Our attitude toward money

[JDgreen227]

What changes our attitude about money to a greater extent, getting older, or having more disposable income?

Yesterday morning I was thinking about the Christmas week of 1972, when I was earning about $3.45 per hour, and I had just won $30 in the office check pool. I was so excited about having the extra cash just before the holiday...:laughing:

And yesterday, I drove to my credit union, put my card into the ATM, and the machine spat out twenty $20 bills for me. Back in 1972, that same $400 would have been THREE WEEKS of work before taxes. And my balance left in my account was more than I earned in an entire year back in 1972.

Was I excited about getting $400...no, getting that $30 so many years ago was a much bigger deal.

Go figure !!

 

[GregbkH]

Being desensitized by inflation. Remember when gas was less than .20/gal? A pack of smokes was less than a buck? It's still basically the same, just the numbers have changed.

I figure the reason you weren't excited about the $400 is because it was already yours and you didn't win it. You actually had to remove it from your account. This never feels good to me. However, if I win money, nomatter the amount, I still get excited.

 

[JDgreen227]

Gas used to be less than twenty cents a gallon? Hey I am not THAT old...the lowest I remember is about 45 cents a gallon.

 

[GregbkH]

Gas used to be less than twenty cents a gallon? Hey I am not THAT old...the lowest I remember is about 45 cents a gallon.

You win! Unfortunately, I am that old!

 

[2LaneCruzer]

You win! Unfortunately, I am that old!

I can remember gas at 20 cents per gallon; I can also remember no running water, no central heat, no AC and the "facilities" consisting of a two-holer in the back. I can remember supplementing our table with squirrel, rabbit, quail, ducks and fresh caught fish. I can remember paying all my bills and having $25 left to buy food for the 3 of us. I can remember taking a job...any job...to keep from being thrown out on the street. It's tough being dirt poor in bad economic times...you work hurt, you work sick, or you don't get a paycheck.

Now to the original question; the economy, bad as it is, is much better than it was in my state in the 50's. My kids and grandkids have not experienced the hard times some of us older folks (and our parents even more so) have, and things have been so much better for so long, that we take it for granted. I can recall my daughter finding a $50 dollar bill right before Christmas (about 1975 I think) and it was a REALLY BIG DEAL! We are living a lot more comfortably today than we ever did, so $400 is not a big deal today, especially compared to $50 thirty or 40 years ago. In those days, our money was all spoken for; we couldn't even afford a telephone. Today, our dog eats better and more comfortably than we did then.

 

[Bird]

I can remember gas at 20 cents per gallon; I can also remember no running water, no central heat, no AC and the "facilities" consisting of a two-holer in the back. I can remember supplementing our table with squirrel, rabbit, quail, ducks and fresh caught fish.

Yep, I'm old enough, and lived out in the country until I was about 16, to have lived and remember all those things. Had to heat water on the cookstove to take a bath in a #2 washtub in the middle of the kitchen floor. Had to milk that cow twice a day no matter what the weather was or whether you were sick or not. I was 19 years old the first time I slept in a home with an air-conditioner (window unit) and we still turned off all the heat at night.

Now of course I started to work part time for the Post Office when the salary was $1.84 an hour and in 1959, it was up to $2.00 an hour. I had a pretty good paying part time job driving a cab back then that made about $1.50 an hour. In 1964, I started on the police department at $370 a month (got paid on the 9th and 24th). My first showroom new car cost about $2,200, our first house cost $12,250 (those $106.00 a month payments, including escrow for taxes and insurance, were tough).

But a dollar bill was a "silver certificate" instead of just a piece of paper.:laughing:

 

[ctbigman]

My first job after getting married and with a child was on a dairy farm. $100 a week, 4 room apartment w/ utilities and if I milked 50 cows alone during crop time I got an extra $5 per milking. Benefits were milk, potatoes and occasionally a little beef. Then again, I could fill my Volkswagon Bug for $1. That was 1972....

 

[2LaneCruzer]

Yep, I'm old enough, and lived out in the country until I was about 16, to have lived and remember all those things. Had to heat water on the cookstove to take a bath in a #2 washtub in the middle of the kitchen floor. Had to milk that cow twice a day no matter what the weather was or whether you were sick or not. I was 19 years old the first time I slept in a home with an air-conditioner (window unit) and we still turned off all the heat at night.

Now of course I started to work part time for the Post Office when the salary was $1.84 an hour and in 1959, it was up to $2.00 an hour. I had a pretty good paying part time job driving a cab back then that made about $1.50 an hour. In 1964, I started on the police department at $370 a month (got paid on the 9th and 24th). My first showroom new car cost about $2,200, our first house cost $12,250 (those $106.00 a month payments, including escrow for taxes and insurance, were tough).

But a dollar bill was a "silver certificate" instead of just a piece of paper.:laughing:

We heated our bathwater on a kerosene cook stove, and the #2 washtub sat next to a potbellied woodstove in the kitchen. I had a scar on my stomach the size of a half dollar for many years, the result of trying to get close to the stove after my bath. I also recall ice crystals in the waterbucket on winter mornings, and having to go to the creek to get water to prime the old water pump, when my brother forgot to fill the 1/2 gallon karo syrup can that held the priming water.

Nothing like crawling out from under a ton of quilts and hitting the ice cold linoleum early on a winter morning.

 

[sandman2234]

$0.119 was the cheapest I have ever seen gas. It was during the 60's with gas wars between stations. (11.9 cents per gallon).
I think that was cheaper than even my Dad had seen, because he filled up the tank on the car, completely, which is something we usually didn't do.
David from jax

 

[jmurray01]

Gas used to be less than twenty cents a gallon? Hey I am not THAT old...the lowest I remember is about 45 cents a gallon.

:laughing:

 

[treman]

Whats wild is I found an old receipt behind a dresser recently. gas was $0.91/gal. the saddest part about this.... it was only 10 years ago. sept. of 01. this whole inflation thing is starting to look exponential and i'm not likin it.

 

[Illinoisdmax]

Whats wild is I found an old receipt behind a dresser recently. gas was $0.91/gal. the saddest part about this.... it was only 10 years ago. sept. of 01. this whole inflation thing is starting to look exponential and i'm not likin it.

Agreed

 

[JDgreen227]

:laughing:

I would have thought you miserly, penny pinching Scottish guys would be upset at the cost of things today...not laughing.

 

[brin]

Whats wild is I found an old receipt behind a dresser recently. gas was $0.91/gal. the saddest part about this.... it was only 10 years ago. sept. of 01. this whole inflation thing is starting to look exponential and i'm not likin it.

We just bought gas at $2.96 a gal for unleaded and some would think that to be a good deal...yet in 2003 it was $1.67 a gal...

What they are doing , the powers that be, is just gradually bleeding us...they are slowly convincing us to pay the higher price and they run it up periodically to over $4.00 just to make the Lemming masses praise them when it falls into the low $3.00 or lower..

I am not falling for it...We should be drilling everywhere there is to drill...This alternative energy is decades away from working..if then..WE need to stop fighting wars over oil we have right here.

 

[sandman2234]

I wonder if "drilling" is the answer, because where are we going to refine it at? Nobody wants a refinery in their backyard, much like a nuclear power plant, and a lot of the existing refineries seem to be getting old from the chatter I hear.
Where is the oil we are currently pumping out of Alaska going? Rumor I heard was it was heading for Japan, who pays more for it than we do, so the oil companies sell it to them. What needs to happen is the oil here needs to stay here, first and foremost, to fuel future generations till it runs out. If we start using OUR oil, then the other suppliers are just going to change customers, which is what is currently causing our price increase. China is burning more and more fuel, demanding more and more, so the price goes up with the increase in demand. Allowing the producers to control how much they pump as a group limits overall production, thereby keeping the price down. Why should they pump more and force the price down, when they can make the same money off less? Probably learned that trick from the diamond mine owners, lol.
We can drill and pump our own, but they will just limit how much they pump, keeping the price up till we use up our supply, then they have us in a position of just what they want.
Being able to control the supply will always keep the price up. The only way to drop the price over the long haul if the supply is limited, is to decrease the demand to a point where the supply can't live on what people are willing to pay, then they increase the supply, which kicks the price down even more. Only realistic way to do that, in the big scheme of things is to find an alternate fuel source. If we could burn water as fuel, their oil would be worthless and they would be poor buying our wheat in a hurry. If wheat suppliers joined together and put a 500 % increase on all exported wheat, from all wheat producing countries, the non producing countries would get hungry or pay the price. We could reduce the supply because the farmers could live off the income of less bushels sold, but our good nature keeps us from doing that. In reality that is what the oil countries are doing to us.
Rant off....
David from jax

 

[rasimmo]

Where is the oil we are currently pumping out of Alaska going? Rumor I heard was it was heading for Japan, who pays more for it than we do, so the oil companies sell it to them. David from jax

That oil from Alaska is not coming south because there is no pipeline. There was a big push to build one, but that was stopped.
If you made a product and I would pay you $5 dollars for it and the guy across town would pay $7, you would sell it to him. I think most companies are in business to make the most profit on their products.

 

[sandman2234]

I don't think there is a pipeline from the middle east to the USA, or from Alaska to Japan last I checked, either.

Selling to the highest bidder is what is driving the price up, the $7 buyers are driving our price up, and they have the manufacturing to make the money to be able to afford the luxury of a higher price oil. (they have the JOBS)...so what your saying, is absolutely true, our price is being driven up by others. We need to NOT drill, but to change at least a large part of our use to something else.
WHY are we lighting streets, using oil to fuel the process? Only to waste a resource that is already in question, or to just increase the demand? We need to GET SMARTER, not drill more! I am no economics major, but this in reality is common sense. Happens in all fields of commerce, supply and demand run hand in hand.
David from jax

 

[sandman2234]

In any conversation about oil, change the word oil for some other commodity and see if there is anything else that controls it rather than simple supply and demand.
Granted, in the short run if we drill, drill, drill, we will be able to drop the price by simply increasing the supply, but if we increase our production and the others decrease their pumping, what have we done except decrease our ability to control it in the future? They supply too large a percentage of oil to the world for us to able to control it for very long at the worlds current usage. We can probably pump enough to supply ourselves for many years, but why should the oil companies pump our oil and refine it and sell it to us at a reduced price? We are going to have to pay the world price for oil if we want to buy it and as long as the major players in the supply chain can control the price by how much they pump, they will. We can become a major player in a hurry by simply drill, drill, drill, but I think there are other factors to be concerned with.
How about our 12 mile border which allows other countries to drill off the coast of our country? How many of them have 200 mile borders, yet don't hesitate to drill off our coast? We need to protect what we have, also...
David from jax

Just for the record, I am not opposed to drilling, however I would really be happy to watch the middle east pump all of their oil reserves out and we be left with ours, rather than the other way around.
David

 

[rasimmo]

I agree that we need other energy sources. I do not think we should be force fed unproven ones that drive the cost of other commodities up. I just believe that a reliable, cost effective option of renewable energy is not avaliable at this time. That is a long way off. We need to make the most of all the energy sources we have. Coal, natural gas, wind, crude, ethanol, hydro, and nuclear are all capable of being improved on. I work in the oil industry, but I do not believe that is the only one we need to develop.

 

[Uncle Doug]

People can moan and groan about how bad things are now but last time I checked most people (kids included) still have cell phones (with internet), home internet, cable or satilite TV, 2 or 3 cars per family. Still lining up to pay over $100 for a pair of retro shoes. Last time I checked the thrift store sold retro shoes.

Most people have not had to give up these perks that were not even around 35 years ago.