Business, Family, Food, Kids, Uncategorized

Pucker Up for Inflation

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Two young girls had a card table set up outside the hardware store on Saturday, selling lemonade.  They had made up matching t-shirts for their cause and were very friendly and respectful.  I’m sure I’ve mentioned here before that I am a sucker for kids selling stuff.

I know I talked about my childhood KoolAid stands before. My mother always allowed me to use any Kool-Aid packets and sugar that I could find as well as Dixie cups and she never made me pay her back for the ingredients with my profit.  5 cents a cup.  Most days I made between 50 cents and a dollar, depending on how long I could keep it up.  I always felt a little like John D Rockefeller with this money.

These girls had options: water or lemonade. They also had something I never did – a choice of size!  Small, medium or large.  Their pricing started at $1.50.  I gave them $2 and told them to keep the change, thinking it wasn’t too much more than the pop I bought from a kid during the Lyndale Open Streets  festival a couple of weeks ago.  As I was driving home I thought back to my Kool-Aid days and hoped the money they made felt like a lot, like my 50 cents did to me way back when!

What’s something you’ve noticed has substantially increased in price since you were a kid?

 

 

37 thoughts on “Pucker Up for Inflation”

      1. We had a gas barrel at home and just filled all the cars from that. It wasn’t until a tax law changed that ‘farm gas’ wasn’t taxed but it could only be used for farm use that we had to start buying gas in town. At that point it was probably just over $1/ gallon.

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        1. Yep, that’s what we paid when I first arrived in the US in 1965, and they washed your windows and checked your oil to boot.

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        2. I remember going to my girlfriends prom, wearing a tux, and going to the one remaining full service station for gas because I didn’t want to pump my own while in the tux.

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  2. Seed. It used to be a big deal to buy a bag of corn seed that was over $100 / bag. Now they’re all at least $250 / bag and often more depending on how much technology is in the seed. (Genetically modified). One bag does just under 3 acres.
    Alfalfa seed was always much more expensive. I hated buying a bag at $200 and now some is over $400. I don’t have to buy that anymore because I don’t have the cattle so I don’t have to plant alfalfa.
    Course machinery is more, fertilizer and chemicals are more. But it’s the seed price that floors me every spring.

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  3. The only brand new car I ever bought was a 1973 Mercury Capri. I bought it straight off the showroom floor, and didn’t know enough to haggle about the price so paid sticker: $3,200.00.

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      1. We’re you living at home with your parents at that time, Bill? The rent on our first apartment in New Brighton when we first moved to the Twin Cities in 1972 was $245.00 a month, and it was a no frills complex.

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        1. At that time, Robin and I had been married for three years and I hadn’t lived at home since 1968. Of course, Robin was also working, so our total income was greater than $3,200. We were living in the bottom half of a house. Rent was $125 a month.

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        2. My first apartment in a small town in Central Iowa, was $90 in 1975. I can hardly believe that. My mother kept the check my dad wrote for the hospital when I was born. I think it was $500-$700.

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  4. Movie tickets – often a quarter when I was little, and the summer matinees were 10 for $1… for some reason I can remember the flyer I brought home from school – I was surprised that my mom was gonna spring for that. Then I was also allowed to walk the 8 blocks on my own to see them! (This was Storm Lake, IA circa 1957.)

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  5. Well, today I feel like I am getting a good deal. It is gently raining on our seedlings and garden plants. We pay a lot for water here, as we should for such a precious commodity. Our city water comes from the Missouri River. Now, with the rain, I don’t have to water the garden. We use soaker hoses all over the garden and flower beds, but we still end up with the most expensive vegetables in town by the end of the summer if we calculate the cost of watering. Many homes have wells for watering, but our ground water is heavily alkali and isn’t very good for plants.

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  6. Our monthly rent for a one bedroom basement apartment in Cheyenne, WY was $62.50 in 1965. When we moved to a two bedroom, above ground apartment a year later our rent went up to $68.00.

    At the time I worked part-time for Mr. Armstrong, the watch repairman at F.E. Warren Air Force Base, who paid me the princely sum of $3.00/hr.

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  7. I got my license on my 16th birthday, in 1972. I had learned primarily on my dad’s Lincoln, that’s a whole nother story, but from the minute I got my license I really only drove my mom’s car, the VW Beetle. That first night it was pouring down rain and my mom said that the car needs gas and she handed me a $5 bill. So I drove up to the gas station closest to our house and the guy came out in his cap and rain jacket. I said fill er up or $5 whichever comes first. I thought he was going to fall down on the ground he was laughing so hard at the thought that anyone could think you could put $5 worth of gas in a Beetle.

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  8. Some things that I can still remember:
    – full sized candy bars for a nickel
    – some candy, such as Tootsie Pops were less than a nickel
    – gas at less than 30 cents/gallon
    – babysitting for 25 or 50 cents/hour regardless of how many kids
    I did get $1 an hour if after midnight
    – first part time job at $1/hour
    – first full time job (hospital nursing) at $5.25/hour
    – stamps at 4 cents
    – taking out a loan of $4200/year for college, which included tuition,
    room & board, books, and I had money left over at the end of the year.
    This increased significantly by the time I graduated.
    – Gopher football student season ticket for $14
    – Gopher hockey & basketball student season ticket for $12
    – movie tickets for 25 or 50 cents and popcorn for about a dime

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  9. A three day hospital stay in 1970, that included an emergency surgery to stanch the hemorrhaging resulting from a ruptured fallopian tube, cost $3,200.00 without insurance. Can you imagine what that would cost today?

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    2. Still waiting the entire bill, but just the room and related charges for my 5 days was $20,000.

      Seems Like every time I see a doc it’s $275-$400.

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      1. I hope you have insurance that covers most of that, Ben?

        Wonder how ljb’s day went. It was supposed to be day of extensive tests. Has anyone heard from her?

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        3. I’m here and survived the day. I’m tired and plan to update my CaringBridge site sometime in the next few days.

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      2. xdfben – The bill for my fractured hip, surgery, and 5 day hospital stay two and a half years ago came to over $65,000. I was responsible for about $2500 of that. Yikes!!!

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  10. I remember movies costing a dollar for admission.

    My first job, as I recall, started me off at a whopping $1.90 per hour. My housemate and I split rent of $170 a month.

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