<p>When I was in college, we used to go out Friday nights to this place about 5 miles off campus into the wilds of eastern Connecticut. Nice restaurant – white tablecloths and everything!</p>
<p>All you could eat linguini – with meat sauce or clam sauce, salad, bread, <em>and</em> a glass of wine … $4.95. Drinking age was 18 … </p>
<p>Those were the days.</p>
<p>I remember when I was like ****, it’s 85 degrees outside in the summer. Now I’m like yesss, it’s only 85 degrees. Sadly, that wasn’t too long ago.</p>
<p>In 1972 I paid 19 cents per gallon for gas. And tuition at state college was 200 per semester. But since I earned between $1.20 and $1.60 per hour, it still took a long time to pay my tuition and room & board.</p>
<p>I remember when you can purchase a 3BR SF home in CA for $67,000.</p>
<p>Over 30 - Thank goodness!! Finally someone my age!! I remember when gas was 19.9 cents a gallon my senior year of high school in 1974 and then JUMPED to 69.9 a gallon during the “Arab Oil Embargo”, as it was called in those days. We thought we would die paying that much for gas. What we wouldn’t give for gas at 69.9 cents a gallon now!</p>
<p>My H’s mother saved the doctor’s bill from his delivery into the world - $26!!!</p>
<p>I remember when cell phones didn’t have text messaging…well, not really but I heard about it in history class.</p>
<p>I remember when cell phone bills were prohibitive and only rich businessmen had them. Our first came with a huge bag that was the battery that we velcroed onto the space between the seats in the van. It used to be called a car phone and some were actually built in. We used it only for emergencies.</p>
<p>MidwestParent: you graduated the same year I did. When I went away to college, my parents gave me $20/month for food.</p>
<p>My private LAC was 12k/year and that was VERY expensive. My first job out of college was minimum wage - 3.15/hr, and then I got a salaried job for 18,000 and thought I was doing pretty darn good. I also remember when gas prices went over a dollar and the local stations didn’t have pumps that could calculate that high so they put the 1/2 gallon price on the pump and you’d have to double it. So 3.04 on the pump meant 6.08 at the cash register.</p>
<p>Also when I was young, my .25 allowance got me a 16oz soda and a Sky Bar.</p>
<p>my first car - 1980 mustang bought in 1982. Interest rate was 18% (the flip side being that people who had $$ were earning high rates on their money)</p>
<p>my first job in programming in 1982 paid 14K. Left programming for good in 1989 making 32K</p>
<p>I would start my life as a government employee in 1991 making that same 14K (it would take 8 years until I got back up to 32K)</p>
<p>When I was a little girl growing up in the '50’s, my dream was to have a house that cost $50,000. When we did buy our house in '79, it cost $56,000. My dreams have come true!</p>
<p>My salary right out of college as a teacher was $8400. While we were in college we fed 4 of us for $25 a week and we ate well!</p>
<p>katliamom, I remember when we went to the drug store next to the movie theatre to buy our candy, because the theatre’s candy was “so expensive.”</p>
<p>It was $.06 per bar/packet to the drugstore’s $.05.</p>
<p>Those were the days.</p>
<p>I remember taking 50 cents to the Saturday afternoon movies–35 cents for the ticket and 15 cents to buy candy.</p>
<p>When I was a college freshman, it cost either 5 or 10 cents to ride the St. Charles AVenue trolley.</p>
<p>When I was a college junior, the cost of a first class stamp jumped from 5 to 8 cents. This had a significant effect on my budget, since I was writing EVERY SINGLE DAY to my long distance boyfriend–to whom I am thankfully NOT married.</p>
<p>Penny Candy
Nickel Cokes
5 & 10 Cent Stores</p>
<p>Ah, Childhood Memories</p>
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<p>I imagine that an apartment like that would be worth at least a couple of million dollars now. Which would make it worth 100 times as much as what my parents paid for it 49 years ago.</p>
<p>Dairy Queen cones for a nickel.<br>
No, I really can’t be that old. The person inside this skin certainly isn’t that old!</p>
<p>In Third Grade, my mom gave me 25cents after school each day to walk ALONE 3 city blocks to the neighborhood soda fountain to buy a milkshake, so I could gain weight. Milkshake from a silver pitcher filled 3 large (10-cent) glasses marked “CocaCola.” </p>
<p>Didn’t gain weight. (this is an old story)</p>
<p>I was gone for hours and nobody came looking for me, either.</p>
<p>In fourth grade I’d go an ride my horse for hours in Somalia and no one worried about where I was either. </p>
<p>I remember that ice cream sandwiches in the school lunch room cost 10 cents.</p>
<p>And I remember that you could get a Peter Max beach towel with your gasoline.</p>
<p>The minimum wage was once $1.60, I remember getting $1.80 in the dorm food service jobs, $1.85 after midnight in the snack bar. My old calculus book, used for 3 semesters (no AP classes in our area back then) cost $13 (for some reason I had penciled that in on the inside). No cell phones- even the single black rotary phone from Ma Bell was hardwired into the wall when I was a kid, our first three “digits” after the area code were “AC2”. TVs were black and white, if you had one. Record albums were 33 rpm, singles 45, and if you found your parents’ they were 78s. No computers, VCRs, much less CD and DVD players. I got a stereo system with an 8 track player for my 21st birthday. Never had a beta max, though. My college typewriter was manual (no wonder I handed in those English lit papers halfway through the due date class period). I still have a few plastic handled steak knives my mom got as bonuses at the gas station (cheap gas with full service oil checks and window washing weren’t enough). Thongs, queer, gay and other words had different meanings. No TYME/bank machines, you had to get to the bank with your paycheck, while they were still open- by 3 pm; and there were no branch banks, even in the same town, when I was a kid. Grocery stores also had limited hours, everyone went shopping on Saturdays when the one family car was available during store hours. A 3 speed bike was big time.</p>
<p>I remember seeing The Grateful Dead when Jerry’s hair was dark and he was relatively thin.</p>
<p>What a great thread!</p>
<p>I remember when the television show “Love American Style” was considered racy…</p>