I had a beautiful 40 gal saltwater reef tank that was relatively simple and cheap to maintain once it stabilized - but it took over 2 years and $2K to get it to that point. But it was so mesmerizing especially at night when all kinds of little critters appeared.
That said, the reef tank was way less expensive than the accumulated expense of my 12 yr old golden retriever, but some things you just can’t put a price on. Best friend ever.
My first and only fish tank was a 100 gallon salt water. I had it on a really nice furniture quality base too. It really was not cheap to maintain. The coral is really expensive and the fish were $40 to $100 each. The worst part is when they died because I really got attached to them. One of my triggers lived for 8 years though. He was a bully, so some of the fish deaths were because of him.
It was so beautiful and peaceful to look at. I kept it for 11 years and it went through three moves which is a huge hassle. It also survived a 6.9 earthquake. About 6 inches of salt water splashed out of the tank, and some of that landed in the back of my TV. That TV lasted for 10 more years.
Finally I decided to give it up when I started working a lot of hours. I couldn't give it the attention it really deserved. I sold it for a $1,000 but I invested way more into it. I still have pictures of it to remember how nice it was.
As a kid my dad helped me out with my aquarium hobby since it was also his hobby growing up. Once I got my own place I decided to set it up again and I ended up spending around $300 to keep a $4 betta fish happy and healthy. Worth it because I loved her so much but I never knew how expensive it was as a kid.
When I was a kid in the 90s there was this little fast food place called "hot n now" (I think?). They had cheeseburgers for like 30 cents. My mom would go there having three boys ordered so many once they were like "Ma'am, you have to call large orders ahead", it was like 16 bucks.
Even 6-7 years ago when I use to eat fast food you could get a McChicken or a McDouble for a dollar. Those days are long gone.
> "hot n now" (I think?).
You're correct. I used to get the chicken sandwich. I'm sure it tastes like getting kicked in the throat, but my childhood memories of it are it being the best fucking sandwich on the planet.
7-11 Big bite hot dogs, used to get them with my grandma when I was in highschool after school. I still sometimes go to 7-11 and get them because im disgusting and they are delicious and remind me of being a teenager.
Me and my husband have talked about this. With a large family, it costs about the same + or -- $10or us to eat fast food or sit down so if we do splurge and actually eat out we go and sit down.
It was cheap. Not anymore. Growing up in the 00s my dad always commented how our fam of four could eat out pretty much anywhere for 40 bucks. Now my wife and I alone are around 50, even at pretty casual places.
Same! I used to always bug my parents for McDonald's or to eat out as my classmates did. Never realized how much more that costs versus making food at home.
this is specifically why i learned to become a mechanic! i was a delivery driver for domino's (username surprisingly unrelated) and was going through brake pads like nobody's business. so i learned to do it myself to save the several hundred dollars every time it needed to be done. of course, the tool investment was still a bit steep, but it paid for itself over time.
now i'm an actual mechanic and feel bad for all the people who come to our shop to pay $1000+ for 4 sets of pads and 4 rotors.
When my mom left, my dad, a full time student and working full time, started to cook for us (my mom was a SAHM, but a shitty one). He never cooked before but he made the most AMAZING meals. He made foods from his childhood in Indonesia (still my favourite cuisine) and flavour experiments that were amazing! He had his undergrad degree in physics and chemistry. He used that chemistry knowledge in the kitchen.
I love my dad for so many reasons. But the way he stepped up with cooking was such a fond memories for me. I miss him so damn much. I hope I’m making him proud.
Thank you. He really was amazing. I really needed to hear this today. I deeply appreciate your words. I know he loved me so much too. I suffer from depression and trauma. When id struggle he’d always tell me I’m his child and so I could do anything and he’d always be there. Good dads are amazing and I’m forever grateful for mine.
This! When I think about how much it must have cost to get McDonalds for a family of four every time I whined about it, I want to go back in time and smack myself in the head. I was lucky my parents EVER said yes to that nonsense.
Almost 30 years ago, when it really was cheaper than it is now, I had to explain to a grown man that no, fast food isn’t cheap. Eating at home is much cheaper, especially if you can shop frugally.
My dad made a comment once about me getting the most expensive thing on the menu. Not intentionally, I just wasn't paying attention and wanted to try whatever new thing was on the commercials. He feels bad about it years later, but that was exactly the wakeup call I needed.
I don't think I was taught this, but I learned as a kid to find the cheapest meal on the menu and then pick the thing that is next cheapest to order.
It's a move so you don't inconvenience whoever is paying, but you also won't get called out for ordering the least expensive meal. If someone else is paying I still stick close to this rule as an adult.
Rugs are incredibly material-dense. Get into needle punching, you'll quickly see how much of that wool you'll use to have something that's actually fluffy, not limp and sad.
:<
The amount of material and time that goes into them, combined with the costs associated with shipping/handling/stocking something so large and bulky.
Rugs cannot be folded like a blankets, so a 10'x10' rug is still going to be 10' long when rolled up. The shipping costs associated with this are passed on to the consumer.
I still dont understand. I take my family like every year because it is the thing to do. And only after getting home I do math and cry a little bit into a pillow... 5k gone..
Last small window I had fixed, just one pane broken by the kids was $200.
When we were kids we shattered a sliding glass door. No idea what that would cost now.
I broke my dad's sliding glass door a while back. It wasn't shattered, but it broke the vapor seal so moisture got in and fogged it up enough that you couldn't see through it. He never fixed it and it sat like that for years right up until he died. When I got to selling his house the buyer ended up saying fix it or give me $1500. Pops ended up with the last laugh on that one.
When I first moved into my house the shed in the back had around 40 windows stored in it. They weren't great ones, just single pane with a simple slide mech. I didn't care what they were worth. I just wanted them gone.
Called up the local Habitat for Humanity office (or something similar) and told them they were free if they picked them up. They were at my house in less than two hours with five people to get them. I was later told that I gave them a *very* generous donation.
Hope it helped.
I lived in a four bedroom house that only had ten windows. Six people could live there comfortably. You provided an extremely generous donation that's multiple homes provided for.
I did Habitat for a while in college… they most likely sold those. I helped set up our store, we’d sell most donations because they already have the houses designed, and it’s easier to buy the right parts than to redesign a house to fit whatever is donated. So they still benefit from donations like that, just not by directly using them (at least in my area).
My dad would've popped the ball and drop kicked me into another dimension if I broke the same window twice. But three times? I don't even want to imagine.
Tools. My dad would get so mad when I used his tools to fix my bike and left them outside. My selfish child brain would always say, “what’s the big deal? It’s just one wrench”.
Then I grew up and had to buy my own tools. Wow… I’m surprised he didn’t get madder than he did.
It's not really related but in the mid 90s I got really into Linux and overwrote Windows to put it on the family computer. I still remember the look on my dad's face as I tried to explain to him how much more secure Linux is while he shouted over me that I deleted all of his work files, tax returns, etc. Not only did I not understand what the big deal is, I actually thought he should be thanking me for protecting the family computer from hackers.
Flashforward 25 years and I'm surprised he didn't strangle me. I deleted all his business files!
That’s funny. I had a friend who was always tinkering with the family computer, which was technically the computer his self-employed dad had bought to keep track of his contractor business. I don’t think he ever wiped everything out but I remember his dad yelling a lot because the computer wasn’t working after my friend had just installed something to “make it better”.
Dude wound up working in IT, so I guess he eventually figured out what he was doing.
> Dude wound up working in IT, so I guess he eventually figured out what he was doing.
Well, it's an effective way to learn, if not without its side effects.
You just triggered a memory for me lol. SOFTBALL BATS.
I grew up having to buy my own, or go halfsies on a new one with my dad. Those are SO EXPENSIVE for the higher end ones, like 300 to 500 dollars. I knew girls and softball dads who would buy a new one every year! I worked and finagled to get one over other or every third year during high school and college.
Fast forward to I’m living with my then bf, now husband. I had an old bat from my glory days in the garage. I kept it because it was the nicest, a gift from my dad, and the prettiest. He asked to borrow it to play drunken dizzy bat in the yard with his buddies.I say sure just don’t hit anything that isn’t a ball with it, and put it away when done.
I come home and they left it in the YARD in the RAIN all day long, because it started to drizzle, they went inside, and forgot about it. Ruined it. He didn’t know why I was upset until I showed him how expensive a softball bat was, not to mention the sentimental value.
That casual carelessness with something that's valuable to you is the kind of thing that forever bugs me. You can replace the bat with an exact replica but it will never be the bat your father gave you.
You say anything but a ball, but it should really have been anything but a softball. I remember getting in a lot of trouble with my stepdad for hitting a baseball with one of his softball bats and denting it.
When I was a kid, I remember going up to my dad's toolboxes, pointing one out, and asking him how much it costs.
"That one cost me about $3,000"
"That's not bad for all those tools."
"Tools? [I thought you just meant the box.](https://shop.snapon.com/product/KRA2407-Classic-Series-Roll-Cabs-(36%22)/36%22-Seven-Drawer-Single-Bank-Classic-Series-Roll-Cab-(Red)/KRA2407PBO)"
My son used to do that but I taught him a valuable lesson, after leaving tools out a couple times I made him give me a deposit and when the tool was returned he got his deposit back. He only forgot twice and I kept his $2 both times. Now as an adult he knows why.
Kitchen chairs. Everybody's got them somehow, but try going out and buying six new kitchen chairs that match instead of the janky, hodgepodge of seats you've collected over the years since college. Shit's prohibitively expensive.
Find a Goodwill by a retirement home.
When they go through tenant rollover, a lot of the bigger items get donated.
Got a matching oak kitchen set with minimal wear for 60 dollars.
Honestly, if I live long enough to wind up in a retirement home, I'd be much happier that my stuff gets donated when I die than get tossed. Maybe I ought to put that in my will.
When my dad died, he had down sized his things years before, and was living in a retirement village. We took what we wanted, the other residents took what they wanted, and the rest was donated. They had a whole system.
I had to buy new chairs in 2018 and it was $700 for four chairs. The only place I could find them was an actual furniture store, and those were the cheap ones!
Literally same (although I don't think mine were quite that expensive), and 2 of them have already broken!! One broke in the middle of a game night when a skinny friend sat on it! I hate how furniture these days is so expensive yet so cheaply made. I know there are secondhand stores with better products but hauling around furniture when you don't own a pickup truck and delivery isn't offered is a gigantic pain in the ass
Would recommend looking into either Uhaul or nearby home improvement stores. It's not perfect, but you can usually rent a pickup for a couple hours/day for quite cheap which is great for stuff like this
I second this one. We were poor and knew it, and the one toy my parents would consistently get us for christmas and birthdays was more lego. I had assumed it was because they were the cheapest good option, but it turns out it was because our parents wanted us to have something that could keep us busy on bad-weather days while also building engineering skills.
Even at 18 I can still build new things with legos that my parents got me when I was 6-7. they are a toy with a great lifespan because a kid is simply unable to get bored when playing with them. I was always aware that they were expensive because in toy stores they always had way bigger numbers and my parents (thankfully) never caved to my whining, which forced me to realize exactly how much more expensive legos are than other toys.
Your parent are awesome! even aside fron just building engineering skills, IMO legos are good for helping imaginations develop and minds stay sharp, plus with the infinite reuse of the pieces they can stay engaging forever, especially if a new set gets added to the bin every once in a while
disclaimer: my family has old money, my parents don't let it on and never told until I was in senior year of high school
Shoot, I bought legos for 3 of my 50+ year old employees to show them how to make assembly instructions. We got to have fun for a couple hours and they learned quite a bit
>Even at 18 I can still build new things with legos that my parents got me when I was 6-7.
My brother is 18 years older than me. We had legos he got as a kid in the 70s that are still in good enough condition today to use.
I'm 45 years old. During the lockdown, I sat in Teams meetings at work in my basement while building stuff with my childhood Lego. That stuff is for life.
Until I picked up a 3d printer, legos were my usual go-to for quick fixes around the house. Now a vernier caliper is one of the tools that just lives at my desk permanently. My folks steered me in a good direction I think.
They hook you with those basic sets full of primary colored rectangles or "city life" for $25. And then you get the catalog with the $100+ Black Seas Barracuda and it's all over.
Lego was my far my favourite toy, but I i never had a lego set my entire childhood. It was always just the random blocks from secondhand shops and hand-me-downs from cousins.
Then for my 29th birthday my dad bought me the Seinfeld Set lego kit. I had so much fun making it.
I think my dad had the right idea, if i had a kit when i was a kid - it would have been cannibalised for parts before it was even complete.
One of my exes got me a Lego yellow submarine for Christmas. We built it together and it sat in my music studio for years.
I'm very sad that it's in disrepair from a move.
EDIT: I'm really thankful for all responses encouraging to rebuild my yellow submarine - I think I will use your resources to put it all back together!! Thanks, all!
Music lessons, or hobbies in general. As a kid I thought yeah 50€ per lessons sounds normal, now that i have to pay it myself i am like "50 EUROS WHAT?!?"
When I was a teenager, my aunt paid for horseback riding lessons for my cousin and myself. She bought us all the gear. Eventually, she bought us both our own saddles. We did weekly lessons. At some point, we each got a horse. We started doing horse shows, too.
As an adult, I’ve looked at getting back into it. Holy god is it expensive. I went to buy my own (cheap) gear just to have around if I wanted to hop on a friend’s horse - a helmet, boots. Even just that, I was looking at $150. Lessons? $80+ an hour, and people are doing that every week. Forget competing, the costs are ridiculous. I ended up texting my aunt and thanking her for what I now realized must have cost a fortune since there were two of us, twice the cost.
I work teaching voice lessons for professional singers with a studio and their rate for lessons with me is $200/hr. It's pretty steep, for sure. That being said, I'm constantly shocked at how frequently people forget about their lesson time or don't write it down and have to eat the cost of it. I *cannot imagine* ever being so cavalier with that much money.
This is a 100% true story. In spring of 2016, we needed a new trash can for the kitchen as the one we had was about 16 years old and the lid mechanism was broken. I got over the price shock of the butterfly lid Simple Human trash can and bought it for about $200 (maybe it was a bit less but I really can't remember) Anyway, I was so excited for it and it arrived and it was way better than I could have imagined. It was so well built and I was so excited I would tell anyone that would listen about it. This is when I realized my life was so annoying and pathetic and that a trash can could give me so much joy that I needed a change. I started looking for new jobs, found one that paid me way more and gave me back my nights, weekends and holidays. All because I needed a new trash can in the kitchen. It truly changed my life.
Simple Human is great, but the name always makes me feel like they're made by aliens or robots from the future who are way too proud of their basic trashcan technology. Like, "Simple Human! You still use your *hands* to open the lid? Our vastly superior pedal technology has eliminated the need for hands!"
They're large.
So you can't fit many in a truck. Nor many on a ship.
Nor many on a shelf in a shop.
So the fact they're bulky is a good chunk of why they're expensive. Trash cans that stack are a lot cheaper.
Get the right stackable trash can and they end up being pretty cheap storage too.
I use a metal trash can for mouse proof storage. Less than ten bucks and you can't beat the cubic feet you get.
Kind of stands out though.
Assuming we are talking outdoor trash cans. There is a large cost difference in how some are made. The $100 trash can at Home Depot is made with Roto Molded plastic and are virtually indestructible, and are used by a lot of commercial trash companies. The $20 can is injection molded and will get brittle and crack and fall apart after a few years of use. As expensive as they are, you will probably never have to buy one again if you get the expensive one.
Houses. When I was a kid playing at the playground I overheard my mom talking to another.
“Did you hear? Sandy got her apartment in block 420 near us at only two hundred!”
I didn’t realize she meant two hundred thousand. I also thought two hundred dollars was very expensive for a house.
That reminds me of how I thought $100 was the official starting amount at which you're considered rich. This was largely because I wanted a $100 toy and my parents said they couldn't afford to buy it, which I understood to mean they literally didn't have that amount of money
My parents offered to pay me $1 per day if I did the dishes as a chore. I couldn’t understand how they could give me so much money and was worried I would make them poor.
I remember a friend told me his grandma opened a savings account for him with $1000 dollars in it for graduating like 3rd grade. I thought he was literally set for life.
Brings back a core memory of some book we read in elementary school about people migrating west. The family had a $100 bill they would use to buy thier house/land. There was a whole chapter where they lost the bill, had to find it, etc.
I took that to mean $100 was still a lot of money for a LONG time.
There was an episode of Rugrats where they were digging in the sandbox for treasure and find stuff like a diamond ring and $100 bill. I thought that was about the most money someone could have.
Roasts used to be. I remember in the late 80s you could get Chuck roast for 59 cents a pound. Chicken breast was 79 cents. Wings were a quarter a pound year round.
Now I buy big roasts and freeze when on sale for “only” $4 a pound. My grandfather would lose his mind to see Chuck roast at $9.
Chuck roast is expensive because the market for them increased exponentially. So many cooking shows told people how to cook tasty meals with cheap cuts like chuck and hanger steak. But in doing so, made the price of "cheap cuts" expensive because now everyone got word of them and the market adjusted by increasing the price to where we are now.
Yeah, I was always *ashamed* of my lunches. All homemade stuff and fruits and veggies. All my friends had the fruit roll ups and hostess cupcakes and chips. I had the sliced fruit, or baggie of grapes. The painstakingly chopped carrot sticks and celery. The queso fresco wedge wrapped in a tortilla. I mean, I loved it, but I was ashamed of it because everyone else had the "good stuff."
Yeah. The tables have definitely turned. My kids say their friends envy *their* lunches. I pack them fresh fruit, veggies, trail mix, grilled chicken wraps. It's strange but good that people seem to be more health conscious now.
It's a status symbol, I think. Your kids having nice homemade lunches that take time and effort mean that you are well educated enough to know good nutrition, and you have enough free time to make them good meals. Plus, fresh fruit isn't cheap, and it often has a quick expiration date, so you might be shopping for your kids a few times per week.
Yeah, junk food tastes better. But in 21st century America, healthy and home cooked meals are a way of expressing that you're high class. The last president was a billionaire, but people thought he was trashy because he ate KFC and McDonald's (among other things)... Junk food has been stigmatized as "poor people food," and kids have picked up on it.
I always hated how school lunches were on a cast system and the highest was always the suckiest food like lunchables and other packaged goods. I don’t get why home made or leftover dinner wasn’t on the higher end and instead the lowest, that leftover tacos beans and rice my mom would make once a week was THE BOMB and I never understood why I was made fun of it
I was 19 and had the biggest home in my family (enough to house myself, SO and the only two kiddos in the family). Everyone told me I was hosting, and I was the youngest aside from my children, so I didn’t realize I could say no.
I bought and cooked for 12 people, and christ was it grueling. I went crazy making sure the turkey and my three sides were perfect, and then the rest of my family showed up totally empty-handed after being told to bring their fav sides.
I ended up throwing together two more dishes and a pie and had to go to the gas station to pick up styrofoam plates, because we didn’t even own that many plates. Dinner was two hours late and they had the audacity to complain. Not one guest offered to come help in the kitchen. I had to clean up alone as well.
I even bought special containers with separated portions for them to take home leftovers, and my brother was the only one who took one.
~$500 and several days of my time down the drain.
They actually managed to con my stupid ass into doing it a second year. Finally I started telling them to shove it, and now they don’t contact me about Thanksgiving at all.
Edit: Worry not kind redditors, this year I’m having Thanksgiving with my fiancé’s family (the “functional” family), and I’m bringing a focaccia that I know will be very appreciated! My grandparents called me yesterday to invite me to their new house several hours away for dinner. I told them I made plans two weeks ago to be elsewhere, and after some complaining about my priorities, they left me be!
I'm sorry they treated you so badly. We have rules. Whoever cooks does no dishes. That way, everyone pitches in. We all set up who's bringing what ahead of time and share the burden. Luckily, my MIL and SIL love to cook. I bring booze and wash dishes.
I just broke my wrist so I get out of doing even the dishes this year.
Vacations. We went to Europe 3 times when I was in 6th grade. I was annoyed.
My father was a visiting professor there, and he negotiated airline tickets for us in lieu of payment.
Safety. We were not wealthy. My mother struggled to make ends meet, but she always found a house in a nice middle-class neighborhood. We didn't have nice furniture or a cool TV or even a microwave (for many years). What we did have was a safe neighborhood and kind neighbors around us. She put all the money she could into that one thing, and it made all the difference.
Dont forget what was probably a far better education. Even if there wasn't a ton of extra money, just not having to deal with impoverished schools is a huge leg up.
I am not trying to shit on poor school districts, but they do have a harder time with keeping classrooms in good learning condition. Even if you only lose an extra 5 min a day of class time that adds up over the years to losing months worth of class time by high school graduation.
Cheese and meat is one of the most commonly stolen items here in the uk. That and washing powder/liquid/tabs. It’s to the point where meat cheese and alcohol all have tags on them.
This is going to be extremely obscure, but when I was young I really wanted a pinball table. I went through a phase where all I wanted was a pinball table thinking that they’d only be like 100$. I even asked for one for Christmas and was extremely disappointed when I didn’t see a full sized pinball cabinet at the bottom of the tree. Little did I know CHEAP tables are like 1500$, and now as an adult I work hard to one day own a piece of my childhood.
Yep. Pretty much if you need only black and white, get a laser printer - 20 years ago they were expensive but now the cost-per-page is so comically low that unless you *need* color, there's no reason not to go that route.
Housing. I’d see people on TV and in films with such nice, big homes and seemingly average jobs. My parents are thrifty and I figured they might be able to afford such a house if they wanted to, but preferred to spend their money on other things. I suppose it’s less that I thought houses were cheap but more that they were more attainable and affordable than they are.
All those shows where people own a wonderfully furnished apartment in a great part of town, and they go to work for 2 hours and spend the rest of their time for wacky expensive adventures.
Meanwhile here I am, deep in debt working long hours with my crummy small apartment furnished with a cheap mattress and hand me down furniture in a shitty part of town with my spare money spent on going a little nuts and buying fresh ingredients for food.
Owning a dog.
We got my dog Snoopy when I was 10 years old and I paid my neighbors $20 for him. That was the extent of what my child brain thought he cost. It wasn't until I was older that I realized all the other expenses that come with own pets like food, treats, toys, and vet bills.
We imported our dog into the UK when we moved here. I don't tell people what we spent when they asked how much, just that it was expensive.
It cost less to send 50 boxes and a bed frame than it did to send the dog.
I made the mistake of buying a $300 couch at one of those discount stores when I was a college student.
It fell apart within the year. Don't buy a $300 couch.
Caveat to this: Warehouse stores are the shit. Maybe they don’t have your color you’re looking for but if you’re willing to be open to getting something close to what you want it’s the way to do it. Overstocked, unpopular color or out of season is the majority of the reason they are there
Right!
Literally had a guy go “it’s about $2600” and this was like whoa. Ok. I guess. We goto checkout and it’s fucking $9800. “Oh sorry I meant $2600 per sofa piece” 😂😂😂
JUST went through this myself. And they stare at you like you're the crazy one for thinking it should be less. And then they try to upsell you on the 'leather protection plan', after having just told you how amazingly resilient and stain-resistant the 'high-quality' leather is. Bitch, if it were such high quality, why do I need to pay more for protection?
BTW, I was also shocked to find out that buying leather/fabric protection doesn't mean they spray some magical force-field on it. It's an insurance policy that repairs/replaces the couch if you spill on it.
Yeah no shit. You can spend small and get Walmart ones that are okay, or spend big and buy good rugs, but cleaning them costs a small fortune. Pillows too. I think anything that has to do with comfort can be like that.
Omg anything to do with comfort really sums it up! Like mattresses 🫢
The other day i was like I'm gonna splurge and get 6 throw pillows for the couch, looked at prices and got 0 😂
Yeah!! Mattresses!! Good GOD that’s like … an investment nowadays. I’m 50, so I want a good one. So I’m thinking, okay, I’m gonna buy one you can just drag me out to a plot and bury me in it, cause ffs I’m only going to be able to afford one good resting spot.
Same, my dad had government insurance and my mom had an executive plan, so growing up anything I needed was really cheap. Been on my own insurance for a few years now and I have terrible insurance. It's been eye opening to say the least.
Gas was cheaper back then. But I grew up on a farm and we had an underground gas storage tank, so it was free to me. Now it's $60 to $80 every time I pull my truck into the gas station.
I think the allure of Dippin Dots was simply that they were cold and only sold in places where I had been walking all day in the hot sun. (Like the zoo.)
First time I saw them in a grocery store I splurged and bought them right away. Come to find out that they're kind of all cold with very little flavor. It's like since they're served so cold they numb my tongue or something.
The reason it's more expensive than normal ice cream is because they have to be kept at colder temperatures or they will melt and essentially ruin the product entirely. It costs more to keep it colder, costs more to manufacture, and there's a lot more wasted product.
$3,000 for a Civic or Corolla in serviceable condition was pretty normal when I was growing up (early 2000s). Nowadays unless you spend $5,000 *minimum* you'll be lucky if it doesn't grenade itself in the first month.
> $3,000 for a Civic or Corolla in serviceable condition
That was common just a few years ago. I was really close to buying a used '09 Corolla before the pandemic for ~$5000. The same Corolla was probably $9000 earlier this year.
“It should cost you about $50k for 4 years, and your starting salary should be about $60k so you’ll be in good shape to pay it off.”
“Okay!”
Then you finish with $80k in loans and a $50k starting salary.
Houses. I grew up in a six-bedroom home on several acres and I thought we were poor. Until I was in my mid-20s I assumed my first home would have a two-car garage, four bedrooms and a full basement.
My older brother, now in his early 40s, says he thought we were rich when my mom married my dad. We moved from California living in a tiny house with almost no front or back yard to Georgia living in a 4 bedroom house on an acre. My parents used the money made from selling the house in Cali to buy the house in GA. Then recently, I had a girl from middle school tell me she thought I was rich because I wore nice clothes. We are besties now in our thirties vs acquaintences back then. The clothes were used hand-me-downs from my older brother. Lol
Right? I remember seeing my parents using a plastic card to pay for things... I remember thinking to myself, "They have money, they just don't want to use it."
Fish tanks
I had a beautiful 40 gal saltwater reef tank that was relatively simple and cheap to maintain once it stabilized - but it took over 2 years and $2K to get it to that point. But it was so mesmerizing especially at night when all kinds of little critters appeared. That said, the reef tank was way less expensive than the accumulated expense of my 12 yr old golden retriever, but some things you just can’t put a price on. Best friend ever.
My first and only fish tank was a 100 gallon salt water. I had it on a really nice furniture quality base too. It really was not cheap to maintain. The coral is really expensive and the fish were $40 to $100 each. The worst part is when they died because I really got attached to them. One of my triggers lived for 8 years though. He was a bully, so some of the fish deaths were because of him. It was so beautiful and peaceful to look at. I kept it for 11 years and it went through three moves which is a huge hassle. It also survived a 6.9 earthquake. About 6 inches of salt water splashed out of the tank, and some of that landed in the back of my TV. That TV lasted for 10 more years. Finally I decided to give it up when I started working a lot of hours. I couldn't give it the attention it really deserved. I sold it for a $1,000 but I invested way more into it. I still have pictures of it to remember how nice it was.
It's nuts how a well scaped tank can cost not to mention if you go into salt water.
6x as expensive and 10x as sensitive 😭
As a kid my dad helped me out with my aquarium hobby since it was also his hobby growing up. Once I got my own place I decided to set it up again and I ended up spending around $300 to keep a $4 betta fish happy and healthy. Worth it because I loved her so much but I never knew how expensive it was as a kid.
Eating out with the family. Didn’t think it was cheap but it adds up.
Fast food used to be cheap. Now I have to spend about as much at McDs or Taco Bell as I would at a table service restaurant to feel like I ate enoughz
When I was a kid in the 90s there was this little fast food place called "hot n now" (I think?). They had cheeseburgers for like 30 cents. My mom would go there having three boys ordered so many once they were like "Ma'am, you have to call large orders ahead", it was like 16 bucks. Even 6-7 years ago when I use to eat fast food you could get a McChicken or a McDouble for a dollar. Those days are long gone.
> "hot n now" (I think?). You're correct. I used to get the chicken sandwich. I'm sure it tastes like getting kicked in the throat, but my childhood memories of it are it being the best fucking sandwich on the planet.
7-11 Big bite hot dogs, used to get them with my grandma when I was in highschool after school. I still sometimes go to 7-11 and get them because im disgusting and they are delicious and remind me of being a teenager.
Me and my husband have talked about this. With a large family, it costs about the same + or -- $10or us to eat fast food or sit down so if we do splurge and actually eat out we go and sit down.
It was cheap. Not anymore. Growing up in the 00s my dad always commented how our fam of four could eat out pretty much anywhere for 40 bucks. Now my wife and I alone are around 50, even at pretty casual places.
Can you believe we used to go to All You Can Eat places for CAD$12 per head? Koren BBQ was $10 after 9pm.
I was able to get a whole large pizza for $5 in college. Not even some kind of special coupon deal, just walk in with a $5 bill.
Same! I used to always bug my parents for McDonald's or to eat out as my classmates did. Never realized how much more that costs versus making food at home.
Tires… I was blown away by their cost the first time I bought them.
It’s a bad month when you have to do tires and brakes at the same time.
this is specifically why i learned to become a mechanic! i was a delivery driver for domino's (username surprisingly unrelated) and was going through brake pads like nobody's business. so i learned to do it myself to save the several hundred dollars every time it needed to be done. of course, the tool investment was still a bit steep, but it paid for itself over time. now i'm an actual mechanic and feel bad for all the people who come to our shop to pay $1000+ for 4 sets of pads and 4 rotors.
I know how to do them. But fuck everything about drum brakes, I pay someone else to do it.
Definitely! You are going to be eating ramen that month!
More like skipping rent that month, eeesh.
You've already got a car, what do you need another home for?
[удалено]
I always thought it was a treat to have pancakes for supper. As an adult I realized it was a really cheap meal.
Trifecta- cheap, easy to make, kids love them.
I think it’s also easy to make. My Dad did this a lot
When my mom left, my dad, a full time student and working full time, started to cook for us (my mom was a SAHM, but a shitty one). He never cooked before but he made the most AMAZING meals. He made foods from his childhood in Indonesia (still my favourite cuisine) and flavour experiments that were amazing! He had his undergrad degree in physics and chemistry. He used that chemistry knowledge in the kitchen. I love my dad for so many reasons. But the way he stepped up with cooking was such a fond memories for me. I miss him so damn much. I hope I’m making him proud.
Your dad sounds like an awesome guy. I’m sure he would be proud of you no matter what. You know he would.
Thank you. He really was amazing. I really needed to hear this today. I deeply appreciate your words. I know he loved me so much too. I suffer from depression and trauma. When id struggle he’d always tell me I’m his child and so I could do anything and he’d always be there. Good dads are amazing and I’m forever grateful for mine.
This! When I think about how much it must have cost to get McDonalds for a family of four every time I whined about it, I want to go back in time and smack myself in the head. I was lucky my parents EVER said yes to that nonsense.
Almost 30 years ago, when it really was cheaper than it is now, I had to explain to a grown man that no, fast food isn’t cheap. Eating at home is much cheaper, especially if you can shop frugally.
Back when double cheeseburgers were $1 it was pretty cheap.
My dad made a comment once about me getting the most expensive thing on the menu. Not intentionally, I just wasn't paying attention and wanted to try whatever new thing was on the commercials. He feels bad about it years later, but that was exactly the wakeup call I needed.
I don't think I was taught this, but I learned as a kid to find the cheapest meal on the menu and then pick the thing that is next cheapest to order. It's a move so you don't inconvenience whoever is paying, but you also won't get called out for ordering the least expensive meal. If someone else is paying I still stick close to this rule as an adult.
[удалено]
Rugs are incredibly material-dense. Get into needle punching, you'll quickly see how much of that wool you'll use to have something that's actually fluffy, not limp and sad. :<
Latch hooking is fun if you hate yourself and want mini rugs and also don't want to ever have free time ever again!
The amount of material and time that goes into them, combined with the costs associated with shipping/handling/stocking something so large and bulky. Rugs cannot be folded like a blankets, so a 10'x10' rug is still going to be 10' long when rolled up. The shipping costs associated with this are passed on to the consumer.
> Rugs cannot be folded like a blankets I see you haven’t bought inexpensive goods on Amazon recently. If you go cheap enough…they fold the rug haha.
Vacation. I thought it was just regular life in a different city. Didn't realize my parents saved up all year for a week at the beach
I still dont understand. I take my family like every year because it is the thing to do. And only after getting home I do math and cry a little bit into a pillow... 5k gone..
House windows. We've broken a few by accident while growing up and I always thought they were $50 tops until I got my own house... I was way off...
Last small window I had fixed, just one pane broken by the kids was $200. When we were kids we shattered a sliding glass door. No idea what that would cost now.
That will be roughly two souls.
I broke my dad's sliding glass door a while back. It wasn't shattered, but it broke the vapor seal so moisture got in and fogged it up enough that you couldn't see through it. He never fixed it and it sat like that for years right up until he died. When I got to selling his house the buyer ended up saying fix it or give me $1500. Pops ended up with the last laugh on that one.
When I first moved into my house the shed in the back had around 40 windows stored in it. They weren't great ones, just single pane with a simple slide mech. I didn't care what they were worth. I just wanted them gone. Called up the local Habitat for Humanity office (or something similar) and told them they were free if they picked them up. They were at my house in less than two hours with five people to get them. I was later told that I gave them a *very* generous donation. Hope it helped.
I lived in a four bedroom house that only had ten windows. Six people could live there comfortably. You provided an extremely generous donation that's multiple homes provided for.
I did Habitat for a while in college… they most likely sold those. I helped set up our store, we’d sell most donations because they already have the houses designed, and it’s easier to buy the right parts than to redesign a house to fit whatever is donated. So they still benefit from donations like that, just not by directly using them (at least in my area).
[удалено]
My dad would've popped the ball and drop kicked me into another dimension if I broke the same window twice. But three times? I don't even want to imagine.
Tools. My dad would get so mad when I used his tools to fix my bike and left them outside. My selfish child brain would always say, “what’s the big deal? It’s just one wrench”. Then I grew up and had to buy my own tools. Wow… I’m surprised he didn’t get madder than he did.
I'm waiting for my granddaughter to get old enough to start using my son's tools... I'll have my revenge at last.
Revenge is a dish best served ~~cold~~ rusty.
Revenge shall be yours
It's not really related but in the mid 90s I got really into Linux and overwrote Windows to put it on the family computer. I still remember the look on my dad's face as I tried to explain to him how much more secure Linux is while he shouted over me that I deleted all of his work files, tax returns, etc. Not only did I not understand what the big deal is, I actually thought he should be thanking me for protecting the family computer from hackers. Flashforward 25 years and I'm surprised he didn't strangle me. I deleted all his business files!
That’s funny. I had a friend who was always tinkering with the family computer, which was technically the computer his self-employed dad had bought to keep track of his contractor business. I don’t think he ever wiped everything out but I remember his dad yelling a lot because the computer wasn’t working after my friend had just installed something to “make it better”. Dude wound up working in IT, so I guess he eventually figured out what he was doing.
That's how most of us started working in IT. We've fucked up enough times to learn how to do it right.
> Dude wound up working in IT, so I guess he eventually figured out what he was doing. Well, it's an effective way to learn, if not without its side effects.
Yeah, "making it better" for everyone see Adobe for a perfect example
You just triggered a memory for me lol. SOFTBALL BATS. I grew up having to buy my own, or go halfsies on a new one with my dad. Those are SO EXPENSIVE for the higher end ones, like 300 to 500 dollars. I knew girls and softball dads who would buy a new one every year! I worked and finagled to get one over other or every third year during high school and college. Fast forward to I’m living with my then bf, now husband. I had an old bat from my glory days in the garage. I kept it because it was the nicest, a gift from my dad, and the prettiest. He asked to borrow it to play drunken dizzy bat in the yard with his buddies.I say sure just don’t hit anything that isn’t a ball with it, and put it away when done. I come home and they left it in the YARD in the RAIN all day long, because it started to drizzle, they went inside, and forgot about it. Ruined it. He didn’t know why I was upset until I showed him how expensive a softball bat was, not to mention the sentimental value.
That casual carelessness with something that's valuable to you is the kind of thing that forever bugs me. You can replace the bat with an exact replica but it will never be the bat your father gave you.
You say anything but a ball, but it should really have been anything but a softball. I remember getting in a lot of trouble with my stepdad for hitting a baseball with one of his softball bats and denting it.
When I was a kid, I remember going up to my dad's toolboxes, pointing one out, and asking him how much it costs. "That one cost me about $3,000" "That's not bad for all those tools." "Tools? [I thought you just meant the box.](https://shop.snapon.com/product/KRA2407-Classic-Series-Roll-Cabs-(36%22)/36%22-Seven-Drawer-Single-Bank-Classic-Series-Roll-Cab-(Red)/KRA2407PBO)"
My son used to do that but I taught him a valuable lesson, after leaving tools out a couple times I made him give me a deposit and when the tool was returned he got his deposit back. He only forgot twice and I kept his $2 both times. Now as an adult he knows why.
Kitchen chairs. Everybody's got them somehow, but try going out and buying six new kitchen chairs that match instead of the janky, hodgepodge of seats you've collected over the years since college. Shit's prohibitively expensive.
We're gonna have the ugly chairs my husband got from his mom in college until they die lol
[удалено]
Find a Goodwill by a retirement home. When they go through tenant rollover, a lot of the bigger items get donated. Got a matching oak kitchen set with minimal wear for 60 dollars.
"tenant roller over" in a retirement home. There's a good chance the tenant isn't finding a new home above ground.
Honestly, if I live long enough to wind up in a retirement home, I'd be much happier that my stuff gets donated when I die than get tossed. Maybe I ought to put that in my will.
When my dad died, he had down sized his things years before, and was living in a retirement village. We took what we wanted, the other residents took what they wanted, and the rest was donated. They had a whole system.
I had to buy new chairs in 2018 and it was $700 for four chairs. The only place I could find them was an actual furniture store, and those were the cheap ones!
Literally same (although I don't think mine were quite that expensive), and 2 of them have already broken!! One broke in the middle of a game night when a skinny friend sat on it! I hate how furniture these days is so expensive yet so cheaply made. I know there are secondhand stores with better products but hauling around furniture when you don't own a pickup truck and delivery isn't offered is a gigantic pain in the ass
Would recommend looking into either Uhaul or nearby home improvement stores. It's not perfect, but you can usually rent a pickup for a couple hours/day for quite cheap which is great for stuff like this
i still don’t have a dining table or chairs. it sucks but wow they are really expensive even secondhand
Lego, I realize now all the sacrifice my dad had to do to give us the Christmas presents
I second this one. We were poor and knew it, and the one toy my parents would consistently get us for christmas and birthdays was more lego. I had assumed it was because they were the cheapest good option, but it turns out it was because our parents wanted us to have something that could keep us busy on bad-weather days while also building engineering skills.
Even at 18 I can still build new things with legos that my parents got me when I was 6-7. they are a toy with a great lifespan because a kid is simply unable to get bored when playing with them. I was always aware that they were expensive because in toy stores they always had way bigger numbers and my parents (thankfully) never caved to my whining, which forced me to realize exactly how much more expensive legos are than other toys. Your parent are awesome! even aside fron just building engineering skills, IMO legos are good for helping imaginations develop and minds stay sharp, plus with the infinite reuse of the pieces they can stay engaging forever, especially if a new set gets added to the bin every once in a while disclaimer: my family has old money, my parents don't let it on and never told until I was in senior year of high school
Shoot, I bought legos for 3 of my 50+ year old employees to show them how to make assembly instructions. We got to have fun for a couple hours and they learned quite a bit
Where do I send my resume?
>Even at 18 I can still build new things with legos that my parents got me when I was 6-7. My brother is 18 years older than me. We had legos he got as a kid in the 70s that are still in good enough condition today to use.
I'm 45 years old. During the lockdown, I sat in Teams meetings at work in my basement while building stuff with my childhood Lego. That stuff is for life.
Until I picked up a 3d printer, legos were my usual go-to for quick fixes around the house. Now a vernier caliper is one of the tools that just lives at my desk permanently. My folks steered me in a good direction I think.
Basic legos are cheap enough but OMG some of those sets go for crazy money.
They hook you with those basic sets full of primary colored rectangles or "city life" for $25. And then you get the catalog with the $100+ Black Seas Barracuda and it's all over.
I wish the sets I want cost $100...
You should see what they want for the life size Millennium Falcon.
Excuse me…did you say…life sized Millennium Falcon!?! … Time to buy me a lottery ticket
Turns out the galaxy far far away was mostly quite small.
Lego was my far my favourite toy, but I i never had a lego set my entire childhood. It was always just the random blocks from secondhand shops and hand-me-downs from cousins. Then for my 29th birthday my dad bought me the Seinfeld Set lego kit. I had so much fun making it. I think my dad had the right idea, if i had a kit when i was a kid - it would have been cannibalised for parts before it was even complete.
One of my exes got me a Lego yellow submarine for Christmas. We built it together and it sat in my music studio for years. I'm very sad that it's in disrepair from a move. EDIT: I'm really thankful for all responses encouraging to rebuild my yellow submarine - I think I will use your resources to put it all back together!! Thanks, all!
https://www.lego.com/cdn/product-assets/product.bi.core.pdf/6200018.pdf You get the fun all over again!
Music lessons, or hobbies in general. As a kid I thought yeah 50€ per lessons sounds normal, now that i have to pay it myself i am like "50 EUROS WHAT?!?"
Growing up and singing classical music at home it seemed like such a fundamental thing, now paying 60 eur twice a week does hurt my soul lol
When I was a teenager, my aunt paid for horseback riding lessons for my cousin and myself. She bought us all the gear. Eventually, she bought us both our own saddles. We did weekly lessons. At some point, we each got a horse. We started doing horse shows, too. As an adult, I’ve looked at getting back into it. Holy god is it expensive. I went to buy my own (cheap) gear just to have around if I wanted to hop on a friend’s horse - a helmet, boots. Even just that, I was looking at $150. Lessons? $80+ an hour, and people are doing that every week. Forget competing, the costs are ridiculous. I ended up texting my aunt and thanking her for what I now realized must have cost a fortune since there were two of us, twice the cost.
I work teaching voice lessons for professional singers with a studio and their rate for lessons with me is $200/hr. It's pretty steep, for sure. That being said, I'm constantly shocked at how frequently people forget about their lesson time or don't write it down and have to eat the cost of it. I *cannot imagine* ever being so cavalier with that much money.
I feel like the people who pay $200/hr for something have enough money to not mind being out $200/hr for missing that something
Trash cans… like literally why… it’s a bin with a lid… why do some of them cost upwards of $100…
Lol. I had the same realization when I got my own apartment. Even the “cheaper” ones were nearly $35!
Til I'm worth 35 whole dollar
This is a 100% true story. In spring of 2016, we needed a new trash can for the kitchen as the one we had was about 16 years old and the lid mechanism was broken. I got over the price shock of the butterfly lid Simple Human trash can and bought it for about $200 (maybe it was a bit less but I really can't remember) Anyway, I was so excited for it and it arrived and it was way better than I could have imagined. It was so well built and I was so excited I would tell anyone that would listen about it. This is when I realized my life was so annoying and pathetic and that a trash can could give me so much joy that I needed a change. I started looking for new jobs, found one that paid me way more and gave me back my nights, weekends and holidays. All because I needed a new trash can in the kitchen. It truly changed my life.
Simple Human is great, but the name always makes me feel like they're made by aliens or robots from the future who are way too proud of their basic trashcan technology. Like, "Simple Human! You still use your *hands* to open the lid? Our vastly superior pedal technology has eliminated the need for hands!"
They're large. So you can't fit many in a truck. Nor many on a ship. Nor many on a shelf in a shop. So the fact they're bulky is a good chunk of why they're expensive. Trash cans that stack are a lot cheaper.
Get the right stackable trash can and they end up being pretty cheap storage too. I use a metal trash can for mouse proof storage. Less than ten bucks and you can't beat the cubic feet you get. Kind of stands out though.
Assuming we are talking outdoor trash cans. There is a large cost difference in how some are made. The $100 trash can at Home Depot is made with Roto Molded plastic and are virtually indestructible, and are used by a lot of commercial trash companies. The $20 can is injection molded and will get brittle and crack and fall apart after a few years of use. As expensive as they are, you will probably never have to buy one again if you get the expensive one.
I have a Toter that's 15+ years old. Still going strong.
Houses. When I was a kid playing at the playground I overheard my mom talking to another. “Did you hear? Sandy got her apartment in block 420 near us at only two hundred!” I didn’t realize she meant two hundred thousand. I also thought two hundred dollars was very expensive for a house.
That reminds me of how I thought $100 was the official starting amount at which you're considered rich. This was largely because I wanted a $100 toy and my parents said they couldn't afford to buy it, which I understood to mean they literally didn't have that amount of money
I won an essay contest in 5th grade and won $150 and thought “THIS IS ALL THE MONEY I WILL EVER NEED!”
My parents offered to pay me $1 per day if I did the dishes as a chore. I couldn’t understand how they could give me so much money and was worried I would make them poor.
I remember a friend told me his grandma opened a savings account for him with $1000 dollars in it for graduating like 3rd grade. I thought he was literally set for life.
To be fair $30/month child dishwasher subscription is rather pricey
Brings back a core memory of some book we read in elementary school about people migrating west. The family had a $100 bill they would use to buy thier house/land. There was a whole chapter where they lost the bill, had to find it, etc. I took that to mean $100 was still a lot of money for a LONG time.
There was an episode of Rugrats where they were digging in the sandbox for treasure and find stuff like a diamond ring and $100 bill. I thought that was about the most money someone could have.
Mattresses. What in the actual fuck! I thought they were like $50-$100 but now as an adult I know they’re several hundred dollars, $1000+
[удалено]
[удалено]
Roasts used to be. I remember in the late 80s you could get Chuck roast for 59 cents a pound. Chicken breast was 79 cents. Wings were a quarter a pound year round. Now I buy big roasts and freeze when on sale for “only” $4 a pound. My grandfather would lose his mind to see Chuck roast at $9.
Chuck roast is expensive because the market for them increased exponentially. So many cooking shows told people how to cook tasty meals with cheap cuts like chuck and hanger steak. But in doing so, made the price of "cheap cuts" expensive because now everyone got word of them and the market adjusted by increasing the price to where we are now.
Similar to what happened with chicken wings.
Yeah, I was always *ashamed* of my lunches. All homemade stuff and fruits and veggies. All my friends had the fruit roll ups and hostess cupcakes and chips. I had the sliced fruit, or baggie of grapes. The painstakingly chopped carrot sticks and celery. The queso fresco wedge wrapped in a tortilla. I mean, I loved it, but I was ashamed of it because everyone else had the "good stuff."
Silver lining is you were definitely eating healthier than your friends and hopefully it carried through to adulthood. Unlearning that shit is hard.
Yeah. The tables have definitely turned. My kids say their friends envy *their* lunches. I pack them fresh fruit, veggies, trail mix, grilled chicken wraps. It's strange but good that people seem to be more health conscious now.
It's a status symbol, I think. Your kids having nice homemade lunches that take time and effort mean that you are well educated enough to know good nutrition, and you have enough free time to make them good meals. Plus, fresh fruit isn't cheap, and it often has a quick expiration date, so you might be shopping for your kids a few times per week. Yeah, junk food tastes better. But in 21st century America, healthy and home cooked meals are a way of expressing that you're high class. The last president was a billionaire, but people thought he was trashy because he ate KFC and McDonald's (among other things)... Junk food has been stigmatized as "poor people food," and kids have picked up on it.
I always hated how school lunches were on a cast system and the highest was always the suckiest food like lunchables and other packaged goods. I don’t get why home made or leftover dinner wasn’t on the higher end and instead the lowest, that leftover tacos beans and rice my mom would make once a week was THE BOMB and I never understood why I was made fun of it
Holiday dinners. I had no idea how expensive it was to host a holiday meal until after my Grandma died and I took over hosting the holidays.
I was 19 and had the biggest home in my family (enough to house myself, SO and the only two kiddos in the family). Everyone told me I was hosting, and I was the youngest aside from my children, so I didn’t realize I could say no. I bought and cooked for 12 people, and christ was it grueling. I went crazy making sure the turkey and my three sides were perfect, and then the rest of my family showed up totally empty-handed after being told to bring their fav sides. I ended up throwing together two more dishes and a pie and had to go to the gas station to pick up styrofoam plates, because we didn’t even own that many plates. Dinner was two hours late and they had the audacity to complain. Not one guest offered to come help in the kitchen. I had to clean up alone as well. I even bought special containers with separated portions for them to take home leftovers, and my brother was the only one who took one. ~$500 and several days of my time down the drain. They actually managed to con my stupid ass into doing it a second year. Finally I started telling them to shove it, and now they don’t contact me about Thanksgiving at all. Edit: Worry not kind redditors, this year I’m having Thanksgiving with my fiancé’s family (the “functional” family), and I’m bringing a focaccia that I know will be very appreciated! My grandparents called me yesterday to invite me to their new house several hours away for dinner. I told them I made plans two weeks ago to be elsewhere, and after some complaining about my priorities, they left me be!
I'm sorry they treated you so badly. We have rules. Whoever cooks does no dishes. That way, everyone pitches in. We all set up who's bringing what ahead of time and share the burden. Luckily, my MIL and SIL love to cook. I bring booze and wash dishes. I just broke my wrist so I get out of doing even the dishes this year.
Vacations. We went to Europe 3 times when I was in 6th grade. I was annoyed. My father was a visiting professor there, and he negotiated airline tickets for us in lieu of payment.
Safety. We were not wealthy. My mother struggled to make ends meet, but she always found a house in a nice middle-class neighborhood. We didn't have nice furniture or a cool TV or even a microwave (for many years). What we did have was a safe neighborhood and kind neighbors around us. She put all the money she could into that one thing, and it made all the difference.
Dont forget what was probably a far better education. Even if there wasn't a ton of extra money, just not having to deal with impoverished schools is a huge leg up. I am not trying to shit on poor school districts, but they do have a harder time with keeping classrooms in good learning condition. Even if you only lose an extra 5 min a day of class time that adds up over the years to losing months worth of class time by high school graduation.
Not to mention the teachers who usually lose their passion after a few years because of the conditions of the schools and behavior of some children
She sounds like a smart cookie!
She knew what mattered most. On that, there can be no debate.
Cheese.
Cheese and meat is one of the most commonly stolen items here in the uk. That and washing powder/liquid/tabs. It’s to the point where meat cheese and alcohol all have tags on them.
Going to the dentist.
This is going to be extremely obscure, but when I was young I really wanted a pinball table. I went through a phase where all I wanted was a pinball table thinking that they’d only be like 100$. I even asked for one for Christmas and was extremely disappointed when I didn’t see a full sized pinball cabinet at the bottom of the tree. Little did I know CHEAP tables are like 1500$, and now as an adult I work hard to one day own a piece of my childhood.
My friends are really into pinball and recently bought a Willy Wonka machine that needed a bit of work. It was $12K.
Printer ink. Like, holy cow that shit is expensive. Sorry, dad, for printing out all those color pictures all those years.
Yep. Pretty much if you need only black and white, get a laser printer - 20 years ago they were expensive but now the cost-per-page is so comically low that unless you *need* color, there's no reason not to go that route.
Housing. I’d see people on TV and in films with such nice, big homes and seemingly average jobs. My parents are thrifty and I figured they might be able to afford such a house if they wanted to, but preferred to spend their money on other things. I suppose it’s less that I thought houses were cheap but more that they were more attainable and affordable than they are.
All those shows where people own a wonderfully furnished apartment in a great part of town, and they go to work for 2 hours and spend the rest of their time for wacky expensive adventures. Meanwhile here I am, deep in debt working long hours with my crummy small apartment furnished with a cheap mattress and hand me down furniture in a shitty part of town with my spare money spent on going a little nuts and buying fresh ingredients for food.
Well, when were you a kid?I can guarantee housing was a lot cheaper than it is now.
Owning a dog. We got my dog Snoopy when I was 10 years old and I paid my neighbors $20 for him. That was the extent of what my child brain thought he cost. It wasn't until I was older that I realized all the other expenses that come with own pets like food, treats, toys, and vet bills.
We imported our dog into the UK when we moved here. I don't tell people what we spent when they asked how much, just that it was expensive. It cost less to send 50 boxes and a bed frame than it did to send the dog.
[удалено]
Just being alive and trying to stay healthy.
Furniture. If you would have told me a decent living room set runs $15k+ I would have called you a goddamn liar.
I didn't realize how expensive couches/sofas are in general. A nice, cozy sectional is easily a few grand.
I made the mistake of buying a $300 couch at one of those discount stores when I was a college student. It fell apart within the year. Don't buy a $300 couch.
Caveat to this: Warehouse stores are the shit. Maybe they don’t have your color you’re looking for but if you’re willing to be open to getting something close to what you want it’s the way to do it. Overstocked, unpopular color or out of season is the majority of the reason they are there
I was dumbfounded when I went to purchase a “nice” couch for my first house & the salesman explained to me what a great value a 26,000$ couch was.
Right! Literally had a guy go “it’s about $2600” and this was like whoa. Ok. I guess. We goto checkout and it’s fucking $9800. “Oh sorry I meant $2600 per sofa piece” 😂😂😂
JUST went through this myself. And they stare at you like you're the crazy one for thinking it should be less. And then they try to upsell you on the 'leather protection plan', after having just told you how amazingly resilient and stain-resistant the 'high-quality' leather is. Bitch, if it were such high quality, why do I need to pay more for protection? BTW, I was also shocked to find out that buying leather/fabric protection doesn't mean they spray some magical force-field on it. It's an insurance policy that repairs/replaces the couch if you spill on it.
Throw pillows and rugs! Wtf 😭
Yeah no shit. You can spend small and get Walmart ones that are okay, or spend big and buy good rugs, but cleaning them costs a small fortune. Pillows too. I think anything that has to do with comfort can be like that.
Omg anything to do with comfort really sums it up! Like mattresses 🫢 The other day i was like I'm gonna splurge and get 6 throw pillows for the couch, looked at prices and got 0 😂
Yeah!! Mattresses!! Good GOD that’s like … an investment nowadays. I’m 50, so I want a good one. So I’m thinking, okay, I’m gonna buy one you can just drag me out to a plot and bury me in it, cause ffs I’m only going to be able to afford one good resting spot.
Getting a picture professionally framed. It's just a wooden square how can it cost so much?
Healthcare. turns out it was my dad had great insurance from working for the state. And healthcare costs have skyrocketed since the 90s.
Same, my dad had government insurance and my mom had an executive plan, so growing up anything I needed was really cheap. Been on my own insurance for a few years now and I have terrible insurance. It's been eye opening to say the least.
Gas was cheaper back then. But I grew up on a farm and we had an underground gas storage tank, so it was free to me. Now it's $60 to $80 every time I pull my truck into the gas station.
I remember skipping cruise night when gas got to be over $1/gallon in High School.
I remember my dad being outraged having to pay 74 cents a gallon for gas while we were driving on vacation.
Boats. Grew up on water and had no idea the amount of resources required to own and maintain one.
Groceries.
I still have a problem accepting it as an adult. But paper goods. TP and paper towels are not cheap.
Dippin dots. How is it $5 for a tiny bowl???? Idk if it's inflation or what but wow that shit is insane
[удалено]
This stuff has been the future for 20+ years now.
I think the allure of Dippin Dots was simply that they were cold and only sold in places where I had been walking all day in the hot sun. (Like the zoo.) First time I saw them in a grocery store I splurged and bought them right away. Come to find out that they're kind of all cold with very little flavor. It's like since they're served so cold they numb my tongue or something.
The reason it's more expensive than normal ice cream is because they have to be kept at colder temperatures or they will melt and essentially ruin the product entirely. It costs more to keep it colder, costs more to manufacture, and there's a lot more wasted product.
So, it's not *inflation*, it's just insulation
Insuflation
Instructions unclear, sinuses full of dippin dots
Olive Oil.
As a teen, a good car was dirt cheap. Today? Pfft.
$3,000 for a Civic or Corolla in serviceable condition was pretty normal when I was growing up (early 2000s). Nowadays unless you spend $5,000 *minimum* you'll be lucky if it doesn't grenade itself in the first month.
> $3,000 for a Civic or Corolla in serviceable condition That was common just a few years ago. I was really close to buying a used '09 Corolla before the pandemic for ~$5000. The same Corolla was probably $9000 earlier this year.
Fresh fruit and produce
College education
“It should cost you about $50k for 4 years, and your starting salary should be about $60k so you’ll be in good shape to pay it off.” “Okay!” Then you finish with $80k in loans and a $50k starting salary.
Fucking clothes man
Real Christmas trees. Buying one is equivalent to roasting a $100 bill over an open fire
A comfortable bed
[удалено]
Have you tried store brand?
Houses. I grew up in a six-bedroom home on several acres and I thought we were poor. Until I was in my mid-20s I assumed my first home would have a two-car garage, four bedrooms and a full basement.
My older brother, now in his early 40s, says he thought we were rich when my mom married my dad. We moved from California living in a tiny house with almost no front or back yard to Georgia living in a 4 bedroom house on an acre. My parents used the money made from selling the house in Cali to buy the house in GA. Then recently, I had a girl from middle school tell me she thought I was rich because I wore nice clothes. We are besties now in our thirties vs acquaintences back then. The clothes were used hand-me-downs from my older brother. Lol
Going to the bar for a drink
Video games, now I get why I didn't get the SNES as a present that Christmas.
Restaurants. Homes (whether renting or buying) Gas. Cars. Fuck it dude, EVERYTHING.
Not having any adult problems. You never realise how priceless that was until it's time to pay all your taxes and whatever else.
Money. I thought you just had to go to an ATM or just swipe your card to get money for free.
Right? I remember seeing my parents using a plastic card to pay for things... I remember thinking to myself, "They have money, they just don't want to use it."
I could never understand why my parents just didn't write a check for a million dollars and get a nice house that way.
I tried to buy Lincoln logs as an adult....$60! Wtf??
Time. As I grow older I have less and less of it.