What is the trend of the cost of living for single income families in the years gone by? 16

I've been thinking for years about this kind of "life inflation". You have to have two incomes now to live the life one income bought before the 80s. You have to have a degree or similar now to have almost any chance of getting a job, in the 80s and before you didn't. A gym fit body now, or at least the aspiration of one, is the default standard, 25 years ago the gym and body building was a niche interest.

In every single aspect of life people have to do much more and work much harder to live the same life people did a generation or two ago.

When I was on a single income of 35000 ater tax I had about £2200 Rent, bills, council tax, subsriptions, phone , travel ,food = 1900 So I have more disposible money on Benefits. Economy is broken badly when thats the case.

Money is worth less, and everything costs more, but people aren't paid more, that's about it.

Oh and everything is taxed a lot more.

When we were getting our mortgage in the 1970s, it was based on 2.5 times the man's salary and half of his wife's.

Average house price Vs Av. Income has gone crazy.
Factory workers used to afford a nice house on 1 income. Now consultants & teachers can't afford a 1bed flat.

It's strange that when I wes employed at a shcool in the 1970s we had a German student who had a brand new car and had holidays in exotic places whereas we had rough second hand bangers and looked forward to a holidy in spain, but, hardly anyone in Gemany owned houses and were all rentals with a rent cap.

My grandpa was able to buy a nice home, car and raise a family on his single income which was not huge. He drove a beer delivery truck. After he passed, my grandma was setup for like financially. Good times I'm told.

You know what I can't get past? The appreciation. My parents bought a three bedroom house in what turned out to be a mediocre hood for $118,000. Sold it in a market slump for $580,000. Not even twenty years later. I bought MY three bedroom house in a mediocre hood a month ago for the same $580,000. There's no fkn way I'm going to be able to sell mine at the same appreciation.

A quick search will show what happened to the disconnect around the 1970s between productivity and wages. Before then, they were in sync, but after they diverged as imported labour and technological development displaced the workforce. The system is heading towards being permanently broken and the need for a universal basic income becoming more evident.

My parents owned a house, and my mother didn't work until I was a teenager, but prior to that my parents were extremely thrifty. My wife and I own a house, we have two children and we both work - we're also extremely thrifty and our quality of life is not significantly better.

I look at my mam & dad’s life when I was growing up in the late 80’s / 90’s. My mam only worked part time as a dinner lady & my dad worked for a construction company. They had a very easy life, had a big house, raised two kids & got to retire fairly early. Fast forward to my existence, I’m divorced because my wife & I couldn’t afford children so split up. I work two jobs 7 days a week just to exist, if I worked only one job I’d lose my house probably in two months. We really are living through hard times. The only way out of my situation is winning the lottery or suicide, the latter is becoming more appealing by the day.

People used to afford a house on one salary without loans. Now most people can't even afford a house with a minimal interest loan.

I grew up in a single income household, and it was the same for most of my friends. Me and my wife make a lot more than what my dad ever did and yet we can save money anywhere close to what my parents did. The increase in workers, when more women came into the job market, increased the price of living and decreased peoples pay, as now there is more workers and so companies and pay less.

Huge fact check here from the start! Government didn’t get twice as much tax because we didn’t suddenly create 100% more jobs, a huge amount of the male work force were laid off and replaced by overly eager hence cheaper female work force, men without jobs then got filed for divorce, kids raised by the single working mums who then suffered because cost of living went up and male depression and suicide went up

A lot of people spend money on conveniences which keep them in the poor house. Do you need an iPhone 16 with an unlimited data plan? Do you need 4K streaming internet. Do you need six cable/satellite/streaming providers? Do you need to go out for Applebees, or could you bake a casserole and choke it down over the course of three days? Do you need a $65/month gym membership? Do you need to spend $60K plus interest and insurance on a truck that never hauls more than a couple 2x4s and several bags of groceries you could fit in the back of a Nissan Versa (or a 10 year old junker). Does your C-average kid HAVE to go to University and live on campus when they could just as well go to a community college and live at home for 10% of the price? People forget these aren't all necessities and wind up incurring gobs of debt to feel "normal" I guess. Things haven't changed as much as the number of ways you could spend money has.