S/o what changed since the 80’s that makes life so expensive

amother

OP ↓

Thu, Sep 26 2024, 3:37 pm

4 year olds didn’t need $60 swim coverups.
6 year olds didn’t need $100 worth of knee socks and $40 long sleeve t-shirts.
12 year olds didn’t need $60 jewish t-shirts with necklines 1/2 higher than the $12 gap tee.
14 year olds didn’t need $400 worth of stockings.
Boys didn’t need $80/hour extracurricular lessons, they could play sports for free.
Kids didn’t need $28 poorly written “jewish” books, they had a whole library of free books.
Families didn’t need to buy $15 bags of wilted bodek lettuce.
30 year old men didn’t need tens of thousands of dollars of communal kollel tzedaka a year.
40 year old women didn’t need to have babies.

I could go on for much longer but I need to get a headstart on running from the tomatoes.

amother

Lightyellow

Thu, Sep 26 2024, 3:41 pm

Some of your examples are weird.

Jewish books were always a thing

Babies were and hopefully will continue to be a thing.

Yes we are more materialistic today.

Things are also astronomically expensive.

amother

Brown ↓

Thu, Sep 26 2024, 3:44 pm

How about the cost of everything went up and you just can’t compare. Also why do you feel the need to spend on things you think aren’t necessary?

Cmon be nice

Thu, Sep 26 2024, 3:45 pm

I think that housing costs, adjusted for inflation, werent so expensive. Mist of your examples are gashmiyus, which can be lowered if need be, but not housing

amother

↑ Brown ↓

Thu, Sep 26 2024, 3:45 pm

I don’t know which 80’s you grew up in but in my world all women had babies until 45. They were trying to rebuild their lost families. Now people have less kids.

shabbatiscoming

Thu, Sep 26 2024, 3:51 pm

amother OP wrote:

Some of your examples are community specific. I dont know people who buy half the things you are mentioning for the prices you are mentioning.

First off, the almighty dollar today is 3.80 to what it was in the 1980s. That alone makes everything more expensive. Thats just how life goes.

Your last example is the most bizarre. Are you talking about IVF? or something else that I am not getting here.

amother

Kiwi

Thu, Sep 26 2024, 3:53 pm

amother Lightyellow wrote:

I'm 38 & my mom had me at 43. So you're wrong.

We also had tons of books. And she spent plenty dressing me in teen suits (remember those?)

amother

↑ OP

Thu, Sep 26 2024, 3:56 pm

My main point seems to have been lost on most people. As a community we have shifted to being much more “farfrumpt” and we waste money on “necessities” that have nothing to do with Halacha.

amother

Gray

Thu, Sep 26 2024, 4:00 pm

Scarcity on goods
Geopolitical risk (houthis bombing container ships is an example)
National debt
Inflation
House prices rising in response to low availability
People raising prices just because they can
Higher standards/more items “needing” to be purchased

amother

↑ Brown ↓

Thu, Sep 26 2024, 4:03 pm

amother OP wrote:

My main point seems to have been lost on most people. As a community we have shifted to being much more “farfrumpt” and we waste money on “necessities” that have nothing to do with Halacha.

Do we though? We have more abilities to keep things more meticulously. Unlike the post Holocaust generation that was just trying to survive and start over. What excuses do we have for not keeping the Torah properly the way it’s meant to be kept? What do you think money is meant for? We are in this world to keep the Torah and money is just a tool to help us keep it. We use the money to do more mitzvohs. Our goal isn’t to die with as many bags of cash as possible. I think you lost the plot.

amother

Sienna

Thu, Sep 26 2024, 4:03 pm

My grandma had a baby in 1975 born with CP. Put him in an institution straight from the hospital, visited him twice a year. Much cheaper than bringing him home, paying for services.

A different relative had severe learning disabilities. No biggie. Label the kid stupid and lazy, smack him with a ruler when he can't keep up in the classroom. Cheaper that way. He also killed himself in the 80s. Left a wife and 2 kids.
Cheaper than wasting all that money on modern therapy.

Sarcastic in case it's not clear.

Fox ↓

Thu, Sep 26 2024, 4:04 pm

My DH once had a rebbe who would tell the boys in a thick Yiddish accent, "You're a hunnert percent right! You're a hunnert percent right! Now let me show you where you're wrong."

Absolutely everything you listed is accurate, but I was a young adult in the 80s, and it wasn't exactly the halcyon era people think it was.

On the plus side, the "malaise" of the Carter administration had ended, and business profits were up significantly. There was definitely a more optimistic attitude in the the U.S. as well as the U.K.

On the minus side, interest rates were crazily high. It was almost impossible to get a home loan from a bank; people with 50 percent down payments were being turned down. And if you were self-employed? Forget it! So many people bought or sold their homes "on contract," meaning that the owner was basically acting as the bank.

Even though business profits had picked up, the high interest rates meant that there was very little credit available for expansion. Which meant that nobody was hiring. Even if you had good qualifications, finding a job was really, really tough.

Something else that people don't think about is the flip side of having so many consumer goods: having fewer consumer goods.

Walmart had not yet begun its expansion, for better or worse, and there were relatively few mail-order companies. You were pretty much stuck with whatever merchants were selling in your community at whatever price they were selling it. Again, that seems quite quaint and charming, buying your shoes at the local shoe store and your toilet tissue at the local grocery or discount store. But that meant that you had very, very little choice in selection, size, style, or anything else. It also meant that unless you were willing and able to go further afield for your shopping, everyone in the neighborhood had already seen, tried on, and knew the cost of your new shoes.

There had always been delivery services from local stores in NY boroughs, but it wasn't a widely-offered service OOT. Which meant you had to have access to a car or make sure you lived close to food stores, etc.

Prices, too, were widely different than what we know now, especially electronics. I remember getting an off-brand "Walkman" to listen to the radio while commuting on public transportation. It also played cassettes! It was $119 -- cheaper than the fancier Sony brand. Anything like that was a major, major purchase. I still marvel at how cheap TVs and similar electronics have become.

So, yes. We now have far higher expectations and our "needs" have expanded with lower costs and greater availability (part of what's making today's inflation so painful). But many of the conveniences and choices that we expect today just didn't exist in the 80s, and the financial picture was not uniformly rosy.

amother

Hydrangea ↓

Thu, Sep 26 2024, 4:09 pm

amother Brown wrote:

What mitzvah is there in saying clothes have to be a certain brand, and only European shoes arw acceptable, and kallahs and chossons must have x and x or should I say $ and $. Even babies need name brand strollers and clothes. And 4 years olds have to be wearing the roght clothes. And chas v shalom you get your kid the wrong backpack, or one from Walmart. Or not serve fleishigs every night.

amother

↑ Brown

Thu, Sep 26 2024, 4:12 pm

amother Hydrangea wrote:

I’m not talking about any of that. And if you have trouble with any of that you need to work on it. I’m referring to spending extra to be covered fully, buying tznius bathing suits, buying tights etc… half her examples are just weird anyway like having babies.

Ruchel

Thu, Sep 26 2024, 4:14 pm

I've heard hidden cam interviews. Ukraine has been used as an excuse to increase (while some real)

amother

Snapdragon

Thu, Sep 26 2024, 4:16 pm

insurance was often paid for in full by employers without high deductibles...
medical care is better now but there is a price that comes with that

Aurora

Thu, Sep 26 2024, 4:18 pm

If you don't like it, don't do it.

lamplighter ↓

Thu, Sep 26 2024, 4:18 pm

I think our simchas were simpler, and therapy wasn't as common.
Otherwise not much change in lifestyle between my kids and myself growing up.

amother

Jasmine

Thu, Sep 26 2024, 4:29 pm

In the 1980s someone who lived a 2000 sf home had 10 outfits and 5 pairs of shoes in the closet, cake and nosh and meat for shabbos was considered rich. Now we collect money for anyone wh has less than this. The standard have gone up. I bh still have grandparents and I see how they live and it’s very different than our generation even though they are not poor.

GLUE ↓

Thu, Sep 26 2024, 4:35 pm

In around 2000 a lady wrote in a London rag, that the reason why millennials are not buying houses is because they are spending to much money on avocado toast.
She wrote a whole list on what she thought millennials were wasting there money on, then a whole list on the things she used her money on when she was that age.
It took three seconds(if that long)for people to rip apart her list.
some examples:
Did not vacation in Spain in the winter, vacationed at the sea in the summer
Did not have unlimited Netflix, went to the theater every week
A few more things.
Yet if you compare what she spend in the 1950 on her extra's and what millennials were spending on their extra's in 2000, the prices were about the same(after inflation) it was just different stuff so it looked like they were being spend without a plan.

The biggest difference in 1950 vs. 2000 was the price of houses.

As Fox pointed out up-thread live was always expensive.
I remember my mother talking about people who could not paint the walls of their house because of tuition. This was in the 1980's.