 52p per hour wage.

The average going rate for a domestic cleaner was 60p per hour. A clerical assistant in the civil service (the lowest office grade) 65p per hour. Hospital canteen workers rates started at around 60p per hour.

My first flat was furnished and had two rooms, one small bedroom and a bigger room that had a tiny bathroom and a tiny kitchen partitioned off at one end, it cost £9.00 a week, utilities not included.

The first house I bought, a 6 room mid terrace on three floors, cost £17,000 in 1979. I sold it 10 months later for £21,000.

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.

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.

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.

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....

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.