Herman by Jim Unger for January 20, 2025

Them days are returning soon

You can get just the bag for thirty cents.

Every time I get a nickel raise, every thing goes up a dime.

yes, and wages were less than $1 per hour and the regular work week was 48 hours – and no pension, IRA, 401k or Social Security. Yeah, the good old days

It’s an old reframe. In the 60s I made $11,000/year. Wife stayed home and raised the kids. The house cost us $20,000. Families now; Both work, make $260,000 a year, day care raises the kids and houses are $600,000

Mrs. Methuselah constantly complains about such things.

As a kid I would be sent to the store with a couple of dollars and was able to get eggs, milk, bread, some butter and a bag of chips and a soda. Sure can’t do that anymore…too many security cameras!

Define “groceries.”

You even remember back when you didn’t look like Ernest Borgnine!

When I was bagging groceries, in the mid ’60s, a bag of groceries that size averaged $5. The average cost has risen a bit.

You could roll into your local Esso station and say “Fill her up!” A pit crew appeared checking your lead sled from headlights to taillights. Give them two dollars and ride off to San Diego.

And you could eat the whole thing.

Tell me, how was Warren Harding as President?

By the numbers:

When I was born in 1949, a dozen eggs cost 57 cents. That’s $6.62 in today’s dollars.

A gallon of gas was 27 cents which is $3.27 in today’s dollars (I spent 49 cents less the other day).

And it took 3 cents to mail a letter.

She’s so old,she remembers when moby dick was a sardine.

I remember when I had thirty cents

And the bag only costs a dime here, of course it’s empty.

Now bags cost 10 cents.

My first full time job after college paid $417/month. It came with free clothing, free meals, free world wide travel and free housing. Sometimes the housing wasn’t so great.

In college we could split the rent 2 ways easily, it’s harder now

candy bars used to be 5 cents, glass bottle of soda 10 cents

and smokes were 30¢ or so a pack in the 70’s.

Yeah, that was in the day of silver coinage. Value today would be $9.30

My joke (that cashiers hate): I must be getting stronger, as a I grow older. There was a time when I could not push a shopping cart with $100 worth of groceries in it.

Wow. 2 sumo wrestlers meet outside the circle of death. The suspense is killin’ me.

Inflation is not that hard to understand. Fire up a brain cell or two and have at it.

That may be an exaggeration LOL!

As a young married couple, our grocery budget was $20 a week, and that included food and laundry and cleaning supplies.

I will NEVER for get that!

I don’t think you can buy anything for 30 cents today.

Some will still sell a grocery bag for that.

(Groceries are optional.)

The bags were smaller back then

1897?

When I began living on my own, $10 filled the brown paper grocery bag (no meat). Now, the bags are smaller, and it runs about $25-30 per bag, still no meat. Meat raises it about $10.