<p>On tv, they seem to never speak about money. It’s always, “Let me write down the figure for you.” Then the other person looks thoughtfully at the piece of paper, and says “Hmmm.”</p>
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<p>Well, if they used real numbers, they’d have to try to explain out how a family earning $70,000 a year lives in a $2 million house.</p>
<p>Lol! They did this on* Mad Men* a couple of weeks ago, but they ended up showing the figure - $19,000 a year in 1967 for copy chief at an ad agency. I asked my mom and she said that’s about what my dad made in those days as a sales rep for a major drug company. Now, it’s a starvation wage.</p>
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When we were kids we could always tell who was guilty on Perry Mason - it was whoever was on the witness stand with 5 minutes left in the show. Law and Order was like that, too - they rarely arrested the right guy first.</p>
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<p>I know that when my father first made partner at one of the well-known New York law firms in 1963, he probably wasn’t making much more than that. When he started there in 1951, his annual salary was $3,600.</p>
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<p>That’s more than I made as a first year teacher in 1986. :(</p>
<p>I always notice in “It’s A Wonderful Life”, when they build Ernie Bishop “a house worth FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS”…and then Mr. Potter offers George a job starting out at twenty-thousand a year (and then George drops his cigar in disbelief)</p>
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<p>For me $11,700 in 1980.</p>
<p>That’s about how much I made as a newspaper reporter in 1985, my first year out of college</p>
<p>$12,500 – 401(k) administrator at major financial firm in the Phila area, 1985. Paid about the same as the entry level copy editor job I got at an academic publisher in NYC at the same time.</p>
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<p>My salary as a first year teacher in Hurst, Texas in 1986 was $17,000. Unreal. I’m pretty sure the cost of living in Texas was far less than Philly at that same time, yet I was eating cold spinach out of a can at the end of the month on that salary. And I was VERY frugal.</p>
<p>My first job was in the management training program at A&S in Brooklyn in 1978. I think I made $12,500. Couldn’t afford my apt in Manhattan on that salary (my parents insisted I live in a doorman building) so they paid my rent, which was pretty high - I think at least $800/month. I still had no money but neither did anyone else. Even my friends who were working at the banks made no money.</p>
<p>I remember being frugal - we were not buying cheese, it was expansive luxury food. At my first job as Computer Programmer, my salary was about $12,500, it was in early 80s. My H’s job as EE paid about the same. Not sure if it connected to OP though.</p>
<p>Made $27,000 in my first job out of college in 1986. It was supposedly the highest non-engineering salary in my college class. Turned down a big fancy consulting company (of the kind that are drooled about on CC) that only offered $22,500 and required far more travel. I remember getting the job offer for the job I took and calling H (then my fiance) and telling him … guess how much the offer was. $21? Higher. $22? Higher. $23??? Higher. By the time I got to $27, we thought we were the Rockefellers. The next year, I got a raise to $29,200 (I still remember the number). This was the big-time!!</p>
<p>It was a wonderful job - I stayed at the company for over a decade - worked with fabulous, top-notch people and don’t regret a thing. I’ve actually only held 2 jobs since graduating college - that one and my current one.</p>
<p>By 1986, I had graduated from law school, so the money was a lot better. As a sign of the times, my friend’s D just graduated from law school and was thrilled to get a job at a small firm in a smallish city - and she her starting salary in 2012 is what mine was in 1985. (And her law school tuition was more than triple what mine was.)</p>
<p>In my final year of grad school (1984) my research assistanceship from my professor’s grant was $7500/year, and I thought I was rich. In 1985 I got my first job in biotech as a PhD and got $32K/year. But somehow I had felt richer the year before with one quarter the salary, because I was living the grad student lifestyle with grad student expectations and expenses. That all changed just one year later.</p>
<p>I’m freaking out about spending 13 on a pair of jeans, because I haven’t been able to find a job after 2 years of looking.</p>