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In article , "Dee D. Flint"
writes: Just to put those numbers in perspective, I'll list some other things that I remember from 1973-1974. An engineer who had just graduated with a Bachelor's degree from college was getting about $10,000 to $11,000 per year. A nice 1200 sq ft house with full basement and decent sized yard could be purchased in the suburbs around Seattle for under $30,000 and the monthly payment was under $300 per month. I graduated EE school in 1976 and those numbers are right in line with my experience (1976 numbers about 15% higher due to inflation). Some other datapoints: - New car prices ranged from $3000 to $5000 - Gasoline was about 60 cents a gallon - A year's tuition at an Ivy League university was $4500 - Ham rig prices were somewhat less than today's prices Maybe 60-75%. - Inflation was double digit and interest rates were not far behind 73 de Jim, N2EY |
"N2EY" wrote in message
... In article , "Dee D. Flint" writes: Just to put those numbers in perspective, I'll list some other things that I remember from 1973-1974. An engineer who had just graduated with a Bachelor's degree from college was getting about $10,000 to $11,000 per year. A nice 1200 sq ft house with full basement and decent sized yard could be purchased in the suburbs around Seattle for under $30,000 and the monthly payment was under $300 per month. I graduated EE school in 1976 and those numbers are right in line with my experience (1976 numbers about 15% higher due to inflation). Some other datapoints: - New car prices ranged from $3000 to $5000 - Gasoline was about 60 cents a gallon - A year's tuition at an Ivy League university was $4500 - Ham rig prices were somewhat less than today's prices Maybe 60-75%. - Inflation was double digit and interest rates were not far behind 73 de Jim, N2EY My first son was born in October 1974. The following year, 1975, I can't remember the exact figure but my then-husband made right at or a little under $3,000.00 and I think the only "assistance" (welfare) we were on then was for Medicaid. I don't remember ever doing food stamps, cash, or anything like that. But, I think I remember when I found out I was pregnant, we immediately went to Social Services to see what we could do about Health Insurance. Anyway, so health issues aside (and other than pregnancy neither of us ever went to the doctor), we, uh, well, subsisted on that income. Heh heh, we sure didn't "live" on it, but we weren't in need; we had food on the table, gas for the car to go to work, and rented an actual house. Granted, we went without cooking gas all Summer (we cooked on a grill outside or ate a lot of sandwiches), so we could save up for heating oil through the Winter. The house rent, if I remember correctly, was $75.00/month. Two-story, 2-bdrm, 1 bath, kitchen, living and dining. Huge lot (I grew and froze all our veggies in a 32' x 32' garden--with NO motorized tools mind ya), we had a deer every Winter that I'd make stretch for meats (mostly ground to make it last), and my husband ate fish (trout right out of the Battenkill River). Yuk, I didn't like fish. Gasoline for the auto, what was it? $0.28 or something near there? Gosh, I can't remember all those prices. Baby food was, I think, $0.19 a jar and--oh, disposable diapers were just coming onto the market and I sure as all get-out didn't have money for them. LOL I went the cloth diaper route, in fact I can't think of any of my friends using the disposable, except for whatever ones they got in baby showers and, when those were gone, that was it. Anyway, life may have seemed simpler then, and maybe it was to some degree. But, I'll take life today much quicker! I could not be shopping for a 2300 sq. ft. home back then!! Kim W5TIT |
Alun Palmer wrote in message .. .
The world was blessed with your codeless presence on Nov 11 1957. Handheld calculators rendered slide rules obsolete when you were 14-15. Are you still using Leydon jars for capacitors Alun? w3rv That's about right on the dates, except that there were very few calculators around back then. I remember my dad paying the equivalent of about $250 for a rather large four-function calculator c1970-1971 ish. It was made by Sharp. Sinclair had a cheaper one, but you had to build it from a kit! Sure they were out there in that timeframe. I forget exactly what year it was, maybe '71, when I paid $200 for a four-function Japanese-made Canon calculator. Beautifully finished, solid as a rock. They were sold by Canon itinerent peddlers who went out knocking on the doors of tech-based companies which is how I got mine. I happen to prefer HP RPN calculators which are no longer available in stores. My 1983 HP 32S died about three years ago but HP still sells the things direct. It's a cult calculator and HP supports the cult. Odd . . ! Also, high school (at least it's sometimes called that, amongst other things) is usually age 11-18 in the UK, so it takes in middle school/junior high (although in some areas of the UK there are middle schools, just to confuse the issue). It's all the same ball of wax. The regime I plodded thru was into first grade at five, into junior high school for seventh grade, then into high school for tenth thru twelfth grades, pop out at 17-18. w3rv |
"N2EY" wrote in message
om... "Kim" wrote in message ... "N2EY" wrote in message ... - New car prices ranged from $3000 to $5000 - Gasoline was about 60 cents a gallon - A year's tuition at an Ivy League university was $4500 - Ham rig prices were somewhat less than today's prices Maybe 60-75%. - Inflation was double digit and interest rates were not far behind 73 de Jim, N2EY My first son was born in October 1974. Are you gonna be mad at me if I call ya grandma? Proud of it!! She's eight years old and we go shopping all the time. I've been teaching her to shop since she was about 18 months old. Every school year so far, we've paid a visit to Payless Shoe Source. I save all Summer, and when we go in the store I tell her to start picking until I tell her to stop. We have a blast! Oh, and she is my youngest son's daughter. Oldest has never had kids yet. Anyway, so health issues aside (and other than pregnancy neither of us ever went to the doctor), we, uh, well, subsisted on that income. Heh heh, we sure didn't "live" on it, but we weren't in need; we had food on the table, gas for the car to go to work, and rented an actual house. Granted, we went without cooking gas all Summer (we cooked on a grill outside or ate a lot of sandwiches), so we could save up for heating oil through the Winter. The house rent, if I remember correctly, was $75.00/month. Two-story, 2-bdrm, 1 bath, kitchen, living and dining. Huge lot (I grew and froze all our veggies in a 32' x 32' garden--with NO motorized tools mind ya), we had a deer every Winter that I'd make stretch for meats (mostly ground to make it last), and my husband ate fish (trout right out of the Battenkill River). Yuk, I didn't like fish. This was New York State? Oh, definitely. I lived in NY until 1979. I got my first deer a little less than 2 years ago. Only problem was I got 'er with a Honda Odyssey. Even though I asked nice, for some reason the body shop wouldn't paint a little Bambi outline on the new fender... Well, yeah, deer are hard to come by if one is depending upon only "one" man--and don't get any twisted ideas there... What I mean is, all the guys used to start hunting on Season open. Good 'ol Rick usually got first meat by Thanksgiving. He was single and, actually, going to college at the time (he's the reason we were on the Plattsburgh campus to see Alice Cooper). So, about three of us families would divvy up that one. Then, as it went, there'd usually be one or two more and we'd divvy that one up. One could end up with a freezer full of ground meat. My kids' Godfather tried to get me into racoon and turtle but, dude, that weren't happenin'. Gasoline for the auto, what was it? $0.28 or something near there? Until it doubled after the first OPEC embargo. But yeah, it was cheap, as were used cars and parts. Plus you could work on 'em yourself. heh heh...yeah, or use them for freezers! We used to have a Ford Galaxy that died on us in the middle of Winter. Same week, the fridge went. Well, money was tight. So, we'd use the car to keep the refridgerated stuff in and, believe it or not, it was actually cold enough to even keep ice cream a day or two! Oddly enough, gas today is even cheaper, once you adjust for inflation. It's one of the few necessities that has gone that way. Oh no...good 'ol Rick (mentioned above) used to get into how money was going to be cheaper in the future than it was then...in fact, he'd make long-term credit purchases based upon that. You mathemeticians! Yup. A lot depended on what it cost to wash the diapers vs. buying the disposables. If you pay all your own utilities the cloth route gets expensive real fast. If the water and electric are somebody else's problem it goes the other way. Then there's baby formula vs....no, I'm NOT gonna go there! Yeah, and neither did I :o Anyway, life may have seemed simpler then, and maybe it was to some degree. But, I'll take life today much quicker! I could not be shopping for a 2300 sq. ft. home back then!! 2300 sf would be a big house fer me, then or today. Location, location, location.... Right here where we are at. Moving it in before the end of this year. And, it is big! We've decided instead of building, to go ahead and buy a manufactured home, and have a pier and beam foundation put in, then move it onto that. We can get more house for the money, it's vinyl sided, has the OSB top, bottom, and sides (marine grade), we've upgraded the carpet, have two living areas, 3 baths (if the home we think we've settled on ends up being the one we get), and I'll gain an extra bedroom to boot! That's in case my parents or my hubby's Mom ever has to come and live with us (the two living areas will accommodate a nice gathering and be good for if the parents have to live with us, too!). In the "old days", necessities were relatively inexpensive and luxuries were relatively expensive. But since then the trend has been for the necessities to get more and more expensive and the luxuries cheaper and cheaper. So now many hams can afford a $1000-2000 rig, but they can't afford a nice house on a big lot with no CC&Rs to put the rig in. Yeah, it seems that way. I was just telling my darlin' the other day that I still feel "priviledged" to shop for something in a store called Linens and Things (don't know if you have those up there). I remember when that store used to be for the rich folks (from my perspective). IIRC the minimum wage back in '75 was around $1.50, and there are about 2000 working hours in a straight-time year. (40 hrs/week x 50 weeks). So you folks were essentially living on one minimum-wage income. Think about what those numbers work out to today... 73 de Jim, N2EY 2080 hrs. to be exact. And, that wage sounds about right. Hey, do you remember when 5-Friday months were the cat's meow? Or, did you ever budget that way? I budgeted based on a four week month. When those 5 Fridays rolled around, that was high cotton time! Yes, I was a stay-at-home mom until my kid (one went to go live with his dad) was about 11 and then was working from home, so still was at home for him. I've only been climbing the professional ladder for about 18 years; somewhere around there anyway. Radio. Yeah, I remember when we first became hams! I didn't know it, but Cliff had been saving from the time I'd gotten him interested in the hobby and we were going to classes and "studying." When we got our ticket--he started out with swim COW so he was a Tech+, he went out and bought a Yeas 890AT (or is that 850AT). Anyway, he got what was then a darned nice radio with all the bells and whistles. We already had a 70' tower up, with a 10M quad antenna on top. Man, that thing was nice. First bad wind that year (90 mph past the house--straight line winds) blew that quad over and broke one of the fiberglass spreaders. We could have replaced it. But, this was a 3-element quad for 10M. Imagine how darned big and cumbersome that thing was!? Kim W5TIT |
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On Sat, 13 Sep 2003 22:17:21 -0500, Kim W5TIT wrote:
IIRC the minimum wage back in '75 was around $1.50, and there are about 2000 working hours in a straight-time year. (40 hrs/week x 50 weeks). So you folks were essentially living on one minimum-wage income. Think about what those numbers work out to today... 2080 hrs. to be exact. Somewhere in the early 80s the Feds changed to 2087 to account for the leap year day. Even though it changed our paychecks only by the cost of a donut or two, did we scream. To no avail, of course. Man, that thing was nice. First bad wind that year (90 mph past the house--straight line winds) blew that quad over and broke one of the fiberglass spreaders. We could have replaced it. But, this was a 3-element quad for 10M. Imagine how darned big and cumbersome that thing was!? Was it a 11-meter "cubical quad" before it became a 10-meter quad ?? Hmmm.... ???? -- 73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane From a Clearing in the Silicon Forest Beaverton (Washington County) Oregon |
"Phil Kane" wrote in message
et... Was it a 11-meter "cubical quad" before it became a 10-meter quad ?? Hmmm.... ???? -- 73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane What are the implications if it was, Phil? Most antenna manufacturers market their 10/11m single band models as such. This includes Maco (ex Wilson), Mosley, Butternut, Trident (UK), Max-Gain, Delta X-Ray, and Cubex. Quote from Cubex: "These same construction techniques are used in our new line of rugged Quad antennas for the 11M band - The MAGNUM-CB Series!" Is there a difference? (Other than frequency, that is.) -- 73 de Bert WA2SI |
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On Mon, 15 Sep 2003 16:04:51 GMT, Bert Craig wrote:
Was it a 11-meter "cubical quad" before it became a 10-meter quad ?? Hmmm.... ???? What are the implications if it was, Phil? "Stand Clear of the Chain....." ggg -- 73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane |
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