Back To The 70’s And 80’s

In the late 1970’s, our house seemed to have shrunk. Two boys meant we needed more square footage than we had. We went out for a drive one Saturday afternoon and found a road we had never seen before. We drove down there and found that a builder was putting up homes. They had a model home so we stopped in to see it. We loved it. It had 2350 sq. feet, 4 bedrooms, 2 and 1/2 baths, a large living room and dining room, a family room, enormous kitchen and a full basement. It backed up to woods. It was perfect for us.

We went home and went over the budget numbers and decided we could have one built. So later that week we signed the paperwork. When we applied for the mortgage( 8 and 1/2%) we told the bank that we did not want escrow for the school and property taxes. We had paid our own taxes twice a year on our prior house and have done the same with every house we have owned right up to today’s. When we first started doing that in the 1960’s, they were not paying interest on escrow. We liked controlling our own money. We liked earning the interest on that money rather than the bank using our money all year long. The interest rate was high on this house because of the many years of inflation we had with Jimmy Carter as President. Friends of ours had a home built near ours a few years later and they paid 16%. That is when we came up with plan to pay it off early. It was an expensive time to live but not as bad as now. They have kept the interest rates down now but that is a mistake. You can’t get rid of inflation by doing that. You must have an approach that cools government spending.

We had the builder put in the bare basics which meant linoleum floors in the kitchen, and to only finish 1 and 1/2 bathrooms, and put in mid range carpeting. We told them to only plum in the master bathroom. We had the other full bath just down the hallway that we could use. Hubby put the entire master bath in himself a year or so after we moved in. He got very good at tiling the walls and the floor. He put in a walk in shower and a toilet. One upgrade that we did have the builder do was put a fireplace in the family room. We had had one in our first home and we had such a crappy utility company that we were out of power many times over the winter. So we knew how much comfort it gave to have a secondary power source.

In the 1980’s, we did a lot of upgrading including a paver patio and and an in ground swimming pool and fenced the yard. Hubby built a shed to house the pool motor and chemicals we needed for it. That pool turned out to be the best investment ever. Our boys learned to swim quickly at the ages of 7 and 5. Their friends just about lived in it with them and Hubby and I used it all of the time. It gave us many years of paid for entertainment. We lived in this home 20+ years until one boy had graduated college and the other had one semester left to finish. We paid that mortgage off when we were in our forties by always paying extra on the principal. All of those years our first priority was to pay ourselves first.

As the boys grew up in that home, expenses for the boys grew and we made choices for their schooling that we have never regretted. They both went to an all boy private military academy. One went there for 6 years(jr. high and high school) and the other went for 4 years of high school. The tuition was very expensive along with all the other things like uniforms, etc. that we had to buy. That is when I went back to work to pay for that and for their college. At first, I only worked part time but then I worked a couple of full time jobs. By me going to work, we never had to touch a dime of our savings and our taxable retirement money that had grown and grown over the years as we kept adding to it.

I cut every corner that I could frugally without cutting down on our quality of life. When the boys were around 8 and 10, we raised our grocery budget to $180.- $ 200. per month. I stuck to that grocery budget for years even when we were living in AZ. I did everything I could to stick to that budget including using coupons, markdowns, and eating from our shelves and freezer. When the boys were small when we first moved to that home we found in the seventies, we bought a 27 cubic foot freezer that I kept stocked with meats, veggies, fruits, etc. when they were on sale. Much the same as I do now. Then we just made meals from the things that we already had stocked in our home. I had Hubby build some wooden shelves in the basement where we stored things that we purchased all the time on sale.

We didn’t make frivolous purchases or spend money on useless crap. We didn’t spend money we didn’t have via credit cards. We used credit cards for convenience and to this day we pay them off when we get the bill. The boys never went without anything they needed. But we did not spend to excess.

The boys got paper routes when they were 11- 12. They worked various jobs every summer when they were old enough. When they turned 16 and got their licenses, they bought their own used cars with the money they had saved. We paid their insurance. This helped us out because then they could drive to their private school where they both played sports. They could stay late for practices and Hubby didn’t have to pick them up. The school was just under 25 miles from our home. They had taken a school bus that was provided by our public school, which we paid hefty taxes to, until they had their own cars.

By having them do paper routes and then work jobs in high school, they learned the value of a dollar and the hard work it took to get it. They never thought money grew on trees. It is a lesson that sticks with them today.

Tomorrow, I will be back with the 1990’s.