I was about that young boys age in 1962. Kids behaved in public or we got our butts swatted.
I especially liked the commenter who calculated the cost of groceries in today’s prices/wages. Really makes you think...especially if, like me, you went grocery shopping today and went googly-eyed at the price of certain things.
But hey, Washington says there’s no inflation. So, no worries! And we’ve always been at war with EastAsia!
I’m having a tougher and tougher time watching stuff like this. It makes me so melancholic when I think about what America was.
Thanks. I was six in 62. Same car and almost identical store. Paper only and no plastic. $5.63! Paychecks average about 100 a week and the split level mortgage was $82. Car payments were less than $10 a month and Mom stayed at home to take care of the four of us. Shoes were a bit on the expensive side. Our family also had money left over to save. What more can I say. Thank you inflation and fiat currency.
Actually, the copyright date on the film is 1957 (MCMLVII), not 1962 (MCMLXII). The hairstyles also give it away!
I don't know whether to thank you or curse you
In 1962 we had a family of three, I was making couple bucks an hour and thought I picking in tall cotton. In 1963 we bought our first new car, a Plymouth Valiant, $1700.00 out the door.
Now for the silver: 5.60 times .72 (ounces of silver in $1.00 face value coinage at 90%) equals 4.032 ounces of silver, worth 37.96/oz. spot at the time of this posting, or $153.05 in today's market.
One of those silver quarters is worth $6.83 today (as silver), still better than a gallon of gas...
Sure wish I still had the dimes I fed Coke machines back in the day...
In 1962, my parent’s nearly new, California ranch-style 3-2-2 was worth around $15,000 and the monthly mortgage payment was around $100 a month.
I’ve often said that the real value of things doesn’t change a whole lot - only our paper money does. I’m sure that you could buy the same (or equivalent) house today for the same amount of gold that it would have fetched when it was new.
HA...no chips, cookies, candy, soda in THAT budget....and if you notice they are not overweight, either.
Mrs. Nelson got around in style in that 55 Bel Aire. My dear old Dad bought a 59 Impala convertible with a 348 that could outrun anything short of a Corvette. It cost $3100 new, in those days anyone who spent more than 3k on a Chevy could be declared legally insane! In 62 we lived in a 2-bedroom co-op in the Palham Bay section of da Bronx, still a nice neighborhood, in a brand new apt building. It cost my parents an astounding $2500 plus a whopping $120/mo in common charges. I remember them telling me about a recession in 1962. My grandparents, like most other “seasoned citizens” who lived through the Depression were worried that we were headed for another one.
Think of the differences today:
- All cars back then were domestic
- The women all wore dresses
- No credit/debit cards
- Cashier had to “wring up” every item - no scanners
- Very few single parent households
- No cell phones
Grocery carts still look pretty much the same.
it might be interesting to see what it would cost today for what they bought
i found a 4 lb veal roast price on the net... $46 (i had no idea of the current price, seems crazy high)
assuming value stayed the same but the dollar shrank, $5 in silver would be about 4.5 oz, or about $171. that seems like it’d be close
funny how that is.
I can remember in 1963, buying groceries and coming out of the store and complaining to the wife that we only got one bag of groceries for $5, when the year before at the same store you could get two bags full for $5. Ahhhh, the good old days. I was making $2.06 per hour and considered it pretty fair wages compared to what some people made.
In 62 I was making $3.25/hour and only paying $65/ month rent for a 2 bedroom house.
Luv the buzz cut. Mom wouldn’t buzz me any other way.
I was 8years old in 1962. About that time, my aunt who was working for Westinghouse purchased a new Buick “Wildcat”so she gave my mother & father her 1956 something Buick. It was a green 4-door and had an armrest in the back so big you could sit on it (which my little brother did). These were the days before seatbelts,of course.
We called it “The Tank”. It was an awesome car.
At the end of the video, they slam the door of the car shut.
Listen to it. It sounds like a tank. LOL
Those were some seriously awesome cars in those days.
Graduated from a small Vermont HS in 1961 and I had been working part-time (for $1.00/hr) in a private grocery store for 2 years.
Didn't make much money but allowed me to be the only kid in HS who owned their own car; a 1953 Chevy
After graduating went to work for large chain store (and was making a whopping $1.50/hr) and worked for them until Oct. 1962, when I quit to join the USAF.
Worked in every dept. except the meat dept and that kid stamping can with a marker sure reminded me of what a laborious time consuming task this was compared to today when everything already has a bar code.
Likewise, running a register then, was no easy task whereby one had to actually punch the amount in manually as well as which dept the item was purchased from.
Today's checkers have it made as all they have to do (with the exception of some loose produce) is scan the items as fast as they can swipe them and simply hit the total button.
The amazing advancement of technology.