May 1968, my national guard unit is activated for the Vietnam War. I received two weeks pay from my employer and the promise that when I got back I’d have a job. Nothing like the benefits provided to guardsman during the Gulf War and after. December 1968, my wife and I are married.
August 1969 I return home to my old job (and my wife). November 1969, my wife is pregnant with our first child. June 1970 my wife stops work and there is no discussion of her working outside the home after the baby is born. Not even a consideration, we will live on what I make no matter what. On the downside we never took our children to Disney World.
Every financial decision we made was based on its affordability using my income alone (which I supplemented with part-time work). There were no credit cards, if we didn’t have the money, we didn’t have whatever we hoped to buy. Weird, right?
July 27 1970 our first son is born. Between then and September 1975 we have three more children and each time I take some vacation to help my wife who is caring for one, two, three or four children. There is no family leave, paid or unpaid. After a week or so I was back to work and she was on her own.
Did I mention I was going to college three nights a week and half a day on Saturday between 1969 and 1978?
Oh, the impossibility of it all. Can we get any retroactive help, paid leave perhaps, a mortgage less than 9.5%, loan forgiveness, free child care, can I get back what we gave up to do this, maybe tickets to Disney or a cruise somewhere would be nice?
In 1974 the inflation rate was 11% and in 1975 it was 9.1%. When we bought our first house in 1970, 30-year mortgage rates averaged 7.1%. In 1975 when we moved across town the rate was 9.5% Yikes, by today’s standards times were tough. In January 1975 unemployment was 8.1% and remained at levels at or above today’s rate until the late 1980s. Today it’s 6.3%.
I’m too young to be part of the Greatest Generation, and I miss the baby boomers too, I’m just part of the more prudent (my wife occasionally says cheap) generation raised by parents who knew what tough times really were.
Everything is relevant. Many people today cannot make the distinction between wants and needs, affordable and unaffordable. What are burdens today, were a normal part of life forty-five years ago. By the way, my health insurance in 1970 used a fixed fee schedule. It paid $350 to deliver a baby. If you used a doctor who charged that, great. If not, you paid the difference. Imagine!
It all worked out though, forty-five years later we have no debt even though it took me to age 70 to pay off a mortgage initiated in 1975 (because of college costs mortgaging) and we are not living on Social Security. Patience pays off and so does living within your means, even if you can’t keep up with the Joneses.
All the above is the reason the whining, gnashing of teeth about lack of opportunity, complaining about inequality, the entitlement mentality and quest for more stuff drives us old curmudgeons nuts.
What’s your opinion?
QUINNSCOMMENTARY 
It is a sad day when so many Americans take for granted what so many of us “older folks” know to be the only way to some semblance of financial security is to save what you can and then perhaps spend the rest on the necessities of life. I didn’t get to Disney until I was 48. I have to admit that I had a great time and so did my two children. I could not agree with you more on this one Dick.
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yes…the times they are a changing…..
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The 1960s were the height of the American empire. If I had to pick a date for the zenith, it would be July 20, 1969, the day Americans first walked on the moon.
In 1969 my brother was an Apollo era scientist. He helped create NASA’s Houston Apollo labs from scratch. He even learned how to blow glass so he could create his own specialized test tubes to analyze lunar samples. He bought a nice new home near NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Center for less than $40,000. His wife was a homemaker. They lived the American dream.
Even at the height of empire, fifth-column enemies were gnawing at the empire’s roots. There were lots of enemies and a lot of blame to go around. But the greatest enemy of all were those Americans who were obliviously living and enjoying the dream… Americans who did not or chose not to sustain and defend the dream.
” We have met the enemy and he is us.”
“The only thing necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing.”
Today, we are living on the dregs of the American empire. The barbarians are no longer at the gate… they rule.
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Ah! But we all know that was then and very possible Today, however, with minimum wages leaping toward $10 and $15 per hour, life as we knew it will be almost impossible for our grandkids. Milk at $5 a gallon, bread at $2.50 a loaf were things we laughed at as kids but today it is a reality and others want to redistribute my “wealth”!
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