I graduated in the 1982 recession with an accounting degree. My grades stunk because I played around too much. I’ve always hidden this from my kids. Haha Forget applying to the Big 8. It took me 8 months to land a job at $16,000 and I felt so lucky! Got to move out of my parents home.
DH graduated from Beer Keg U in 1983, went to work in a 100% commission job. First year salary was $78K before taxes and 60/40 split with sponsoring broker. 1984 made $338K before taxes and broker split, 1985 made $800K before taxes and broker split. I met him in 1986 when the entire industry collapsed and he didn’t make another dollar until 1990. He calls me his good luck charm. 
My first job out of college in 1985 paid 17K. Worked up to 19K as a teacher by the time DH and I got married and were weathering the industry collapse. Make more now as a nurse, but still nothing too impressive.
I paid less than $6000 for college in 1985 (total cost of attendance).
That CPI Inflation Calculator gives $14,456.99 for now. It can’t be true.
H had a terrible ACT score and also not so great grades - but he went to a Jesuit prep HS, and knew he had to apply himself in college (ECE) - something/someone really turned him off to classroom education very early in life. Now he is a self learner. We figured out he didn’t need a graduate degree to advance himself. Gets the heebie-jebbies even being on kids’ college campuses.
The interest rates in early 1980’s (fixed rate home mortgage climbed to 16.5% summer 1980) totally sucked.
H and I both graduated May 1978; both with salaries at $17K. Our one bedroom apt in Houston was $255/mo (pretty small - galley kitchen, maybe 550 sq ft). We assumed a 8.75% home mortgage and had a $6000 loan at 12% to pay off the equity and got into our first home in 1979. We were good at living on one income and had the second loan paid off quickly (we also shared a paid for car). Had a company move, and interest rate was supposed to be fixed at 12.5% but then over the 4 months it went up to 16.5% and we had to pay 4 discount points (that is what totally sucked) - we had a realtor that didn’t have the contract tight. In hindsight we should have done something different, but we thought we would be there a long time and pay things off or refinance when times were better.
Does the converted-to-2019 amount seem too high or too low?
I paid $11000 (tuition and fees only) as non-resident for grad school in 1983. The total cost of attendance is like $17000. (if my memory serves me well.）It is a public school in California.
I remember the interest rate was very high then in early 1980s.
Early nineties. Graduate in-state tuition at my Big Research U back then was $1,500 or so a quarter (summer quarter was much cheaper for same # of credits)! It looked like a lot of money, so having that waived and being paid $700 a month (RA/TA) was a giant pile of money!!!
“Does the converted-to-2019 amount seem too high or too low?”
Too low. Students cannot go to any college with $14,600 now.
https://www.dailycal.org/2014/12/22/history-uc-tuition-since-1868/
@Nrdsb4 …that’s impressive what your DH was bringing home so young! I was/am a much better worker than student. I also ended my career making a respectable salary, but nothing to write home about. Had to work hard for even that, though.
Since college costs have been increasing faster than CPI inflation, it should not be surprising that today’s college costs are higher than 1985 college costs adjusted for CPI inflation.
UCLA fee archive for both residents and non-residents (undergraduate and graduate):
https://www.registrar.ucla.edu/Archives/Fees-Archive
https://www.registrar.ucla.edu/Portals/50/Documents/fees-archive/annualfees/annualfee97-98.pdf
I entered school the one year the Guaranteed Student Loan was highest - 9%. The rate was locked even though it went down the following years. First car in 1984 was 16% and first house in 1986 was 14%. Today’s 30-35 year old have grown up on what I consider almost free borrowing money. They do not understand the effects of those high interest rates.
First real job, mid 80’s, small town, accounting - $18, 500 with a raise to 21,000 the next year. I think Midwest Big 8 was starting lowish-mid 20,000s. We all worked long hours, though. I see young people being a lot less willing to do that, and they may be right. CPAs had no work-life balance then, and I still don’t during tax season.
First house in 1995! Mortgage rate was something between 7-8%; took a second loan to avoid PMI (close to 9%). Mister just got a raise and I switched jobs. Two PPO plans covering family members, low employee contributions. $150-200 out of pocket maximum per person, double that per family, which was actually $0 because… two plans.
My bil graduated with a 2.0 after 6 years with a communications degree. My husband graduated in 4 years with a 3.7 in mechanical engineering. Guess who made gobs more money? 
Husband stared a real job after his postdoc and came home with a brochure for something called a “401k”. Tax free savings!!! The timing was right - we just filed our taxes and had to pay a very small amount, so “tax free” sounded nice. Contributed! ? And diligently do so every year since.
Side question best on this thread I think. What do you pay to have your taxes done if you use an accountant? We have various income sources and state income tax. Any one use turbo tax?
Yep, I remember paying 14.5% interest on the house we bought in 1983
We pay our accountant whatever he charges. Our prior accountant (who died) charged less but always put us on an extension and had H stay with him late into the night for several nights when they were trying to reconcile every penny of the business partnership. The new accountant has a firm and they offer a pre-payment fee of $160 for them to help with tax planning, answer tax questions or help in case of IRS correspondence or audit. They also charge something under $1000 for the actual taxes (we have real estate and several sources of income). We also have to pay another fee of under $1000 for them to do a K-1 for our business partnership (real estate). It is one of our indulgences and we are happy to pay and have them untangle the latest tax laws.
I’ve used TurboTax a few times when we were married and I wanted us to complete the returns and be out of town in mid-April and did my returns by paper and filed when I was single. I’m fine with paying the CPA.
We did our taxes by hand until 2011. We now use TurboTax. DH said it would be a disgrace to his accounting degree if he couldn’t complete a 1040, though these days we split the job. We have a simple return – no fancy bells or whistles.
We went from company doing our very complicated taxes (living overseas) to company still doing our complicated taxes (after we came back to the U.S.) to me paying for our gradually getting more simple taxes (but I don’t remember what I paid), to me paying for some fairly simple tax preparation. At some point I figured out the tax accountant that I was paying was merely inputting my simple data into a program that I could access myself and my taxes had gotten very very simple, so I started doing them myself. Now they are extra simple - we haven’t itemized deductions for several years - and we qualify for free federal filing, so we use Online taxes (Olt.com ) and both federal and state are free.