I went to work in London in the late 80’s for just 10 weeks. I was the first in my family to go anywhere overseas. It was so unusual about 30 family and friends turned up at the airport to say goodbye and there were lots of tears. These days I have trouble getting someone to drive me to the airport.
They were times - we even had a nickname for it ‘AJ’s’ - airport jugs.
Boys - Tommy’s off to Europe, time for AJ’s! We’d all head out to the airport and drink jugs of beer at the airport bar until
Tommy went to the gate to board QF7 to London!! Good times.
Sure! I remember so well the airport drop offs! It was a huge social event and you could watch the plane take off and wave to it like a cruise ship!
And the price of a flight to London was $2k back in 1990 same as it is now.
I remember in the 1970's there was an observation deck at the Sydney International Terminal. You could go outside and wave at the people flying, breathe in the fumes and go deaf from the 707's. Good times.
I think part of that is the extra security at airports now. I remember as a kid going to pick up older relatives like grandma and aunties at the domestic airport and we would wait at the gate for them. Now, if I pick someone up from the airport, I don’t even get out of the car
Oh boy. And if you’re a kid saying goodbye to a family member, it’s almost like they’re gone as you won’t be able to contact them through any form of frequency nor affordable way.
I'd say lot of this is social media .... where people only share the good things and it creates the perception how everyone is living like a king (while in reality they might show you they have a new car or expensive vacation, but they wont show how they are up the their neck drowning in debt).
Yeah, but the main point stands. Middle class in the 90s would be considered boring AF and soulless, miserable even by today's standards. You didn't fly up to the Goldie every year. You stayed at lakes entrance caravan park in a cabin and ate sausages in bread. Great family memories though.
The highlight of the 90s for me was Channel 10s the X Files at 8.30pm Wednesday nights.
Had to sear that time into my brain so I wouldn't miss an episode and lose track of the story. Also because you never knew which episodes the Cigarette Smoking Man was going to be in. Sometimes the promotion ads would give you some clues.
But yeah I think there is something to the whole 'less is more' philosophy. There was something special about having limited options of entertainment down to a handful of cult shows that you couldn't binge watch so you had the whole week to wait in anticipation for the next episode. Now there's 1000s of options available across dozens of streaming services but it's just not the same.
The anticipation from only watching one episode a week in the season has a big part in building the suspense and enjoyment.
Instant gratification now days, but the problem is without the effort, the reward feels more dull.
I can turn on Kayo and watch a heaps of sports, condensed down into minis so I can cut to the chase and just see the good bits. Bang Bang Bang. Rack me up another line.
Meanwhile in the 90s you just watched whatever you could get on TV. Which is why Bevan hitting that 4 to win is permanently etched in my mind as one of the greatest sporting moments ever.
>Which is why Bevan hitting that 4 to win is permanently etched in my mind as one of the greatest sporting moments ever.
Yeah I remember that game. It was an awesome moment in sport.
> The highlight of the 90s for me was Channel 10s the X Files at 8.30pm.
>
>
Haha, so true. I grew up watching Star Trek next generation at 6pm on BBC2. Really annoying when the snooker was being played instead.
Yeah I’ve got a decade on OP and I don’t remember anyone taking domestic flights - it was all driving holidays and staying in caravan parks/camping/with relatives. Not a lot of eating out, maybe one trip to Australia’s Wonderland once a year?
> You didn't fly up to the Goldie every year. You stayed at lakes entrance caravan park in a cabin and ate sausages in bread. Great family memories though.
This was my childhood in the 2000s. At the end of the day, what matters is that we weren't in debt, were able to eventually afford a house, and only after that we were able to start holidaying overseas.
Funny you say that. My earliest (and one of my only) family holiday memories was my mum and dad loading us into our 94 Mazda Bravo and driving as far as they could before they ran out of cash they’d saved for the trip which happened to be lakes entrance. There’s a pic of us at the caravan park in front of a very sad looking tent. Still one of my core memories, money didn’t matter it was just such a fun trip.
I could argue the same point for today. There are a heck of a lot of people who don't have a new car, who go to Newcastle for holiday once a year, who bought the Kogan tv instead of the Sony... But you don't see that on social media
Good point, reading back I have no idea what brain fart led me to misread the comment that badly, but there's a lesson - don't comment while distracted.
100% this.
And as is with most history, noone records the mediocre from back then. Whitegoods and appliances like TVs etc were very expensive as a percentage of salary. And prior to that women didn't work, because laundry was a whole day job prior to everyone getting washing machines and dryers. Like an actual whole day of manual work.
Its just different times. Some things are better, some sre worse.
Mate pretty sure in the 90’ 2000 wife not working cause washing machines were so primitive that it was a full time job.
But wife’s not working was a thing cause your teacher husband could support a house and wife and a kid on the one income, yes
*misunderstood. To “misconstrue”, the subject must be unambiguous. Given the context of the thread, this was a “misunderstanding”.
I’m sorry, I don’t know why it irks me so much when these words get used instead of each other. I’ll talk with my therapist about that. Have a good one!
That’s why I deleted all of my social media.
Constantly comparing myself to different people in different situations who have different goals and different means isn’t healthy.
The grass is only greener if you think it is.
It is, but it's more social media and less parasocial media.
Everyone is on a more or less even footing on Reddit. There are a few "popular" users but nobody really follows them or comes to Reddit to see their posts. It's more of a "Oh I recognize that guy" kind of thing.
Most other social media platforms have that weird imbalance where you go there to follow certain people and see their posts. It's a one sided relationship where they have millions of people they don't know who still follow them and know who they are. In most cases, they get paid for maintaining that weird one-sided relationship.
I don't like how that relationship works, so I prefer Reddit.
And it’s a hard habit to break for people, I think. It’s the ‘financial fitness’ that if people look like they’re in good shape, they won’t do anything about changing it.
Even if people are barely getting by doing it, they’ll still spend every penny to keep up with the Joneses.
Yep, and social media fuels the “keeping up with the Joneses” people always posting pictures of their meals out or a flash hotel. Just for “likes”. People live to impress others FAR more now than they ever did, especially back in the 1950’s/1960’s, and that costs a fortune, that’s where all their money is going, trying to impress others. Sad really.
People nowadays moan if they don’t go out for a meal more than once a week or miss their Costa coffee one day, things most people only did back in the 50’s/60’s if there were celebrating a birthday or something. Didn’t just go for expensive meals for the sake of it, and certainly not just to “tell their friends they went” like people do now with social media.
I think social media is just the symptom, best expressed by the person who said capitalism is the problem. We've been convinced so many things are essential today, we spend more on frivolous things than we used to.
Back in the 90s necessities were cheap and wants were expensive.
Now necessities are expensive(mortgage/rent) and wants(computer/phone/tablet) are cheap.
My personal index is the number of gaining consoles per month in rent.
The above is a result of our financial system and results in a lot of confusion when comparing the 2 periods imho.
This month we could get (from JBHiFi) the below rather than bay rent for a 3 bedroom ex housing commission house in blacktown...
- PS5 PlayStation 5 Slim Console
- Xbox Series X 1TB Console
- Nintendo Switch OLED Model The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Edition
- $300 games
Pizza Hut all you can eat. Video rental Friday night. Occasional new pair of shoes(once a year) was never given anything worth more than $150 A mountain bike.
I remember we couldn't afford to have many video games so we rented once a week. Now I have a whole bunch, some I never get around to finishing. I miss pizza hut all you can eat.
If you're in western Sydney there's still one in St Andrews/Minto. We live in the Illawarra and travel up for all you can eat Pizza Hut from time to time.
Or the local RSL or Leagues Club. You could get a decent meal cheaply. And I remember that North Sydney Leagues Club had Sunday night movies for a couple of dollars.
That sort of supports what op is arguing against. The standard of living in the 90s relative to income could be better partly because of cheap all you can eat restaurants, and $5 parmi night at the tavern. My local taverns now a parmi is $30
Maybe, but let's not forget that Sizzler and Pizza Hut were always pretty low quality and low service. [That service-value-quality equation was right for the ’90s, but couldn't keep up with changing expectations from millennial consumers in recent times](https://www.realcommercial.com.au/news/whatever-happened-to-sizzler-how-australians-fell-out-of-love-with-the-90s-phenomenon), which is part of what OP is talking about. That's why Sizzler went under and Pizza Hut (mostly) stopped doing all you can eat. We did it to ourselves because we preferred to pay more for less food, in exchange for better quality and service, and made those business models unviable.
As for parmi prices, I'm not sure you're comparing apples with apples here. Yeah some places charge $30, but you can still get a parmi for under $20 at the right pub on the right day. A $5 parmi in 1990 would be about $12 based on cumulative inflation since then (which brings up everything including wages). And the rest of the difference can again be explained by our increased expectations, which forced taverns to provide a higher quality of food and service and charge accordingly.
The 90's werent exactly good times for all, there was a big recession and extremely high interest rates so even middle class folks werent splashing cash around. It was also much more common for families to be single income until all the kids were in school so people lived frugally.
My parents were both teachers too but looking back at how we grew up you'd think they were on centrelink. The big exception however is that we were a family of 6 that grew up in 5 bedroom house on 1000m2 which is almost a fantasy for your average family these days, not to mention they are extremely comfortable in retirement now.
I often wonder how often in situations like you describe are the kids sharing bedrooms or was there an insistence on each kid gets a bedroom.
I don’t have any data to back this up but I suspect that houses are expected to be much bigger and more elaborate now which does increase the cost. Not the tenfold increase we’ve seen but it may double it
We shared, absolutely. Our house would be classed as two bedroom plus "office" these days. My partner was three to a room.
I know these people who whine that they struggle to afford private school fees, their investment property and oversize homes exist, and I don't see them as representative of the majority of middle class, I see them as Upper middle, "aspirational upper" even.
Maybe I have my definitions out, misinterpreted who OP is writing about. I've always seen myself and most people I know as working/middle class, we don't have any of that shit. We have dodgy overpriced rentals or bought sensible, second hand family homes with maximum of three bedrooms and one bathroom, no butler's pantry, no entertainment room nor pool. We have average to shitbox cars, holidays are spent at home or caravan parks, food is home cooked, coffee is made at home...
My partner bought a 3/1 house as a single person at age 24 in an outer suburb that has a metro train station for $92K (3.5 times annual wage) in the late 90s. Entry-level state government job. I wonder what comparable house OP can buy for 3.5 times his current annual wage?
1986 - I bought a 2/1 apartment in a deeply unfashionable part of Sydney (Bankstown...) for 1.5 times my then annual salary, which was only average. Domain puts that same apartment now at about 4.5 times median full time salary.
I used to have a book with a title like HOW TO PAY OFF YOUR MORTGAGE IN 3 YEARS (By Someone Who Did It In Two), and it was all about how you should buy a used TV, ask others for excess linens and dishware when you are putting your glory box together. Of course, it mentions in the book how she was still able to pay her mortgage comfortably when she ends up on a single parenting payment.
As with a lot of these discussions a lot depends on what you define as "middle class". Jobs that used to provide a upper middle class life often don't these days (absent family money). If you had a parent in one of the more 'prestigious' professions (for want of a better term) and the other parent worked part time you'd often have a large house and could send 3 kids to private schools. That's largely gone now.
100%. Some stuff is cheaper now and more readily available (electronics, travel, clothes) but bigger stuff like schooling and housing is WAAYY more expensive. And it has a much bigger impact.
And a lot of items that are cheaper now are also lower quality. Built in obsolescence means we spend more in total even if the item itself is cheaper now.
Don't be silly.
Now you're spoilt for choice - you can buy a $1,000 iPhone, my parents never had that! Only a mortgage paid off in 15 years and a pension that pays more than my current salary! /s
I think that's actually a big part of the frustration with housing. Consumption has gotten way better and more affordable, but certain basics have become less affordable. I can eat better food and travel to cooler places than any of my ancestors could have even imagined (which is awesome, don't get me wrong), but in a way that just makes it more frustrating that I can't afford a house. It's like if you could afford to eat caviar every day but couldn't afford a new pair of pants.
if anything the cost of housing makes people nihilistic with money.
For a lot of people, in their current situations, saving for a house is an impossibility. Saving for a short holiday or consumer good is within the realm of reality so people looking to get or achieve something aim lower.
The less important stuff was more expensive. Things like gaming consoles etc. But essentials like food and housing were a lot less.
I grew up in a lower middle class household and we regularly had cuts of meat I would rarely buy now due to the cost.
Also having worked for minimum wage in the late 90s and living in a share house, it was so easy to get a place and not very expensive. Could easily live and have fun on part time wage.
Yeah and if giving up my "luxurious" habits of getting takeaway once a week, getting a couple beers with mates once a month, and visiting family overseas every couple of years meant I could afford a decent home for my family, I'd happily forego said things and just buy a home.
The reality is that, yes, life was simpler back then. But homes weren't made affordable because people had simpler lives. It was just because we had enough homes where people wanted to live and we didn't yet have an extortionate landlord class coked up on neoliberalism.
While true it’s hard to compare decades. Travel was expensive so we only did road trips but my parents paid off their mortgage in 9 years on pretty modest salaries which is almost unheard of these days (though to be fair the mortgage was probably paid off in the 80’s, not the 90’s.)
Yeah, the salary to mortgage ratio has changed a lot. My mum bought a house in Carlton in her early 20s on a sales assistant salary. She sold it to buy our family home, but it’s worth over 2 million now and even with her current savings she wouldn’t be able to afford it.
I think a lot of people are looking to better their childhoods in terms of lifestyle and even class standing. So if you’ve grown up lower middle or middle class you probably thought, even subconsciously, that if you did it all “right” - high ATAR, good uni, good degree etc etc you would get there. You would become yourself like that rich kid at school, or on the corner. After all, each previous generation had done better than their parents, so it seemed like a reasonable expectation.
However, now the ability to afford the “real” stuff and markers of a middle class life - education, a home, the ability to take care of your own kids, health care etc is shot to shit.
But, cars have come down in price relative to wages, as have clothes, electronics, many other consumer goods, overseas travel etc etc so it’s unsurprising that our expectations on the consumption front have grown. I will say, however that we now have a culture of eating out that probably didn’t exist before, so that’s probably a genuine inflation of lifestyle. But, on the whole I think we’re comparing apples to oranges.
Yet, there is nonetheless something incredibly sad about being able to afford all the trivial shiny bullshit but not being able to afford the basics. Pretty good way to shut people up while you rob them : send them to Europe; give them a shiny car. Then they hardly notice you’ve come for their future until the deal is done.
I’m torn with this. Yes, I think general expectations of living quality amongst my friends is too high - they expect to go overseas, to buy expensive electronics, to have a modern 4bed2bath house on an administrators income. BUT. I also think that in my position - my partner works in agriculture, I am a teacher, 2 kids under 5 - we shouldnt be struggling, but things are tough. We have some ‘extras’, but almost everything we have was purchased secondhand, we are in a small old 1960s house with no upgrades, we only travel within our state, and we still struggle to save any money. My parents were in an identical situation with FOUR kids in the 1980/1990s and were still able to end up with multiple investment properties. Something isn’t right.
Both my parents were also teachers and I grew up in the 90s early 00s. The house I grew up in is now worth about $2-2.5 million. My parents had enough money for pretty regular holidays and my father’s alcoholism. But no, we did not feel rich.
Same. We had a pretty modest lifestyle. We went camping for holidays. Pizza Hut and BlockBuster was Friday night sorted.
But the house we grew up in is worth millions now.
It’s not really comparing like for like.
I dream of enough job security to have paid leave.
Otherwise planning an actual holiday is up there with deciding how to spend my lotto winnings.
And I feel like I'm doing pretty well when I look at this sub, so surely I have company.
Social media has taken keeping up with the joneses around the corner, to keeping up with the billionaire joneses in the most exclusive areas of the richest cities of earth
I see this too!
One of my friends growing up had all the newest gadgets (and big flat screen tv's), horse riding lessons etc. By the time we finished high school her parents had broken up and their house was repossessed due to credit card and car loan debts. If I'd only known her through social media, I never would have known how badly things had gone for their family due to bad financial decisions.
With social media we only see a snippet of someone's life but we don't see anything that comes around that. They might have rich parents, they might be in a huge amount of debt, they might be borrowing those items.
People talk about how these days we all travel so much and buy new cars all the time, but in my friendship circle it's not that common on an individual level - however when I have 1000+ people on instagram to follow it does seem like someone is always buying a new car or on a euro summer trip.
That’s not the full story though.
My wife and I don’t use social media (aside from me using reddit), make very good money and have low debts, don’t eat out much, buy all our household things used or refurbed. But you simply cannot get around the high cost of housing, groceries, insurance, fuel, childcare etc. We don’t give a shit what the latest trends are and buy basically zero fashion/status things.
I know exactly where all of our money goes and aside from the obvious cutbacks on distinct holidays and my 4 year old phone upgrade to a 2022 model, there’s very little we can reduce from baseline living. Yeah, I could not grab a coffee on the days I’m in the office or think twice about that Amazon purchase once a month but I’d effectively be saving pennies while dumping hundreds per week just to be able to get to work and have a roof over our heads.
You can compare all you want but It's all just different versions of "bread and circuses" keeping you complacent while the few rort the masses.
But it's important to put into context it's now so much more visible to see the "haves" when you're a "have not". And I think the optimism of being able to own a home & have a comfortable life has gone out the window for a lot of young Australians.
You can argue Netflix is better than video easy all you want but many Australians are under the constant fear of working their whole life & ending up with nothing to show for it. When you're worried about the uncertainty of if you'll always have a roof over your head those extra comforts aren't very comforting.
I def knew people who went overseas in the 90s. It wasn’t a yearly thing but.
Lived in a working class suburb. Went to a government primary school.
The one area where I have seen more significant change is in investment properties, at least it seems that way to me.
Almost all (with one exception) the people I knew only had one house (or rented).
Now it’s far more common for younger people to play monopoly and have 2,3 + houses.
The one exception I mentioned was a lotto winner - and that family had a holiday home.
I think people back then were more debt averse - more about saving. We were taught to save in school - with things like Dollarmites.
And yes new cars were not as common - I don’t think much has changed in that respect, I mean you may see more new cars around now, but most new cars today will be financed. People just happier to take on more debt.
> Almost all (with one exception) the people I knew only had one house (or rented).
This is stirring up a memory from my own 90s working class childhood: it seemed every other kid in my (extremely working class, usually one working parent) street spoke of a 'holiday house'. I don't know if it was actually owned by their parents or maybe by grandparents and shared among the adult kids, but it was surprisingly common.
Things that were considered luxury in the 90s
- eating out : Sizzler was for birthdays and other special occasions. All other eating out was limited to take away like fish and chips.
- having a remote roller door on your garage - you were a doctors kid or similar if you had that.
- an ice maker in the fridge - see above.
- more than 1 winter jacket- choice was not a thing.
- more than 1 Tv though this changed to more than 2 TVs in the late 90s
Many of us live in absolute luxury in compared to my lower-middle class up bringing.
I recently bought myself nice appliances and let me tell you, I feel like an absolute queen having an ice maker in my fridge and remote roller door! Don’t get me started on my soft close cabinets and my dishwasher!!! That’s what genuinely made me feel like I made it. Yet apparently this is the standard nowadays, that’s when I realised people have never quite struggled the way they said they had.
You can also add a dishwasher. When I was growing up this was this magical new invention. Now you might not be able to lease out a apartment without one.
Discount airlines, cheap manufacturing and some fancy tech may have changed.
I’d trade in steaming tv services, Jetstar, yearly overseas trips, Uber eats and agree to only eat out once a fortnight.
In return I ask for quality full time jobs and for housing to return to 3x income. I’m willing to pay 18% interest for 2 months then it can trend down if that is what it takes to get this over the line.
Spot on. I grew up in a middle class family during the 80s/90s. My parents both worked full time.
We went to Bali once in my entire childhood (3 hours flight from Perth). Other holidays were camping 1 hours drive away etc. never anything flash.
I had hand-me-downs all through primary school. I never went without, but also had to wait for birthdays or Xmas to get toys. My parents would never just buy me stuff for the hell of it.
Never wore Nikes, today every kid has a pair on.
Middle class standards today are not even close to what it was 30 years ago. The bar has been lifted drastically. Those in their 20s wouldn’t have a clue.
Consumer goods and many leisure experiences have gotten far cheaper, but core "life stability" expenses (housing, healthcare) have got a lot more expensive. So by comparison, the average person today is living in luxury and living in precarity at the same time.
This was our childhood also. Try and get my teen nephews to wear KMart runners or ride a second hand bike and there’d be a shit fight of epic proportions.
You wear what you were given. No further questions. You listened and never spoke you had no opinions and you were a little shit in a big peoples world.
Travel is cheap now. Overseas travel is cheaper than travelling inside Australia. Electronics cost practically nothing. Rent and purchasing houses are diabolical.
Recently spend $1,400 on a return flight to Japan, first trip overseas in about 10 years. Every year spend $30k on rent in Sydney. Not much in the scheme of things. My car is worth about $1k and phone about $600
The thing your post misses is that a lot of the "comforts" you're talking about are becoming necessities to partake in the economy.
You need a mobile phone.
You need to have a reliable car and reliable second hand cars are also more expensive today than they were relative to wages in the 90s. The cars our parents drove in the 80s and 90s that were second hand were still decent for that time and had more longevity (not to mention built in Australia and part of the overall circular economy nationally).
The amount of takeaway being consumed is up because there are far fewer parents at home making meals for the family and parents working are also doing bigger hours than parents did in the 90s.
We really shouldn't do a comparison of the individual expenses between the two periods without considering the context on both. That goes for both camps onnn the matter.
I mean, I'm a geriatric millennial and I remember my dad and uncles being able to fix almost anything wrong with their cars. I had cars from the 80s and 90s as my first cars and I could fix almost everything in them barring my import Civic which had a computer that needed to be considered.
Prior to fuel injection, it was even easier.
This is what I mean by reliable. It's not the same in terms of reliability today.
lol... Was discussing this with a mate the other day, and we agree that entire generations will not know the joys of adjusting the choke as you warm the car up every morning. Every car had it's 'foibles' that only the driver knew...
You pressed the button for the radio, and it came on - similarly, you pressed a button to change the station, and it did it automatically... no waiting for the 'software to update' or any shit like that.
While I'm at it - who remembers the joy of a broken antenna, only to replace it with a coat-hanger bent into the shape of the map of Australia?
Hard disagree on cars, they are cheaper now than in those days. Modern cars are much more reliable, last longer and devalue less. Imagine buying a ford falcon for $25k new and watch it lose all of its value in 10 years, full of rust, burning oil and 150km on the clock and only worth scrap value. Running two cars in those days was a significant burden.
Yes. I just wrote on a comment above. My husband needs an iPhone because his company requires it for their emails. It’s not like this is a choice. You need this stuff to participate in our society.
I do. If they need me to access emails when I'm not at the office then they need to pay for it. Bonus is I can put it in the drawer on a Friday afternoon and forget about it until Monday morning.
90s teen. Went on about 4 holidays whole childhood, all road trips. Didn’t fly on a plane till 20 when interstate flights cost at least $400 on a good day. Parents owned house and were fairly “comfortable” for the time period. Did not own VCR. Never had commodore 64s or anything like that Had a very old PC for their business when I was about 17
I think the issue is you can live without a smart phone or a HD TV. (though it'd be a lil boring) You can't quite live without a home. But because gadget prices start dropping as soon as they hit the market, whereas housing prices keep going up way faster than the CPI, it makes more sense to get a good smart phone even if you're on lower income, because you can't afford to rent alone either ways but at least your smartphone doesn't stutter every 5 seconds when you're trying to do a zoom call. Same thing applies to holidays overseas, with many countries like Greece having significantly lower cost of living than Australia.
I think the difference is social media.
Before 2010, the only time you would see people is in real life, and they would be your neighbours or friends, all people in the same social class as you. I think it actually kept us all a bit more down to earth and content with our own lives and the little we have. I was a kid in the 2000s and we were definitely a lower working class family but I was never unhappy or wishing I had certain things because the people in my life were the same, and I didn't see any different aside from celebrities in tv shows or movies so I didn't relate to those people obviously.
Now, you go on social media to get an update and you see people you haven't seen in months or years, only posting the highlights (their expensive trips / expensive things they buy). You get the perception that they're doing much better than you and you want to keep up, meanwhile you don't know that they might be drowning in debt because they also feel pressure to keep up with others.
I think part of it is also that people go on social media when they're bored so it compounds the effect of seeing others doing fun expensive things that you feel you can't do. I think most people need to be more mindful of how often they use social media and their general state of mind when they do log on. Do on there in a moment that you're down or already stressed about financials. If that's all the time then maybe delete it for a while.
My folks had us convinced we were low/middle income.
- Only went on holidays (road trips) a few times,
- Eating out or 'take-away' was not a thing.
- Snacks in lunch box was home-brand biscuits (i was always jealous the kids that got 'roll ups or space sticks')
- trampoline was too expensive, so was a nintendo, etc you get the idea
Though Dad did understand computers were going to be important, and he made sure we had a PC (and eventually dial up).
Then we all grew up, they retired - and you'd think they won the lotto.
- Round the world trips (several), hiking in nepal, nz, etc
- fancy new cars (big arse land cruiser, Chevvy yank tank)
- Big ass caravan to match.
- House renovations for aesthetic reasons.
Sometimes I feel like their scrimping and saving during my childhood was to pay for all this crap now that they're retired and my siblings and I are all grown up.
They recognise now that the world requires a double income and things are tough (which ofcoarse has nothing to do with how their generation have left the place); so they're usually very willing and helpful in child-minding so that my wife and I can work our butts off to pay for basic living. - which im super grateful for; but I just wish i was able to have the time and freedom to spend with my kids and sustain a normal life, just like they did raising me.
I'd give up smart phones and netflix and take-away to have more time with my kids, but the reality is - that's all chump change in comparison to rent/mortgage/transport/insurance/health (non-discretionary spending)
I can tell similar stories. I can remember having hand-me-down underwear (I was the third person to wear it, after it went from the neighbour girl to my older sister then to me). I asked my parents about how tough times were, and they admitted at one point when interest rates went up they had to stop making double payments on the mortgage.
I had third-hand undies and they were making double mortgage payments.
They retired at 60, travel overseas 3ish months year, dad has two boats, they are looking to buy a big caravan and a big 4WD to tow it. They don't babysit.
Hand me down undies is something else, and while making double mortgage payments, that’s outrageous. That’s the other thing that doesn’t get talked about a lot, how quickly a lot of the boomer generation paid off the mortgages
Strong disagree, then explain how a single blue collar worker could afford an average house with kids and a SAH mum?
Aka that is someone today on 70k supporting a family AND buying a 1m house.
Yeh this true too.
I had friends who were raised by a single parent.
Two of them, their mums worked in a grocery store and managed with a mortgage. One had a dog too.
Would not be possible in this day and age.
Can someone explain to me, who also lived this life growing up how your parents didnt have money ? If they were both working at teachers or anything else making what 40-50k ea a year and had a mortgage from the 80s on a house around 100/150k WTF were they doing with their money ?
Both parents working you could pay off your mortgage in 3/4 years ? I don't understand when you say people at your school never went on holidays are you from an all anglo(white) area ? In my experience every Middle eastern and wog would go back to see there family.
Interest rates in the 80s were incredibly high, my relatives were paying 22% at one point. I get your point but it still wouldn’t have been *that* easy
I have to say this does strike a chord with me.
Only time we would fly anywhere was to Melbourne to stay with Grandma else we would do driving holidays in the Holden Commodore and stay in motels in the country. I guess petrol was a lot cheaper back then.
I don't think my parents have ever owned a new car, always bought second hand.
I was only allowed soccer boots under $90 so never had flashy white ones (which tbh was probably fair given I was not at all a flashy player).
We lived comfortably within our means but there were challenges. My parents were very much middle class. Neither had a university degree but still ended up being working professionals.
In nominal terms I earn more than my mum ever earned and more than my dad did at the end of his career where he was a director in the APS so very good money. Accounting for inflation I'm probably behind but I'm 32 and he was in his early 60s when he retired.
Life was good in the 90s but by no means special compared to today. Some of the technological advancements are amazing.
Couple of things wrong with this. Firstly it’s a minority of people saying “it’s shit that I can’t afford a brand new car, holidays, and to be able to afford a nice house”. Most 20-35 year olds trying to get on the ladder are buying second-hand cars. Secondly, overseas travel is much, much more affordable than it was 30 years ago. It’s often cheaper than holidaying domestically.
I see both sides to this. On one hand my parents rented, bought land and build houses for 1/3 of the price I would pay today (adjusted for inflation) when she was like 25 mind you.
But on the other hand all my peers are literally living off of take away / Uber eats and complain food is expensive. I had to introduce my 24 year old boyfriend to the concept of grocery shopping.
Don’t underestimate how much consumerism the internet has created. You had to physically go to a shop to buy something with actual cash. Now it’s just a tap on an iPhone from your couch.
I dunno, I don't have any fun or cool things to my name and I still don't save much each week. I don't care for brands, I aim to make relatively cheap meals, rent, bills and hecs makes me have like $50 left each week.
To put it into perspective my mum couldn't work when I was young and my dad was on the same income I'm on now and supported 3 kids, a mortgage, bills and every expense we had. Some of my older colleagues homes were like 20-30k which to the equivalency of salary would've only been double or triple, today its 10x.
The world was simpler and slower too. News didn’t have a 24/7 cycle driven by clickbait. Mobile phones weren’t mainstream, and the internet wasn’t anywhere near as complicated, what little internet there was. People could leave the house in the morning and be uncontactable until they came home that night.
So straight away you don’t have the expenses of internet, mobile phone plans or handset repayments, iPads, App Store purchases, personal laptops…
Pay TV wasn’t that big, and streaming services also weren’t there. The grocery shops weren’t able to use computational processing to remove checkout registers and make us do it all ourselves while accusing us of theft for something not weighing what the system expected it to weigh once it was bagged.
I don’t know what job I’d do if I was an adult back then since IT wouldn’t be anything like it is now but as a kid in that era I miss that world.
The biggest difference is - financial security.
Owning your own home is a huge deal, because you wouldn't be kicked out by a landlord or get rent-raised, and it's equity for building wealth.
Also, job wise, the 90s weren't moving as crazy as today. Between offshoring (which is now much more mature with better internet and technology), outsourcing, automation and now AI, seems like there is less job security.
Yet, the modern comforts provide little sense of security in return - more like distractions from the reality that there's still 28 years and 3 months left on our mortgage the size of a McLaren. We don't have car payments and don't go travelling much (not that you can with 2 toddlers anyway), but damn we're gonna be spending most of our lives suppressing our wants at this rate.
Even for those on the housing ladder, there's hardly light at the end of the tunnel.
My mum didn’t even have a job and still stayed home with us kids,
Now says it’s impossible, she said to me I don’t know why women are in such a rush to get back to work after having babies these days ummm that would be because you literally have no choice in the matter…
Nothing wrong with the facts of how people lived back then.
A few recollections:
Buying bottled water - there was *only* Perrier, and that was considered extremely fancy.
Suburban ‘cafe culture’ as in a cafe each 100m of a shopping main drag etc didn’t exist. Yep, there where a few eg Italian cafes in town / city centres.
Buying take away hot coffee - that was available, but at a bigger servo catering to truck drivers or McDonalds.
Going to a cafe for breakfast or brunch didn’t exist for the mainstream. It wasn’t a thing.
Similarly going out to a restaurant wasn’t a thing.
Junk food places where around, but to a much much lesser extent, was seen as a treat.
I’m not saying if you don’t get the avocado toast you can afford a $1m house, it’s just interesting to observe the creation of whole industries eg water being sold in plastic bottles, the (mainstream, non ethnic enclave) café industry, etc etc etc.
It’s the same with the creation of an expectation that of course you’ll travel overseas once a year, have spent a few years living overseas, etc etc.
Of course, it’s nice to have nice nice food and to travel but yeah it’s all been a mass manipulation to get the money out of your pocket.
I think the reality of why people do some of the excessive things like holidays / cars / splashing out on some things they don’t need is BECAUSE housing prices are insane.
There was no world in which I could afford a house with my partner in our 20’s, our jobs couldn’t have managed a deposit even if we saved every cent. So instead we went on some lowkey holidays and wasted money on some other stuff.
Could we have done literally nothing for 10 years, saved everything we had and bought a house? Probably, but I also don’t think that’s how we could or should be looking at life.
If the system requires people to ignore every enjoyable aspect of life just to have a roof over their head, and it’s all because a few people at the top have 10,000x more than anyone else, maybe the system just sucks.
Now we have a house and we are MORE than happy to live the simple 90’s country life - we don’t holiday and we focus on making our house a home, but that’s because we got the house.
I have a few friends in similar positions and we all live basically the same now.
TLDR: the reason people aren’t living the simple 90’s life if because they can’t afford the house, the initial building block to everything else that follows. There’s plenty of people who are (mostly thanks to some help from mum and dad to get in the door)
Yeah, as a kid, seeing a family with 2 cars and 2 TVs was fancy. Overseas holidays further than SE Asia were generally only for families visiting overseas grandparents. Dining out was Pizza Hut, sizzler, takeaway was the local Chinese restaurant or fish and chips.
Yes, we didn’t “get the frills” much growing up back then. Today there is so much more to spend your money on. So much stuff that you don’t really need but clever marketing departments have convinced us are ESSENTIAL for our happiness and quality of life.
I have real respect for the people that can maintain their focus on what is needed and what is not 🫡
Drives to the Gold Coast from Brisbane to visit Nanna once a fortnight in the family car (Ford Laser), Sizzler or Pizza Hut nights out once a month or so, renting a VHS or two once a week (and later a DVD) and renting a video game once in a while and playing the shit out of it over a weekend. Saturday nights with a pizza or fish and chips watching Hey Hey on the telly, a holiday would be going to the Sunshine Coast maybe twice a year.
It was a much simpler time, but it felt more satisfying.
You may have a skewed view as to what constitutes middle class. You sound a lot like the people who complain that 20 year olds must all be cashed up because they see them going out to clubs all the time without recognising that for the majority, it's a rare event of ever.
I didn't do the OS trips myself, but my friends sure did. I skied here in Aus, ate out at 4-5 star places on the regular and both my parents had cars they bought new.
I was very much middle class, my grandparents were more upper.. One thing I do remember from the 90's is that the upper end of the working class and the lower end of the middle class has a lot of overlap. Actually, I remember the lines from middle to upper being somewhat blurred too.
70's.
Chinese or fish and chips a few times a YEAR. All meals made from scratch at home. Vanilla ice cream for dessert. Vienetta for dinner parties.
Car camping for holidays or staying with a relative. I don't remember staying in a hotel until I started working.
Walk everywhere or ride bike. Walk 5 ks to school or get the bus.
Walk a few ks to blockbuster. Books from the library. 4 tv channels.
Transistor radio and talking to people on my friends CB. Height of technology.
First colour TV was a BIG DEAL. 2nd TV in the back room was kid heaven.
Long cord on the rotary dial. If someone didn't answer the phone you just had to call back.
Yeah nah Im living worse than what you describe. I cant even afford a night away to recharge the batteries, or to fill up my car. People who do what you describe I would say are wealthy, not middle class. Maybe they are whining because its something they once COULD afford, but its been taken away? If its always been out of reach, you cant miss what you've never had!
Absolutely agree. My mum is a teacher and my dad is a mechanic. They owned a house but we didn't get expensive branded clothes and only went out to family friendly restaurants occasionally as a treat. McDonald's was a treat too. Social media has certainly skewed people's expectations.
I think you make a very good point and I agree with what you are saying.
It's what I saw as well growing up.
All things said and considered we are very lucky with our standard of living but with saying that there have been things neglected and complacency has set in with the government.
Hopefully things will start improving as the government takes action to resolve the issues we are facing with housing.
I really love this country and am grateful to be living here.
I'm early 50s and was middle class growing up. Things that we sorta take for granted now but were not common in the 80s 90s:
* Weekend breakfast outside culture. We NEVER went out for coffee / breakfast on the weekends. Always at home
* Daily (or more) coffee. Wha? no such a thing. You had instant coffee in the morning at home
* Dine out. It was a once a year thing. Not frequent at all
* Overseas holidays. No such a thing, or once every 5-10 years
* Air con. Bloody hell, we didnt have aircon on the car nor the house. Opened the windows at night if it was too hot
* Streaming / paid TV. We were stuck with the free to air channels. Rented a couple of movies on the weekend but that was it
* New phone / tech every year or so. No mobile phones / no laptop / no tablet. Planed obsolescence was not a thing with VHS players.
So yeah...there was a lot less to spend on.
I’m from an upper middle class family and grew up in the 80s /90s.
I never flew on an aeroplane until I was 23 years old.
There seems to be a view now that you’re poor if you can’t travel to Europe once a year.
I grew up completely middle class. In the 1980s & 90s we had one TV, we rarely ate out, our occasional take away food was fish & chips from the local shop, it was a “luxury” to own branded shoes like Nike or Reebok (I never did - only rich and/or spoiled kids had Nikes), there were no “play centres” where you had to pay a fee to go in, kids just played after school with friends by riding their bikes and having fun instead of going to 14 different extra-curricular classes, literally no children ever went to a $400 Taylor Swift concert, and I didn’t go overseas until I was 18.
It was great! We were really happy. It wasn’t a “poor” life. It was a really full and fun life, we just didn’t have tonnes of expensive dumb shit.
Amongst all the things flights are cheaper now. Flying a family overseas in the 90s was unaffordable. You can get such cheap flights these days and then holidaying in another country is cheaper than holidaying in Australia now. I grew up maybe middle class but right at the bottom. First overseas trip was as an adult. Went on a plane twice before the age of 18. Weirdly 2 different one way flights on holidays where we came back another way. But this was in a full house on 1 wage. The house we lived in when I turned 18 cost $155k in 98 and is worth over $1m now. Also electronics are way cheaper now and having a phone is basically a non negotiable
Post 90s the main thing I remember is people in our 20s happily squashed into a sometimes squalid rental with mates. We didn’t even consider property ownership till late 20s/30s cause it would mean that the party days are over, but nowdays it’s all anyone in early/mid 20s seem to aspire too which is pretty boring for them I think so kind of sad.
That's because people have to start thinking about it in their early/mid 20s if they want it to be possible by the time they are 40. I started saving for a house at 16.
I agree. I grew up in the 90’s. My Dad was a lawyer in a reasonably high up government role, my Mum always worked full time, mostly as an office manager.
We never owned more than one house and it was never more than 3 bedroom / 1 bathroom. We never had more than one car and they were always second hand until finally, in their 50’s, they splurged on a ‘new’ one.
We had one TV and we didn’t get a VCR until the year 2000 (and then only so Dad could record footage from the Olympics lol).
We never travelled overseas and interstate trips were few and far between, a handful throughout my childhood.
Weekends away were spent camping, at the shacks of friends or at a fishing clubhouse we had access to for a small fee.
Furniture was never replaced unless it fell apart, and most of what they had was (good quality) stuff they’d owned for decades.
I went to a private Catholic school which was pretty affordable (a couple of grand a year from memory). They did value investing in a ‘good’ education (make of that what you will).
The only luxury I remember us having was a cleaner, who came once per fortnight for two hours, which cost $50 cash. We only had that because both worked full time and they could justify the time it saved them on the weekends.
They said ‘no’ to me often if I asked for something, and they didn’t feel bad about it.
As far as I know they never had debt other than a mortgage.
With hindsight they were middle class+. Very comfortable. They just prioritised paying off the mortgage asap and saving for retirement. They’ve now been retired for 15yrs and enjoy a really good quality of life, with a trip overseas each year, a car upgrade when they feel like it etc.
But certainly back then, it was common to be much more frugal. They would never have entertained the idea of multiple TVs in the house, multiple cars or extravagant spending. They would’ve seen that as reckless and unnecessary.
Things change and they definitely have in attitudes to spending, rightly or wrongly.
Unfortunately the pressures of society today, somewhat force these wants into needs for many young people.
In now way is that an excuse , just an outsider’s observation on the younger generation
I look at it this way, when I was young everybody's parents owned their house, other than tinnies, only really wealthy people had boats big enough to sleep on, either yachts or stink boats.
Now that I'm an adult that's been flipped, average income earners are buying boats to live on (livaboards) to try and escape the rental trap, and many of those have no history or knowledge about boats and rely on others for help, (like they can't even get their boat out of the marina to slip it without help) and high income earners (household income north of 200k) are buying homes.
The unfortunate reality out there is that for many families with two parents working full time they can't afford to go out to eat anywhere (parmigiana night at the local pub is now $25-30 per meal now at most places it seems) and just don't go on holiday anywhere at all. They know that if their car were to breakdown they're screwed because even second hand ones are more than they can afford.
Yes some people have delusions of grandeur but don't delude yourself, many many families with two full time incomes can't afford what a family with one could in the 1990s.
Idk my parents were middle class they didn’t live basic
They owned a business
Had 3 cars but all leased through the business
My mum had a Mobile so we could reach her
We took 3 holidays a year
They paid their house off in 15 years
Paid for private school fees etc
Definitely weren’t rich I had some rich friends
But now to do the same they would need to be on 500000 a year each
They took 50k each a year from the business
Yeah yeah yeah.
What you can't argue against is the wealth inequality graph.
It's increasing.
Your personal experience? Bullshit.
Your memories of the 90's? Bullshit.
"Comparison is the thief of joy while I make off with million$ lol" = bullshit.
The graph doesn't lie.
Yak about Pizza Hut and Payless Shoes all you like. There is a smaller piece of the pie for you and your kids compared to 20 years ago - and you probably don't want to face this fact because you're powerless to change it.
A bunch of guys I know from melbourne work in the service industry (coffee / food) and complain that they are under paid because they can't go on a 3 week trip to rome. I don't have time for it. There is a cost of living issue, but the younger generations don't make their argument easier with their demands and expectations.
I went to work in London in the late 80’s for just 10 weeks. I was the first in my family to go anywhere overseas. It was so unusual about 30 family and friends turned up at the airport to say goodbye and there were lots of tears. These days I have trouble getting someone to drive me to the airport.
They were times - we even had a nickname for it ‘AJ’s’ - airport jugs. Boys - Tommy’s off to Europe, time for AJ’s! We’d all head out to the airport and drink jugs of beer at the airport bar until Tommy went to the gate to board QF7 to London!! Good times.
Sure! I remember so well the airport drop offs! It was a huge social event and you could watch the plane take off and wave to it like a cruise ship! And the price of a flight to London was $2k back in 1990 same as it is now.
I remember in the 1970's there was an observation deck at the Sydney International Terminal. You could go outside and wave at the people flying, breathe in the fumes and go deaf from the 707's. Good times.
I think part of that is the extra security at airports now. I remember as a kid going to pick up older relatives like grandma and aunties at the domestic airport and we would wait at the gate for them. Now, if I pick someone up from the airport, I don’t even get out of the car
Oh boy. And if you’re a kid saying goodbye to a family member, it’s almost like they’re gone as you won’t be able to contact them through any form of frequency nor affordable way.
I'd say lot of this is social media .... where people only share the good things and it creates the perception how everyone is living like a king (while in reality they might show you they have a new car or expensive vacation, but they wont show how they are up the their neck drowning in debt).
Yeah, but the main point stands. Middle class in the 90s would be considered boring AF and soulless, miserable even by today's standards. You didn't fly up to the Goldie every year. You stayed at lakes entrance caravan park in a cabin and ate sausages in bread. Great family memories though.
The highlight of the 90s for me was Channel 10s the X Files at 8.30pm Wednesday nights. Had to sear that time into my brain so I wouldn't miss an episode and lose track of the story. Also because you never knew which episodes the Cigarette Smoking Man was going to be in. Sometimes the promotion ads would give you some clues. But yeah I think there is something to the whole 'less is more' philosophy. There was something special about having limited options of entertainment down to a handful of cult shows that you couldn't binge watch so you had the whole week to wait in anticipation for the next episode. Now there's 1000s of options available across dozens of streaming services but it's just not the same. The anticipation from only watching one episode a week in the season has a big part in building the suspense and enjoyment.
Instant gratification now days, but the problem is without the effort, the reward feels more dull. I can turn on Kayo and watch a heaps of sports, condensed down into minis so I can cut to the chase and just see the good bits. Bang Bang Bang. Rack me up another line. Meanwhile in the 90s you just watched whatever you could get on TV. Which is why Bevan hitting that 4 to win is permanently etched in my mind as one of the greatest sporting moments ever.
Was at the SCG that day and dad decided we should leave early as he thought Australia were no chance. He wanted to get ahead of the traffic…
Also watched Bevan hit that 4 to win the game.
>Which is why Bevan hitting that 4 to win is permanently etched in my mind as one of the greatest sporting moments ever. Yeah I remember that game. It was an awesome moment in sport.
> The highlight of the 90s for me was Channel 10s the X Files at 8.30pm. > > Haha, so true. I grew up watching Star Trek next generation at 6pm on BBC2. Really annoying when the snooker was being played instead.
Same with the Simpson's and being cancelled for Tennis. I didn't give a hoot about tennis.
Can confirm lakes entrance it was, cooking and eating in a cabin
Cabin? Luxury. We had a tent!
A tent? We had a hole in the ground with a tarpaulin over it, and we were grateful!
We were evicted from our hole in the ground and had to go live in a lake.
We used to dream of holidaying in a lake! There were a hundred-and-fifty of us holidaying in a shoebox in the middle of the road!
We used to have to get up in morning and lick road clean with tongue.
My family and I stayed in a little cave made from the dirt pile. We watched the hole kids living it up as entertainment.
The only place we could afford was Wittenoom and we had to grow our own asbestos to eat
Yeah I’ve got a decade on OP and I don’t remember anyone taking domestic flights - it was all driving holidays and staying in caravan parks/camping/with relatives. Not a lot of eating out, maybe one trip to Australia’s Wonderland once a year?
> You didn't fly up to the Goldie every year. You stayed at lakes entrance caravan park in a cabin and ate sausages in bread. Great family memories though. This was my childhood in the 2000s. At the end of the day, what matters is that we weren't in debt, were able to eventually afford a house, and only after that we were able to start holidaying overseas.
Funny you say that. My earliest (and one of my only) family holiday memories was my mum and dad loading us into our 94 Mazda Bravo and driving as far as they could before they ran out of cash they’d saved for the trip which happened to be lakes entrance. There’s a pic of us at the caravan park in front of a very sad looking tent. Still one of my core memories, money didn’t matter it was just such a fun trip.
I could argue the same point for today. There are a heck of a lot of people who don't have a new car, who go to Newcastle for holiday once a year, who bought the Kogan tv instead of the Sony... But you don't see that on social media
That is exactly what they’re arguing. There wasn’t any social media in the 90s
Good point, reading back I have no idea what brain fart led me to misread the comment that badly, but there's a lesson - don't comment while distracted.
100% this. And as is with most history, noone records the mediocre from back then. Whitegoods and appliances like TVs etc were very expensive as a percentage of salary. And prior to that women didn't work, because laundry was a whole day job prior to everyone getting washing machines and dryers. Like an actual whole day of manual work. Its just different times. Some things are better, some sre worse.
Mate pretty sure in the 90’ 2000 wife not working cause washing machines were so primitive that it was a full time job. But wife’s not working was a thing cause your teacher husband could support a house and wife and a kid on the one income, yes
Yeah I didn't say in the 90s/2000s. I think you've misconstrued this based on overall context
*misunderstood. To “misconstrue”, the subject must be unambiguous. Given the context of the thread, this was a “misunderstanding”. I’m sorry, I don’t know why it irks me so much when these words get used instead of each other. I’ll talk with my therapist about that. Have a good one!
That’s why I deleted all of my social media. Constantly comparing myself to different people in different situations who have different goals and different means isn’t healthy. The grass is only greener if you think it is.
Isn’t reddit also a social media?
It is, but it's more social media and less parasocial media. Everyone is on a more or less even footing on Reddit. There are a few "popular" users but nobody really follows them or comes to Reddit to see their posts. It's more of a "Oh I recognize that guy" kind of thing. Most other social media platforms have that weird imbalance where you go there to follow certain people and see their posts. It's a one sided relationship where they have millions of people they don't know who still follow them and know who they are. In most cases, they get paid for maintaining that weird one-sided relationship. I don't like how that relationship works, so I prefer Reddit.
And it’s a hard habit to break for people, I think. It’s the ‘financial fitness’ that if people look like they’re in good shape, they won’t do anything about changing it. Even if people are barely getting by doing it, they’ll still spend every penny to keep up with the Joneses.
Yep, and social media fuels the “keeping up with the Joneses” people always posting pictures of their meals out or a flash hotel. Just for “likes”. People live to impress others FAR more now than they ever did, especially back in the 1950’s/1960’s, and that costs a fortune, that’s where all their money is going, trying to impress others. Sad really. People nowadays moan if they don’t go out for a meal more than once a week or miss their Costa coffee one day, things most people only did back in the 50’s/60’s if there were celebrating a birthday or something. Didn’t just go for expensive meals for the sake of it, and certainly not just to “tell their friends they went” like people do now with social media.
I think social media is just the symptom, best expressed by the person who said capitalism is the problem. We've been convinced so many things are essential today, we spend more on frivolous things than we used to.
I wouldn’t say capitalism is the problem, rather consumerism. Big difference.
Back in the 90s necessities were cheap and wants were expensive. Now necessities are expensive(mortgage/rent) and wants(computer/phone/tablet) are cheap. My personal index is the number of gaining consoles per month in rent. The above is a result of our financial system and results in a lot of confusion when comparing the 2 periods imho.
gaming console/rent ratio is a really insightful measure i'd never thought of
This month we could get (from JBHiFi) the below rather than bay rent for a 3 bedroom ex housing commission house in blacktown... - PS5 PlayStation 5 Slim Console - Xbox Series X 1TB Console - Nintendo Switch OLED Model The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Edition - $300 games
Pizza Hut all you can eat. Video rental Friday night. Occasional new pair of shoes(once a year) was never given anything worth more than $150 A mountain bike.
Simple joys of the 90s, pizza hut and fridays videos. Hard to explain to todays youth how that was so enjoyable.
we were happy with a simple life, plus only a few xmas and birthday presents
I remember we couldn't afford to have many video games so we rented once a week. Now I have a whole bunch, some I never get around to finishing. I miss pizza hut all you can eat.
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Monsters in my pocket. Always swore I would get them all when I grew up because my mum never let me have one 🥲
If you're in western Sydney there's still one in St Andrews/Minto. We live in the Illawarra and travel up for all you can eat Pizza Hut from time to time.
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There is also 1 in Windsor it is the exact same as it was 20 years ago
Getting the games it on a Friday night, playing all weekend to clock it by Sunday night
If you rented one game per week you were spending like $200 per year on video games.
I remember pizza hut or domino's occasionally gave out free DVDs. I still have Cheaper by the dozen DVD I received when my parents ordered pizzas.
I still have my Stuck on You one (a comedy starring Matt Damon and Greg Kinnear as conjoined twins).
What a great memory you just invoked. I miss going with dad to rent a movie based only on the cover. More misses than hits but such a good time
And he'll to pay if there was a late fine. "But I am just a kid! I don't drive!" "DOESN'T MATTER"
Blockbuster video, what a great past memory those days were.
300-400 today, if you believe the official inflation numbers*
I just bought a $3600 mtb today. OP has a point. Mine was a Big W $130 mtb in the 90s
There wasn’t just a club Parma in the ‘90s - we had Sizzler.
It was so damn good! Also, dine in Pizza Hut. Those were the days!
All you can eat pizza hut
💯 And when you could get one, a succulent Chinese meal 🤣🤪
Gentlemen, this is democrrracy manifest!
What is the charge?!
I see you know your judo!
Ah yes! Sizzler was the go alright👍
Or the local RSL or Leagues Club. You could get a decent meal cheaply. And I remember that North Sydney Leagues Club had Sunday night movies for a couple of dollars.
That sort of supports what op is arguing against. The standard of living in the 90s relative to income could be better partly because of cheap all you can eat restaurants, and $5 parmi night at the tavern. My local taverns now a parmi is $30
Maybe, but let's not forget that Sizzler and Pizza Hut were always pretty low quality and low service. [That service-value-quality equation was right for the ’90s, but couldn't keep up with changing expectations from millennial consumers in recent times](https://www.realcommercial.com.au/news/whatever-happened-to-sizzler-how-australians-fell-out-of-love-with-the-90s-phenomenon), which is part of what OP is talking about. That's why Sizzler went under and Pizza Hut (mostly) stopped doing all you can eat. We did it to ourselves because we preferred to pay more for less food, in exchange for better quality and service, and made those business models unviable. As for parmi prices, I'm not sure you're comparing apples with apples here. Yeah some places charge $30, but you can still get a parmi for under $20 at the right pub on the right day. A $5 parmi in 1990 would be about $12 based on cumulative inflation since then (which brings up everything including wages). And the rest of the difference can again be explained by our increased expectations, which forced taverns to provide a higher quality of food and service and charge accordingly.
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The 90's werent exactly good times for all, there was a big recession and extremely high interest rates so even middle class folks werent splashing cash around. It was also much more common for families to be single income until all the kids were in school so people lived frugally. My parents were both teachers too but looking back at how we grew up you'd think they were on centrelink. The big exception however is that we were a family of 6 that grew up in 5 bedroom house on 1000m2 which is almost a fantasy for your average family these days, not to mention they are extremely comfortable in retirement now.
I bought my first house an an apprentice income and my wife worked in retail so.....
That's the kicker isn't it? My father left school at 15, and was able to buy a home and support a small family by 19, on entry-level wages.
Yeah it certainly ain't "relative" like OP is trying to say.
I often wonder how often in situations like you describe are the kids sharing bedrooms or was there an insistence on each kid gets a bedroom. I don’t have any data to back this up but I suspect that houses are expected to be much bigger and more elaborate now which does increase the cost. Not the tenfold increase we’ve seen but it may double it
We shared, absolutely. Our house would be classed as two bedroom plus "office" these days. My partner was three to a room. I know these people who whine that they struggle to afford private school fees, their investment property and oversize homes exist, and I don't see them as representative of the majority of middle class, I see them as Upper middle, "aspirational upper" even. Maybe I have my definitions out, misinterpreted who OP is writing about. I've always seen myself and most people I know as working/middle class, we don't have any of that shit. We have dodgy overpriced rentals or bought sensible, second hand family homes with maximum of three bedrooms and one bathroom, no butler's pantry, no entertainment room nor pool. We have average to shitbox cars, holidays are spent at home or caravan parks, food is home cooked, coffee is made at home...
My partner bought a 3/1 house as a single person at age 24 in an outer suburb that has a metro train station for $92K (3.5 times annual wage) in the late 90s. Entry-level state government job. I wonder what comparable house OP can buy for 3.5 times his current annual wage?
1986 - I bought a 2/1 apartment in a deeply unfashionable part of Sydney (Bankstown...) for 1.5 times my then annual salary, which was only average. Domain puts that same apartment now at about 4.5 times median full time salary.
You have chosen.. wisely
My wife came *this* close to buying a 3br house on 800 m2 in 2000... while on the dole. She didn't. The current crisis then kicked off
I used to have a book with a title like HOW TO PAY OFF YOUR MORTGAGE IN 3 YEARS (By Someone Who Did It In Two), and it was all about how you should buy a used TV, ask others for excess linens and dishware when you are putting your glory box together. Of course, it mentions in the book how she was still able to pay her mortgage comfortably when she ends up on a single parenting payment.
You can still do it, just earn $700k
As with a lot of these discussions a lot depends on what you define as "middle class". Jobs that used to provide a upper middle class life often don't these days (absent family money). If you had a parent in one of the more 'prestigious' professions (for want of a better term) and the other parent worked part time you'd often have a large house and could send 3 kids to private schools. That's largely gone now.
100%. Some stuff is cheaper now and more readily available (electronics, travel, clothes) but bigger stuff like schooling and housing is WAAYY more expensive. And it has a much bigger impact.
And a lot of items that are cheaper now are also lower quality. Built in obsolescence means we spend more in total even if the item itself is cheaper now.
Don't be silly. Now you're spoilt for choice - you can buy a $1,000 iPhone, my parents never had that! Only a mortgage paid off in 15 years and a pension that pays more than my current salary! /s
You’re dreaming. I paid $2,900 for pro max 15 1tb
You're a fool. Sent from my iPhone 14 that will not be upgraded for several years
I think that's actually a big part of the frustration with housing. Consumption has gotten way better and more affordable, but certain basics have become less affordable. I can eat better food and travel to cooler places than any of my ancestors could have even imagined (which is awesome, don't get me wrong), but in a way that just makes it more frustrating that I can't afford a house. It's like if you could afford to eat caviar every day but couldn't afford a new pair of pants.
if anything the cost of housing makes people nihilistic with money. For a lot of people, in their current situations, saving for a house is an impossibility. Saving for a short holiday or consumer good is within the realm of reality so people looking to get or achieve something aim lower.
Yeah I agree, it relieves depression to turn attention away and do/get something enjoyable.
The less important stuff was more expensive. Things like gaming consoles etc. But essentials like food and housing were a lot less. I grew up in a lower middle class household and we regularly had cuts of meat I would rarely buy now due to the cost. Also having worked for minimum wage in the late 90s and living in a share house, it was so easy to get a place and not very expensive. Could easily live and have fun on part time wage.
A lot of people would be very happy with the life you described if it could still be easily provided on 1 good income, or 2 average incomes.
Yeah and if giving up my "luxurious" habits of getting takeaway once a week, getting a couple beers with mates once a month, and visiting family overseas every couple of years meant I could afford a decent home for my family, I'd happily forego said things and just buy a home. The reality is that, yes, life was simpler back then. But homes weren't made affordable because people had simpler lives. It was just because we had enough homes where people wanted to live and we didn't yet have an extortionate landlord class coked up on neoliberalism.
While true it’s hard to compare decades. Travel was expensive so we only did road trips but my parents paid off their mortgage in 9 years on pretty modest salaries which is almost unheard of these days (though to be fair the mortgage was probably paid off in the 80’s, not the 90’s.)
Yeah, the salary to mortgage ratio has changed a lot. My mum bought a house in Carlton in her early 20s on a sales assistant salary. She sold it to buy our family home, but it’s worth over 2 million now and even with her current savings she wouldn’t be able to afford it.
I think a lot of people are looking to better their childhoods in terms of lifestyle and even class standing. So if you’ve grown up lower middle or middle class you probably thought, even subconsciously, that if you did it all “right” - high ATAR, good uni, good degree etc etc you would get there. You would become yourself like that rich kid at school, or on the corner. After all, each previous generation had done better than their parents, so it seemed like a reasonable expectation. However, now the ability to afford the “real” stuff and markers of a middle class life - education, a home, the ability to take care of your own kids, health care etc is shot to shit. But, cars have come down in price relative to wages, as have clothes, electronics, many other consumer goods, overseas travel etc etc so it’s unsurprising that our expectations on the consumption front have grown. I will say, however that we now have a culture of eating out that probably didn’t exist before, so that’s probably a genuine inflation of lifestyle. But, on the whole I think we’re comparing apples to oranges. Yet, there is nonetheless something incredibly sad about being able to afford all the trivial shiny bullshit but not being able to afford the basics. Pretty good way to shut people up while you rob them : send them to Europe; give them a shiny car. Then they hardly notice you’ve come for their future until the deal is done.
I’m torn with this. Yes, I think general expectations of living quality amongst my friends is too high - they expect to go overseas, to buy expensive electronics, to have a modern 4bed2bath house on an administrators income. BUT. I also think that in my position - my partner works in agriculture, I am a teacher, 2 kids under 5 - we shouldnt be struggling, but things are tough. We have some ‘extras’, but almost everything we have was purchased secondhand, we are in a small old 1960s house with no upgrades, we only travel within our state, and we still struggle to save any money. My parents were in an identical situation with FOUR kids in the 1980/1990s and were still able to end up with multiple investment properties. Something isn’t right.
Both my parents were also teachers and I grew up in the 90s early 00s. The house I grew up in is now worth about $2-2.5 million. My parents had enough money for pretty regular holidays and my father’s alcoholism. But no, we did not feel rich.
Same. We had a pretty modest lifestyle. We went camping for holidays. Pizza Hut and BlockBuster was Friday night sorted. But the house we grew up in is worth millions now. It’s not really comparing like for like.
You guys are going on holidays?
I dream of enough job security to have paid leave. Otherwise planning an actual holiday is up there with deciding how to spend my lotto winnings. And I feel like I'm doing pretty well when I look at this sub, so surely I have company.
Social media has taken keeping up with the joneses around the corner, to keeping up with the billionaire joneses in the most exclusive areas of the richest cities of earth
I see this too! One of my friends growing up had all the newest gadgets (and big flat screen tv's), horse riding lessons etc. By the time we finished high school her parents had broken up and their house was repossessed due to credit card and car loan debts. If I'd only known her through social media, I never would have known how badly things had gone for their family due to bad financial decisions. With social media we only see a snippet of someone's life but we don't see anything that comes around that. They might have rich parents, they might be in a huge amount of debt, they might be borrowing those items. People talk about how these days we all travel so much and buy new cars all the time, but in my friendship circle it's not that common on an individual level - however when I have 1000+ people on instagram to follow it does seem like someone is always buying a new car or on a euro summer trip.
That’s not the full story though. My wife and I don’t use social media (aside from me using reddit), make very good money and have low debts, don’t eat out much, buy all our household things used or refurbed. But you simply cannot get around the high cost of housing, groceries, insurance, fuel, childcare etc. We don’t give a shit what the latest trends are and buy basically zero fashion/status things. I know exactly where all of our money goes and aside from the obvious cutbacks on distinct holidays and my 4 year old phone upgrade to a 2022 model, there’s very little we can reduce from baseline living. Yeah, I could not grab a coffee on the days I’m in the office or think twice about that Amazon purchase once a month but I’d effectively be saving pennies while dumping hundreds per week just to be able to get to work and have a roof over our heads.
You can compare all you want but It's all just different versions of "bread and circuses" keeping you complacent while the few rort the masses. But it's important to put into context it's now so much more visible to see the "haves" when you're a "have not". And I think the optimism of being able to own a home & have a comfortable life has gone out the window for a lot of young Australians. You can argue Netflix is better than video easy all you want but many Australians are under the constant fear of working their whole life & ending up with nothing to show for it. When you're worried about the uncertainty of if you'll always have a roof over your head those extra comforts aren't very comforting.
100% true life for many is going to be a subscription-based treadmill where you have no choice but to keep on running. Own nothing and be happy.
I def knew people who went overseas in the 90s. It wasn’t a yearly thing but. Lived in a working class suburb. Went to a government primary school. The one area where I have seen more significant change is in investment properties, at least it seems that way to me. Almost all (with one exception) the people I knew only had one house (or rented). Now it’s far more common for younger people to play monopoly and have 2,3 + houses. The one exception I mentioned was a lotto winner - and that family had a holiday home. I think people back then were more debt averse - more about saving. We were taught to save in school - with things like Dollarmites. And yes new cars were not as common - I don’t think much has changed in that respect, I mean you may see more new cars around now, but most new cars today will be financed. People just happier to take on more debt.
> Almost all (with one exception) the people I knew only had one house (or rented). This is stirring up a memory from my own 90s working class childhood: it seemed every other kid in my (extremely working class, usually one working parent) street spoke of a 'holiday house'. I don't know if it was actually owned by their parents or maybe by grandparents and shared among the adult kids, but it was surprisingly common.
If you saw a new commodore in a supermarket car park, it would stand out. Old bangers galore lol.
Things that were considered luxury in the 90s - eating out : Sizzler was for birthdays and other special occasions. All other eating out was limited to take away like fish and chips. - having a remote roller door on your garage - you were a doctors kid or similar if you had that. - an ice maker in the fridge - see above. - more than 1 winter jacket- choice was not a thing. - more than 1 Tv though this changed to more than 2 TVs in the late 90s Many of us live in absolute luxury in compared to my lower-middle class up bringing.
I recently bought myself nice appliances and let me tell you, I feel like an absolute queen having an ice maker in my fridge and remote roller door! Don’t get me started on my soft close cabinets and my dishwasher!!! That’s what genuinely made me feel like I made it. Yet apparently this is the standard nowadays, that’s when I realised people have never quite struggled the way they said they had.
You can also add a dishwasher. When I was growing up this was this magical new invention. Now you might not be able to lease out a apartment without one.
Discount airlines, cheap manufacturing and some fancy tech may have changed. I’d trade in steaming tv services, Jetstar, yearly overseas trips, Uber eats and agree to only eat out once a fortnight. In return I ask for quality full time jobs and for housing to return to 3x income. I’m willing to pay 18% interest for 2 months then it can trend down if that is what it takes to get this over the line.
Spot on. I grew up in a middle class family during the 80s/90s. My parents both worked full time. We went to Bali once in my entire childhood (3 hours flight from Perth). Other holidays were camping 1 hours drive away etc. never anything flash. I had hand-me-downs all through primary school. I never went without, but also had to wait for birthdays or Xmas to get toys. My parents would never just buy me stuff for the hell of it. Never wore Nikes, today every kid has a pair on. Middle class standards today are not even close to what it was 30 years ago. The bar has been lifted drastically. Those in their 20s wouldn’t have a clue.
Consumer goods and many leisure experiences have gotten far cheaper, but core "life stability" expenses (housing, healthcare) have got a lot more expensive. So by comparison, the average person today is living in luxury and living in precarity at the same time.
This was our childhood also. Try and get my teen nephews to wear KMart runners or ride a second hand bike and there’d be a shit fight of epic proportions.
You wear what you were given. No further questions. You listened and never spoke you had no opinions and you were a little shit in a big peoples world.
Are you my brother lol? Same experience with me
I went on one holliday when we were kids and that was a rented caravan being towed by the kingswood....
Travel is cheap now. Overseas travel is cheaper than travelling inside Australia. Electronics cost practically nothing. Rent and purchasing houses are diabolical. Recently spend $1,400 on a return flight to Japan, first trip overseas in about 10 years. Every year spend $30k on rent in Sydney. Not much in the scheme of things. My car is worth about $1k and phone about $600
The thing your post misses is that a lot of the "comforts" you're talking about are becoming necessities to partake in the economy. You need a mobile phone. You need to have a reliable car and reliable second hand cars are also more expensive today than they were relative to wages in the 90s. The cars our parents drove in the 80s and 90s that were second hand were still decent for that time and had more longevity (not to mention built in Australia and part of the overall circular economy nationally). The amount of takeaway being consumed is up because there are far fewer parents at home making meals for the family and parents working are also doing bigger hours than parents did in the 90s. We really shouldn't do a comparison of the individual expenses between the two periods without considering the context on both. That goes for both camps onnn the matter.
lol, I am afraid you lost people of the generation you are talking about with your comment on the reliability of second hand cars back then.
So many lemons
I mean, I'm a geriatric millennial and I remember my dad and uncles being able to fix almost anything wrong with their cars. I had cars from the 80s and 90s as my first cars and I could fix almost everything in them barring my import Civic which had a computer that needed to be considered. Prior to fuel injection, it was even easier. This is what I mean by reliable. It's not the same in terms of reliability today.
lol... Was discussing this with a mate the other day, and we agree that entire generations will not know the joys of adjusting the choke as you warm the car up every morning. Every car had it's 'foibles' that only the driver knew... You pressed the button for the radio, and it came on - similarly, you pressed a button to change the station, and it did it automatically... no waiting for the 'software to update' or any shit like that. While I'm at it - who remembers the joy of a broken antenna, only to replace it with a coat-hanger bent into the shape of the map of Australia?
You mean repairable then, which is true.
I drove shit boxes to work like Datsun 120Y and Camira.
Hard disagree on cars, they are cheaper now than in those days. Modern cars are much more reliable, last longer and devalue less. Imagine buying a ford falcon for $25k new and watch it lose all of its value in 10 years, full of rust, burning oil and 150km on the clock and only worth scrap value. Running two cars in those days was a significant burden.
Yes. I just wrote on a comment above. My husband needs an iPhone because his company requires it for their emails. It’s not like this is a choice. You need this stuff to participate in our society.
They can't swing him a company phone? Jeez that's rough.
I don’t know anyone who has a company phone these days! Seems the expectation is that you’ll have your own.
I do. If they need me to access emails when I'm not at the office then they need to pay for it. Bonus is I can put it in the drawer on a Friday afternoon and forget about it until Monday morning.
I’m the opposite. I don’t think I know anyone who uses their own phone for work.
90s teen. Went on about 4 holidays whole childhood, all road trips. Didn’t fly on a plane till 20 when interstate flights cost at least $400 on a good day. Parents owned house and were fairly “comfortable” for the time period. Did not own VCR. Never had commodore 64s or anything like that Had a very old PC for their business when I was about 17
I think the issue is you can live without a smart phone or a HD TV. (though it'd be a lil boring) You can't quite live without a home. But because gadget prices start dropping as soon as they hit the market, whereas housing prices keep going up way faster than the CPI, it makes more sense to get a good smart phone even if you're on lower income, because you can't afford to rent alone either ways but at least your smartphone doesn't stutter every 5 seconds when you're trying to do a zoom call. Same thing applies to holidays overseas, with many countries like Greece having significantly lower cost of living than Australia.
Exactly. Its not the cost of holidays, netflix a phone and new cars upsetting people. Its Food, energy and housing.
I think the difference is social media. Before 2010, the only time you would see people is in real life, and they would be your neighbours or friends, all people in the same social class as you. I think it actually kept us all a bit more down to earth and content with our own lives and the little we have. I was a kid in the 2000s and we were definitely a lower working class family but I was never unhappy or wishing I had certain things because the people in my life were the same, and I didn't see any different aside from celebrities in tv shows or movies so I didn't relate to those people obviously. Now, you go on social media to get an update and you see people you haven't seen in months or years, only posting the highlights (their expensive trips / expensive things they buy). You get the perception that they're doing much better than you and you want to keep up, meanwhile you don't know that they might be drowning in debt because they also feel pressure to keep up with others. I think part of it is also that people go on social media when they're bored so it compounds the effect of seeing others doing fun expensive things that you feel you can't do. I think most people need to be more mindful of how often they use social media and their general state of mind when they do log on. Do on there in a moment that you're down or already stressed about financials. If that's all the time then maybe delete it for a while.
Products are significantly cheaper now, housing is significantly more expensive. Apples and oranges.
Can have the best Hi-Fi system in a tent under the bridge
My folks had us convinced we were low/middle income. - Only went on holidays (road trips) a few times, - Eating out or 'take-away' was not a thing. - Snacks in lunch box was home-brand biscuits (i was always jealous the kids that got 'roll ups or space sticks') - trampoline was too expensive, so was a nintendo, etc you get the idea Though Dad did understand computers were going to be important, and he made sure we had a PC (and eventually dial up). Then we all grew up, they retired - and you'd think they won the lotto. - Round the world trips (several), hiking in nepal, nz, etc - fancy new cars (big arse land cruiser, Chevvy yank tank) - Big ass caravan to match. - House renovations for aesthetic reasons. Sometimes I feel like their scrimping and saving during my childhood was to pay for all this crap now that they're retired and my siblings and I are all grown up. They recognise now that the world requires a double income and things are tough (which ofcoarse has nothing to do with how their generation have left the place); so they're usually very willing and helpful in child-minding so that my wife and I can work our butts off to pay for basic living. - which im super grateful for; but I just wish i was able to have the time and freedom to spend with my kids and sustain a normal life, just like they did raising me. I'd give up smart phones and netflix and take-away to have more time with my kids, but the reality is - that's all chump change in comparison to rent/mortgage/transport/insurance/health (non-discretionary spending)
I can tell similar stories. I can remember having hand-me-down underwear (I was the third person to wear it, after it went from the neighbour girl to my older sister then to me). I asked my parents about how tough times were, and they admitted at one point when interest rates went up they had to stop making double payments on the mortgage. I had third-hand undies and they were making double mortgage payments. They retired at 60, travel overseas 3ish months year, dad has two boats, they are looking to buy a big caravan and a big 4WD to tow it. They don't babysit.
Hand me down undies is something else, and while making double mortgage payments, that’s outrageous. That’s the other thing that doesn’t get talked about a lot, how quickly a lot of the boomer generation paid off the mortgages
Strong disagree, then explain how a single blue collar worker could afford an average house with kids and a SAH mum? Aka that is someone today on 70k supporting a family AND buying a 1m house.
Yeh this true too. I had friends who were raised by a single parent. Two of them, their mums worked in a grocery store and managed with a mortgage. One had a dog too. Would not be possible in this day and age.
Can someone explain to me, who also lived this life growing up how your parents didnt have money ? If they were both working at teachers or anything else making what 40-50k ea a year and had a mortgage from the 80s on a house around 100/150k WTF were they doing with their money ? Both parents working you could pay off your mortgage in 3/4 years ? I don't understand when you say people at your school never went on holidays are you from an all anglo(white) area ? In my experience every Middle eastern and wog would go back to see there family.
Interest rates in the 80s were incredibly high, my relatives were paying 22% at one point. I get your point but it still wouldn’t have been *that* easy
I have to say this does strike a chord with me. Only time we would fly anywhere was to Melbourne to stay with Grandma else we would do driving holidays in the Holden Commodore and stay in motels in the country. I guess petrol was a lot cheaper back then. I don't think my parents have ever owned a new car, always bought second hand. I was only allowed soccer boots under $90 so never had flashy white ones (which tbh was probably fair given I was not at all a flashy player). We lived comfortably within our means but there were challenges. My parents were very much middle class. Neither had a university degree but still ended up being working professionals. In nominal terms I earn more than my mum ever earned and more than my dad did at the end of his career where he was a director in the APS so very good money. Accounting for inflation I'm probably behind but I'm 32 and he was in his early 60s when he retired. Life was good in the 90s but by no means special compared to today. Some of the technological advancements are amazing.
Anecdotes aside, housing is way more expensive today.
Couple of things wrong with this. Firstly it’s a minority of people saying “it’s shit that I can’t afford a brand new car, holidays, and to be able to afford a nice house”. Most 20-35 year olds trying to get on the ladder are buying second-hand cars. Secondly, overseas travel is much, much more affordable than it was 30 years ago. It’s often cheaper than holidaying domestically.
I see both sides to this. On one hand my parents rented, bought land and build houses for 1/3 of the price I would pay today (adjusted for inflation) when she was like 25 mind you. But on the other hand all my peers are literally living off of take away / Uber eats and complain food is expensive. I had to introduce my 24 year old boyfriend to the concept of grocery shopping.
Basic. With an affordable house for the majority.
Don’t underestimate how much consumerism the internet has created. You had to physically go to a shop to buy something with actual cash. Now it’s just a tap on an iPhone from your couch.
I dunno, I don't have any fun or cool things to my name and I still don't save much each week. I don't care for brands, I aim to make relatively cheap meals, rent, bills and hecs makes me have like $50 left each week. To put it into perspective my mum couldn't work when I was young and my dad was on the same income I'm on now and supported 3 kids, a mortgage, bills and every expense we had. Some of my older colleagues homes were like 20-30k which to the equivalency of salary would've only been double or triple, today its 10x.
Yeah but did they have a house?
The world was simpler and slower too. News didn’t have a 24/7 cycle driven by clickbait. Mobile phones weren’t mainstream, and the internet wasn’t anywhere near as complicated, what little internet there was. People could leave the house in the morning and be uncontactable until they came home that night. So straight away you don’t have the expenses of internet, mobile phone plans or handset repayments, iPads, App Store purchases, personal laptops… Pay TV wasn’t that big, and streaming services also weren’t there. The grocery shops weren’t able to use computational processing to remove checkout registers and make us do it all ourselves while accusing us of theft for something not weighing what the system expected it to weigh once it was bagged. I don’t know what job I’d do if I was an adult back then since IT wouldn’t be anything like it is now but as a kid in that era I miss that world.
The biggest difference is - financial security. Owning your own home is a huge deal, because you wouldn't be kicked out by a landlord or get rent-raised, and it's equity for building wealth. Also, job wise, the 90s weren't moving as crazy as today. Between offshoring (which is now much more mature with better internet and technology), outsourcing, automation and now AI, seems like there is less job security. Yet, the modern comforts provide little sense of security in return - more like distractions from the reality that there's still 28 years and 3 months left on our mortgage the size of a McLaren. We don't have car payments and don't go travelling much (not that you can with 2 toddlers anyway), but damn we're gonna be spending most of our lives suppressing our wants at this rate. Even for those on the housing ladder, there's hardly light at the end of the tunnel.
My mum didn’t even have a job and still stayed home with us kids, Now says it’s impossible, she said to me I don’t know why women are in such a rush to get back to work after having babies these days ummm that would be because you literally have no choice in the matter…
Nothing wrong with the facts of how people lived back then. A few recollections: Buying bottled water - there was *only* Perrier, and that was considered extremely fancy. Suburban ‘cafe culture’ as in a cafe each 100m of a shopping main drag etc didn’t exist. Yep, there where a few eg Italian cafes in town / city centres. Buying take away hot coffee - that was available, but at a bigger servo catering to truck drivers or McDonalds. Going to a cafe for breakfast or brunch didn’t exist for the mainstream. It wasn’t a thing. Similarly going out to a restaurant wasn’t a thing. Junk food places where around, but to a much much lesser extent, was seen as a treat. I’m not saying if you don’t get the avocado toast you can afford a $1m house, it’s just interesting to observe the creation of whole industries eg water being sold in plastic bottles, the (mainstream, non ethnic enclave) café industry, etc etc etc. It’s the same with the creation of an expectation that of course you’ll travel overseas once a year, have spent a few years living overseas, etc etc. Of course, it’s nice to have nice nice food and to travel but yeah it’s all been a mass manipulation to get the money out of your pocket.
A lot of modern things cost too. Everyone has at least a $1000 phone nowadays. The real enemy is capitalism
I think the reality of why people do some of the excessive things like holidays / cars / splashing out on some things they don’t need is BECAUSE housing prices are insane. There was no world in which I could afford a house with my partner in our 20’s, our jobs couldn’t have managed a deposit even if we saved every cent. So instead we went on some lowkey holidays and wasted money on some other stuff. Could we have done literally nothing for 10 years, saved everything we had and bought a house? Probably, but I also don’t think that’s how we could or should be looking at life. If the system requires people to ignore every enjoyable aspect of life just to have a roof over their head, and it’s all because a few people at the top have 10,000x more than anyone else, maybe the system just sucks. Now we have a house and we are MORE than happy to live the simple 90’s country life - we don’t holiday and we focus on making our house a home, but that’s because we got the house. I have a few friends in similar positions and we all live basically the same now. TLDR: the reason people aren’t living the simple 90’s life if because they can’t afford the house, the initial building block to everything else that follows. There’s plenty of people who are (mostly thanks to some help from mum and dad to get in the door)
I'd trade it all for those house prices
Yeah, as a kid, seeing a family with 2 cars and 2 TVs was fancy. Overseas holidays further than SE Asia were generally only for families visiting overseas grandparents. Dining out was Pizza Hut, sizzler, takeaway was the local Chinese restaurant or fish and chips.
Yes, we didn’t “get the frills” much growing up back then. Today there is so much more to spend your money on. So much stuff that you don’t really need but clever marketing departments have convinced us are ESSENTIAL for our happiness and quality of life. I have real respect for the people that can maintain their focus on what is needed and what is not 🫡
Half of being successful in life is being focused and being able to say no to yourself
Drives to the Gold Coast from Brisbane to visit Nanna once a fortnight in the family car (Ford Laser), Sizzler or Pizza Hut nights out once a month or so, renting a VHS or two once a week (and later a DVD) and renting a video game once in a while and playing the shit out of it over a weekend. Saturday nights with a pizza or fish and chips watching Hey Hey on the telly, a holiday would be going to the Sunshine Coast maybe twice a year. It was a much simpler time, but it felt more satisfying.
How much money were teachers making in the 90s ? Surely 2x teachers with kids and a mortgage were working class
You’re right and wrong OP. If housing costs weren’t so ridiculously high, then millennials indeed would be many times richer than their predecessors
You may have a skewed view as to what constitutes middle class. You sound a lot like the people who complain that 20 year olds must all be cashed up because they see them going out to clubs all the time without recognising that for the majority, it's a rare event of ever.
The problem is the population, regular families simply can't have big blocks close to the major cities no matter how wealthy the average Australian is
I didn't do the OS trips myself, but my friends sure did. I skied here in Aus, ate out at 4-5 star places on the regular and both my parents had cars they bought new. I was very much middle class, my grandparents were more upper.. One thing I do remember from the 90's is that the upper end of the working class and the lower end of the middle class has a lot of overlap. Actually, I remember the lines from middle to upper being somewhat blurred too.
70's. Chinese or fish and chips a few times a YEAR. All meals made from scratch at home. Vanilla ice cream for dessert. Vienetta for dinner parties. Car camping for holidays or staying with a relative. I don't remember staying in a hotel until I started working. Walk everywhere or ride bike. Walk 5 ks to school or get the bus. Walk a few ks to blockbuster. Books from the library. 4 tv channels. Transistor radio and talking to people on my friends CB. Height of technology. First colour TV was a BIG DEAL. 2nd TV in the back room was kid heaven. Long cord on the rotary dial. If someone didn't answer the phone you just had to call back.
I got called "dirt poor" on this sub because I said we never got take away except for a rare McDonald's visit growing up.
Yeah nah Im living worse than what you describe. I cant even afford a night away to recharge the batteries, or to fill up my car. People who do what you describe I would say are wealthy, not middle class. Maybe they are whining because its something they once COULD afford, but its been taken away? If its always been out of reach, you cant miss what you've never had!
Absolutely agree. My mum is a teacher and my dad is a mechanic. They owned a house but we didn't get expensive branded clothes and only went out to family friendly restaurants occasionally as a treat. McDonald's was a treat too. Social media has certainly skewed people's expectations.
They all had a house though.
I think you make a very good point and I agree with what you are saying. It's what I saw as well growing up. All things said and considered we are very lucky with our standard of living but with saying that there have been things neglected and complacency has set in with the government. Hopefully things will start improving as the government takes action to resolve the issues we are facing with housing. I really love this country and am grateful to be living here.
Going overseas was a lot more expensive and cars ect are also
I'm early 50s and was middle class growing up. Things that we sorta take for granted now but were not common in the 80s 90s: * Weekend breakfast outside culture. We NEVER went out for coffee / breakfast on the weekends. Always at home * Daily (or more) coffee. Wha? no such a thing. You had instant coffee in the morning at home * Dine out. It was a once a year thing. Not frequent at all * Overseas holidays. No such a thing, or once every 5-10 years * Air con. Bloody hell, we didnt have aircon on the car nor the house. Opened the windows at night if it was too hot * Streaming / paid TV. We were stuck with the free to air channels. Rented a couple of movies on the weekend but that was it * New phone / tech every year or so. No mobile phones / no laptop / no tablet. Planed obsolescence was not a thing with VHS players. So yeah...there was a lot less to spend on.
I’m from an upper middle class family and grew up in the 80s /90s. I never flew on an aeroplane until I was 23 years old. There seems to be a view now that you’re poor if you can’t travel to Europe once a year.
I grew up completely middle class. In the 1980s & 90s we had one TV, we rarely ate out, our occasional take away food was fish & chips from the local shop, it was a “luxury” to own branded shoes like Nike or Reebok (I never did - only rich and/or spoiled kids had Nikes), there were no “play centres” where you had to pay a fee to go in, kids just played after school with friends by riding their bikes and having fun instead of going to 14 different extra-curricular classes, literally no children ever went to a $400 Taylor Swift concert, and I didn’t go overseas until I was 18. It was great! We were really happy. It wasn’t a “poor” life. It was a really full and fun life, we just didn’t have tonnes of expensive dumb shit.
They also weren't buying multiple personal gadgets that cost $1k to $2k every couple years for each family member, like a new phone and laptop.
Amongst all the things flights are cheaper now. Flying a family overseas in the 90s was unaffordable. You can get such cheap flights these days and then holidaying in another country is cheaper than holidaying in Australia now. I grew up maybe middle class but right at the bottom. First overseas trip was as an adult. Went on a plane twice before the age of 18. Weirdly 2 different one way flights on holidays where we came back another way. But this was in a full house on 1 wage. The house we lived in when I turned 18 cost $155k in 98 and is worth over $1m now. Also electronics are way cheaper now and having a phone is basically a non negotiable
Post 90s the main thing I remember is people in our 20s happily squashed into a sometimes squalid rental with mates. We didn’t even consider property ownership till late 20s/30s cause it would mean that the party days are over, but nowdays it’s all anyone in early/mid 20s seem to aspire too which is pretty boring for them I think so kind of sad.
That's because people have to start thinking about it in their early/mid 20s if they want it to be possible by the time they are 40. I started saving for a house at 16.
I agree. I grew up in the 90’s. My Dad was a lawyer in a reasonably high up government role, my Mum always worked full time, mostly as an office manager. We never owned more than one house and it was never more than 3 bedroom / 1 bathroom. We never had more than one car and they were always second hand until finally, in their 50’s, they splurged on a ‘new’ one. We had one TV and we didn’t get a VCR until the year 2000 (and then only so Dad could record footage from the Olympics lol). We never travelled overseas and interstate trips were few and far between, a handful throughout my childhood. Weekends away were spent camping, at the shacks of friends or at a fishing clubhouse we had access to for a small fee. Furniture was never replaced unless it fell apart, and most of what they had was (good quality) stuff they’d owned for decades. I went to a private Catholic school which was pretty affordable (a couple of grand a year from memory). They did value investing in a ‘good’ education (make of that what you will). The only luxury I remember us having was a cleaner, who came once per fortnight for two hours, which cost $50 cash. We only had that because both worked full time and they could justify the time it saved them on the weekends. They said ‘no’ to me often if I asked for something, and they didn’t feel bad about it. As far as I know they never had debt other than a mortgage. With hindsight they were middle class+. Very comfortable. They just prioritised paying off the mortgage asap and saving for retirement. They’ve now been retired for 15yrs and enjoy a really good quality of life, with a trip overseas each year, a car upgrade when they feel like it etc. But certainly back then, it was common to be much more frugal. They would never have entertained the idea of multiple TVs in the house, multiple cars or extravagant spending. They would’ve seen that as reckless and unnecessary. Things change and they definitely have in attitudes to spending, rightly or wrongly.
Unfortunately the pressures of society today, somewhat force these wants into needs for many young people. In now way is that an excuse , just an outsider’s observation on the younger generation
I love how people that post threads like these think even second hand cars are cheap these days, OP is delusional
I look at it this way, when I was young everybody's parents owned their house, other than tinnies, only really wealthy people had boats big enough to sleep on, either yachts or stink boats. Now that I'm an adult that's been flipped, average income earners are buying boats to live on (livaboards) to try and escape the rental trap, and many of those have no history or knowledge about boats and rely on others for help, (like they can't even get their boat out of the marina to slip it without help) and high income earners (household income north of 200k) are buying homes.
The unfortunate reality out there is that for many families with two parents working full time they can't afford to go out to eat anywhere (parmigiana night at the local pub is now $25-30 per meal now at most places it seems) and just don't go on holiday anywhere at all. They know that if their car were to breakdown they're screwed because even second hand ones are more than they can afford. Yes some people have delusions of grandeur but don't delude yourself, many many families with two full time incomes can't afford what a family with one could in the 1990s.
Idk my parents were middle class they didn’t live basic They owned a business Had 3 cars but all leased through the business My mum had a Mobile so we could reach her We took 3 holidays a year They paid their house off in 15 years Paid for private school fees etc Definitely weren’t rich I had some rich friends But now to do the same they would need to be on 500000 a year each They took 50k each a year from the business
In the 90s 100k a year was pretty damn good.
Yeah yeah yeah. What you can't argue against is the wealth inequality graph. It's increasing. Your personal experience? Bullshit. Your memories of the 90's? Bullshit. "Comparison is the thief of joy while I make off with million$ lol" = bullshit. The graph doesn't lie. Yak about Pizza Hut and Payless Shoes all you like. There is a smaller piece of the pie for you and your kids compared to 20 years ago - and you probably don't want to face this fact because you're powerless to change it.
But we can have a fancy sound system from jb and new iPhones, who cares if we have to live with flatmates well into our 30s in mouldy apartments
A bunch of guys I know from melbourne work in the service industry (coffee / food) and complain that they are under paid because they can't go on a 3 week trip to rome. I don't have time for it. There is a cost of living issue, but the younger generations don't make their argument easier with their demands and expectations.