That's really interesting to see her slice-of-life. Working for the telephone company was a great job for young women. But it seems like they usually quit when they married or had children, so they must have had a great turnover of young high school graduates years ago. We had elderly neighbors and both of them retired from the telephone company. But about salaries - hubby has been with the same company for 41-years and has always been on a salary plus profit sharing.

Grain lady, SIL actually worked part-time before pursuing her career as an elementary school teacher.

My DH actually made his career working for NY Telephone, eventually retiring from Verizon. He was 18 when he applied for his first job. He remembers being told, "You have a job for life." Certainly not the case now a days.

When my oldest sister graduated from college with a French degree, she had no problem getting a job. Nothing to do with French and she didn't want to be a French teacher! Who knows why she majored in French to start with, but I digress. Back then, a college degree in itself meant something.

My mom worked for the power company as a secretary after she graduated from high school in 1935. Her salary was $50 -- per month! I know living expenses were much lower then, but that was not much.

Travel back to 1962, graduated in June and started working as a secretary for 'The Bell Telephone Company of Canada' and the salary was a whopping $47.50 a week. Cripes, I even managed to buy myself a fur coat by wintertime. Job opportunities were good then, now, not so much.

eld, I think things have changed somewhat but not all that much. Then as now, job preparation, whether college or for a trade, does nothing more than open the first door. Which door a person chooses to open, and what they choose to do once inside, is what most determines career success and job satisfaction or non-success and/or non-satisfaction. Either way, today there are no guaranteed meal tickets or lifetime job guarantees, which is how I think it should be.

11 years later, Carol, I made about 10.00 hour as a new grad in an NICU

When I graduated in 1960 as an engineer, my starting salary was $550 per month during the probation period. After 6 months probation, it went up to $600 per month - whoopee. My new wife had one year of college left. We had to skimp to make ends meet and could do it since she had a scholarship. Fortunately, my salary soon accelerated. Engineer's salaries today are much higher. Most have risen greater than inflation.

Prices were different then. We could rent a 3 room apartment in the back of a private home for $75 per month and gasoline was about 30 cents per gallon.

If you look at inflation using the CPI, a dollar then (1961) was equivalent to $8 today. So that $57 weekly rate would be equivant to $456, or close to $24K per year. Not terrific, but, if they got benefits, too -- like healthcare -- it wouldn't have been horrible...especially since housing was so affordable. My parents built a modest, but very nice house in 1952, and sold it 15 years later for $17,500. They thought they made a killing, :-)

My first teaching job in 1963 was $4800 a year, and I had it split into 12 monthly payments rather than 10. In the summers I worked on my masters degree, which earned me an additional $1000 a year once it was completed. My boyfriend was flabbergasted to learn that I did not have a savings account. There was never any money left over. But I started saving and had just enough set aside to buy him a wedding ring when we finally married.

sheilajoyce-

. Just curious: how long ago was that?

My first salaried job with Bank of America, 1952 was $110.00 per month. USMC, 1954 paid DH $100.00 a month.

I started teaching in 1952 for $1,800 a year, divided into 12 payments, which after taxes amounted to about $125 per month. Rented a room for $25 a month, had no car, no savings and when I married at the end of that year, had $0.41 in the bank. Stamps were 3 cents. This year my monthly AT&T bill was running about $160 until I dropped the cell phone which consumed $42 of that.

@ Miss, you sure are right. There was no such thing as a cable, Internet or cellphone bill back then. Or all the fast food we eat now. I know they had the 5'n diners, but people went there to have a good time, not picking up dinner for 5 on the way home. (Maybe some did).

Here is what I remember: When I decided to go bcak to school for my masters, in 1980, I was able to rent an apartment for $175 a month in Brooklyn. I had $10,000 in savings.

I had weekend jobs to help supplement for the two years. I always felt that I had enough money.

Maybe it's just me, but things are disproportionate now a days. My first job after my masters, the salary was mid 20's. Yet, I was able to swing rent in a studio apartment in Brooklyn, all expenses and a vacation once a year.

Today, rents are so high in NYC that kids have to have multiple roommates and divide apartments up into cubbyholes.

My late mother kept a chapbook of her expenses in 1939. On one page she listed buying two new dresses. One was 68 cents. She underlined the other one; it was $1.06. Such extravagance! She and my father treated themselves to a movie and dinner 'out' once in a while. I think they may have spent $2.00 total. (I hope she wore her new dress!)

My bring home pay in 1960 was $241 month, working at the state hospital as a psych tech., and that was considered very good pay at that time. Could buy a meal book to use at the cafeteria and the meals cost 50¢ and the hospital did your uniforms at their laundry for free is they were cotton. Most of mine were, though I had a couple of those crinkly nylon ones. I was still living at home and helped my parents out a lot.

When I was in high school in the 60's I made 25 cents an hour for babysitting. In the summer I babysat for a family 5 days a week for $12.50 a week. When I got married we paid $25.00 a month lot rent in a mobile home park. We bought our first home along with 10 acreas for $25,000 in 1971. We purchased 32 acreas down south in 1995 for $25,000. A guy is trying to buy it and has offered us $125.000. Hubby says no!! I sure wish I would have saved my hubbies check stub from when he started working for GM. If I remember right he was making around $200.00 a week with overtime. My, how times have changes.

First FT teaching job... 1973... $7300/year.

kiseiverd-

A 1973 dollar is worth about 5.5 of today's dollars according to the CPI, so that teaching salary would be the equivalent of about $40,000 now.

in high school, i had a part time job in a clothing store. i made $1.00 an hour. This was in 1963

Kudzu9, it was 52 years ago. He worked the evening shift for more on the hour and usually worked Saturday's and some Sunday's. When he retired 8 years ago he was making $55.00 an hour plus very good benefits. It always aggravated him when people would complain it wasn't enough. Those were the ones that left work at noon on Fridays when they got their pay checks and didn't want to work any overtime. We had 3 kids we wanted to get educated and on their own so hubby worked all the hours he was given. Once they were educated we saved for our retirement years. We have never been big spenders but can do most things we want. Have always lived within our means. Twenty years ago we bought a place in the southern Indiana. All our family really enjoy it. Life is pretty good.

One living cost that has gotten out of hand is medical, especially hospital care. In 1960, health care was not cheap, but if you had employer supplied insurance, you could afford health and dental care. Since that time, health costs have soared. One factor is litigation. Sometime after 1960, the rules for bringing suit was changed to make it easier, partly driven by parties who were not getting a fair shake from injuries caused by faulty autos. This change immediately slopped over into the medical field. My wife, a long time employee of a hospital, reported that some of her doctor coworkers were paying up to 30% of their income (yr 2000) for liability insurance. This cost is passed on to the patients and their insurance.

I started work as a telephone operator in October 1950 after my high school graduation in June. My first paycheck was $26. I thought I had the world by the tail. I lived at home and gave my mother $10 a week for which she supplied all meals, washed and ironed my clothes, cleaned my room, and did the same things she had done while I was in school. My salary soon increased as I was paid extra for holidays, Sundays, etc. but I'll never forget the thrill of that first $26.

Inflation has been very low for a long time recently. About to change?

Around 1948 a friend of my mother's complained that her DH wasn't asking for a raise. She said, "If he just made $10,000 a year, we'd be on Easy Street." She didn't work; few wives did in those days. My DM was supporting herself, her mother, and me.

I remember back in school when one of the teachers was telling us that they have their annual salary divided up over 12 months. I still remember the shock that went through me, even at that young age thinking "Just how ridiculous is that!" LOL It absolutely flabbergasted me that someone would defer payment of what they were owed, and for no real reason. I later figured out the reason was simply that they didn't know how to handle money. Same with the ideas of paying more into income tax to get a bigger refund at tax time or saving $1 bills (or quarters or change) and then cashing that in. It truly amazes me what some people do. I understand today that most kids are so spoiled by parents who think nothing of going into near-insurmountable debt so they have the toys they want but I would have thought that people in those days would have had the benefit I had of parents/grandparents/relatives who lived through the drought and depression days and that they would have been taught simple basic money handling skills. Looking back I guess it's true that some are born to ignorance and others have ignorance thrust upon them.

When I worked for the school district I recall some people talking about paychecks. We were paid twice a month, which caused some people enough trouble since some months had 5 weeks and they didn't know what to do about bills. One secretary nearly floored me when she started ranting that her husband was paid every 2 weeks and we were only paid twice a month. "We're getting cheated out of TWO PAYCHECKS!" And she was serious. And she complained how they can only get by because her husband got the extra two paychecks she didn't. She honestly thought she was getting paid a lower salary because of the pay period. I attributed it to another humiliation of the public school system but genetics had to play a part in it too.

Comparing costs and such to "then dollars vs today dollars" is pretty iffy at best. Different things inflated at different prices. Plus there was interest paid on savings and even checking accounts back when. Now that's effectively eliminated. So you need to exercise caution when you do such comparisons.

One big knock on the CPI is that it's a national average and most areas aren't average. Whether comparing housing costs, energy costs, spending trends, normal household transportation costs, etc, there is so much regional and locational (urban vs rural) variability that exceptions from the average are easier to find than the average among the real numbers .

Seems to me that common sense tells us that most prices have gone up over the years. Nobody would get a raise if they didn't. I just find it head-shaking to compare New York City with Bozeman, Montana and comparing prices. My point was simple and I stand by it.