What was the value of money..

cleremy jarkson

When you old folk were growing up, how valuable was 1 punt? Like what could you have bought for it...not just in terms of sweets etc but like toys, cinema, even a first car.

what was an average weekly wage for an adult or how much was the dole?

what would have been considered an enormous sum of money? Did a million pounds just seem like a completely unattainable amount...enough money to last a lifetime (in contrast to the less dizzying, although still greatly desired, amount of 1 million euro)?

I'd be curious to know the answers of those who grew up in the 70's, 80's and early 90's!

bullets

Am 34 now.

When I was between 8-10 ish I remember getting
10p to go get sweets at the shop. That was upgraded
to about 50p around 10-13. Getting a full pound was
a very rare thing. Although those Fivers were all the rage
at first holy communions back then. At my confirmation
at around 12-13 I made 60 Pounds and it was just enough
to buy a Double Deck Cassette Player. Although the Cheapest Sony
ones at the time were 90 pounds. Around that time you could pick
up a GI-Joe or Starwars figure in Dunnes stores for 1.99 each or they sold
multipacks of 3 for 3.50. He-man etc was much more expensive. And Mask
Toys were just out of the question, transformers were considered very expensive, I never actaully was bought a genuine one by my parents ever!
they were always handmedowns from the nextdoor neigbours kids that were older.

At 15-16 got a fiver to goto the Local GAA Disco's
That usually got people a packet of faqs a fanta orange a packed of
crips and the silvermints that you thought masked the smell of smoke
before being collected by the Mammy and Daddy at midnight and if you were lucky getting your hand up a girls top round the back of the hall
when you went for some eeerrrr Air.

Between 16-18 Once I started going night-clubbing in early days where I still
had bother getting in underage it was less than 20 Quid. If you
got 20 quid you would have scored big time. Normally it was a stingy
tenner from the Father (and then the Mother would slip ya another tenner)
3 quid would need to be held back for a Taxi or you walked home.

Todays day and age I really would not have a clue on what the value
of money is to different age groups. If it was to come to the likes of giving
pocket money to your kid as a parent (I'm not a parent)

~B

dlofnep

I was born in 1982.

I remember getting pound notes to go to the shop (rarely). My lunch cost 50P when I was younger for a blaa (Waterford breadroll), a packet of chickatees, a touchdown chocolate bar and a bottle of score orange.

I don't smoke anymore, but I used to smoke and I remember buying 10 John Player blue for 1.24, and a box of matches for 6p. If you had £1.50, you'd have enough for 10 fags, a box of matches and a bottle of score orange. I remember that distinctly, because it was often my lunch

I remember the supercans for 30P. Snickers/Mars were 26p. Most crisps were 10P, but some of the more exotic ones like Skips were 20p.

I remember when you could actually buy something decent for a pound in the poundshop.

It doesn't seem like that long ago.

gipi

When I started work in the late 70s, my gross wages were £45.15 pw. I remember coming home with £34.70, and thought I was loaded!!

I can remember going to the shop as a youngster with 4p, and I was able to buy a bar of chocolate (urney's was cheaper than cadburys at 2.5p) and an icepop! Luxury!

Thomas828

I remember round about 1980 when a packet of crisps cost 10p and you could get an ice cream cone or a poke as we called it in Belfast for 10p. And the cover price for the Beano and the Dandy in 1977 was 5p. Also, shopkeepers accepted and sterling coins.

kelle

My mother told me that back in 1970, you could get 8 grocery items for £1. In 1985, she said you were lucky to get 1 item!#

In 1986, it cost me £3.50 to go to the nightclub - Dad would give me a fiver and I would also buy myself a glass of Lucozade which I would leave on a table and take sips out of during the night in between marathon dancing sessions! (That was before date rape drugs became known and you were warned to keep your drink with you at all times). I would have 50p left over from all that!

miltonkrest

my first job as a messanger boy (there used to be such a thing) paid £3 a week ! great money for a 14 year old!

mikedublin

Back in 1983 Radio Nova ran a competition where the winner (50th caller after they played 3 songs in a particular order) would win 6000 pounds. I remember hearing it advertised and it just seemed an absolutly enormous ammount of money.

Mind you not everything was cheaper back in the 80's either. Flights to London or anywhere were really expensive before Ryanair and Virgin and all the other low cost airlines came along.

kelle

mikedublin wrote: »

Mind you not everything was cheaper back in the 80's either. Flights to London or anywhere were really expensive before Ryanair and Virgin and all the other low cost airlines came along.

I lived in London between 1989-1994. I had a choice of Aer Lingus, British Airways or British Midland from Heathrow, their prices were exactly the same and it made no difference whether you booked them on the day or a year beforehand! It cost me £85(sterling) to travel to Dublin, going up to £105 at Christmas.

Kalimah

I started work in 1981 and my first month's salary was 367 irish pounds. The Irish Independent was 18p and my month bus ticket was 18 pounds. That's all I can remember!

filmfan

I miss our old money!

mp22

3d on the number 18 bus to school,kimmage to ballsbridge in 1969

x in the city

bullets wrote: »

Am 34 now.

When I was between 8-10 ish I remember getting
10p to go get sweets at the shop. That was upgraded
to about 50p around 10-13. Getting a full pound was
a very rare thing. Although those Fivers were all the rage
at first holy communions back then. At my confirmation
at around 12-13 I made 60 Pounds and it was just enough
to buy a Double Deck Cassette Player. Although the Cheapest Sony
ones at the time were 90 pounds. Around that time you could pick
up a GI-Joe or Starwars figure in Dunnes stores for 1.99 each or they sold
multipacks of 3 for 3.50. He-man etc was much more expensive. And Mask
Toys were just out of the question, transformers were considered very expensive, I never actaully was bought a genuine one by my parents ever!
they were always handmedowns from the nextdoor neigbours kids that were older.

At 15-16 got a fiver to goto the Local GAA Disco's
That usually got people a packet of faqs a fanta orange a packed of
crips and the silvermints that you thought masked the smell of smoke
before being collected by the Mammy and Daddy at midnight and if you were lucky getting your hand up a girls top round the back of the hall
when you went for some eeerrrr Air.

Between 16-18 Once I started going night-clubbing in early days where I still
had bother getting in underage it was less than 20 Quid. If you
got 20 quid you would have scored big time. Normally it was a stingy
tenner from the Father (and then the Mother would slip ya another tenner)
3 quid would need to be held back for a Taxi or you walked home.

Todays day and age I really would not have a clue on what the value
of money is to different age groups. If it was to come to the likes of giving
pocket money to your kid as a parent (I'm not a parent)

~B

back in my day a 50p piece was basically gold
(80s here), you could get what seemed like the entire contents of a sweet shop with it.

Ann22

I remember my mam saying my dad was getting £11 in his weekly wage. That was late 70s. He won £100 in the bingo about 1980 ish. We were all cheering in the house the neighbours round the corner could hear us. I was sent to the shop for a few messages with a fiver about that time. I was afraid I wouldn't have enough money and the shopkeeper said 'that's a whole fiver you have there'. I got 50p on a Sat back in those days, got me lots for that..sweets, an ice pop, a bun...:). To find 50p was like finding a five euro, to find a pound on the ground was like finding ten.

twitch1984

Jaysus I remember when penny sweets cost a penny, crisps were 10p a bag and you could have a sparkler icee lolly for 10p score orange was 15p i think.
go to the shop with a pound and you had enough sweets to last for the week:D

Firetrap

As a kid, I noticed how the price of sweets and ice cream went up year after year. I can definitely recall thinking that some day a bag of crisps would cost a pound and at the same time, thinking how crazy that seemed :eek:

I'm referring here to the mid to late 80s though my memories are going a bit hazy . I can recall halfpenny sweets. I think the only ones the shop had were little toffees with chocolate on them. Bags of crisps costing in or around 10p. I think the cheaper corn snacks were 9 or 10p and the Tayto ones a couple of pence more. Mars bars were the expensive ones and they were twenty something pence.

Albums on cassette - I'm thinking they tended to cost about a tenner but not sure about that. I got a double deck in the late 80s and it cost eighty pounds. I also went through a few walkmans. My first one cost twenty pounds and by the time I was a student in the early 90s, I was shelling out a whopping forty squid for a Sony one. Computer games. If you bought them when they were released, they could be eleven or twelve pounds but then when they were re-released on the budget labels they were a fiver.

mikemac

Kicking a football around the house and getting kicked out for it, rightly so!

So my brothers & sisters would get 10p for the local shop, penny sweets did indeed cost a penny and we had the kind lady in the shop wrecked, "I'll have one of those and two of that and....."

I vaguely remember the 1/2 penny coin and wondering if the shopkeeper would sell half a penny sweet, bless her she'd cut a penny sweet in half.
I was some annoying young lad :cool:

You could get an old Roy of the Rovers magazine for 10p also and don't forget Mr. Freeze, not sure if Mr. Freeze are still around

Snickers was Marathon, Starburst was Opel Fruits.
No new fangled 500ml bottles, we had supercans.

I'm told when they first starting selling water it came in supercans and not bottles, I'm not sure, can anyone confirm this.

Taytos will always be 12p in my mind

Finally Commodore 64 games cost around 3 to 4 pounds, no more and came on Tapes.

Finally Club released some drink which contained beer, came in a green or yellow logo on the can. I thought I was great buying beer, it was rank!

twitch1984

feelingstressed wrote: »

Finally Club released some drink which contained beer, came in a green or yellow logo on the can. I thought I was great buying beer, it was rank!

I remember that, it was called club shandy and had like a thinble full of beer in it, yeah it was rank but we would still buy it just to be cool drinking beer

L1011

I saw Bass Shandy (much the same thing) in a petrol station in Donegal not all that long ago!

I can remember Virgin Cola coming out and being sooo much cheaper than Coke - think it was 18p a can in Quinnsworth.

lord lucan

I always remembered Club Shandy being in a brown can.

Cicero

gipi wrote: »

When I started work in the late 70s, my gross wages were £45.15 pw. I remember coming home with £34.70, and thought I was loaded!!

...for the benefit of the OP, (and a little bit of fun)...in the late 1970s' a Mar's bar cost 12p and a packet of Tayto cost 7p. (it moved from 5p-7p over a couple of years around the late 70s)....so gipi here, with £34.70 a week, could have purchased at the time, (if he/she so wished)....289 Mars bars or 495 packets of crisps...:D

In today's money, I don't think you can get individal crisp packets for less than 65c or Mars bars for much less than 75c - therefore, gipi would need to be taking home EUR321 a week to feed a 495 bag- a -week crisp habbit or EUR217 to feed a 289 Mars bar habbit...interesting how crisps have moved a lot closer to chocolate prices over the last 30 years...(or maybe I just need to get out more :D)

...however, if gipi had a smoking habit in the late 1970s, a pack of 20 cost 64p so could have gone through 54 packs a week (yeuck)...today, gipi would need to be earning EUR460 (or £362 old pounds) to smoke the same amount...

Bearhunter

lord lucan wrote: »

I always remembered Club Shandy being in a brown can.

It was, but there was another one involving lager and lime that came in a yellow/green can. Can't remember if Club made it or not though.

StormWarrior

Well, I grew up in the UK but I remember in the 80's being able to buy a bar of chocolate for 8p, they are more like 65p now!

Dunjohn

In the early nineties, a pound got me six packs of Chewitts with 10p left over.

That's basically what I gauge inflation against to this day.

And 20p Kinder Eggs in 1988.

cleremy jarkson

Interesting read so far folks!