Paying to go to parties

[Anna]

FIVE POUNDS A WEEK?! I used to get sixpence. Well, half a crown, perhaps, when I was 15.

I was away over the New Year staying with family. One of the children, 11 1/2yr old boy, very sweetly bought me a present (a scented candle) with his own money when we were out shopping. I asked his Mum how much he got - the answer is £1.00 per day!! £7.00 pw is a lot I replied to which she answered, well if he spends it all he doesn't get anymore, he has to learn the value of money.

[ardcarp]

A fiver isn't much for a modern teenager...and anyway it depends on what it includes. Some parents give older teenagers an allowance (maybe as much as £20 a week) but that has to include everything...clothes, going out costs, makeup (girls), club subs. It may also have to be earned by housework, cleaning the car, etc, etc.

The changing value of money examples above seem a bit wide of the mark.

A Mars Bar cost 3d (or 1.24p) in my yoof. Now it's about 60p...and it's shrunk, so it's a staggering 50X more expensive. So, on the Mars Bar scale your half-a-crown (12.5p) pocket money would need to be around £6.30 in today's money.

And then there's other countries. In Norway this Christmas, a single parsnip (a horrible old woody one...but individually wrapped) cost 30kr (£3). A small triangle of Brie cost 100kr (£10). So giving avuncular pocket money to Norwegian second nephews and nieces needs a bit of thought. Lobbing then a fiver would buy them 1.6 parsnips. Gee whiz.

Sorry. Getting off topic, but trying to keep Refreshment Room in mind!

[teamsaint]

A bag of chips was a bit under shilling in 1970/71.
It was 6 shillings for an adult on the cheap terraces at the Dell. Terrace admission was for a long time broadly the same as a cinema ticket, (through the 70's 80'S) IIRC.

[Dave2002]

I used to get one 'n' six age 10 in 1970. Probably not far off the value of a fiver today?

Edit: Just looked it up. A shilling and sixpence in 1970 would be worth 98p in 2012 using the retail price index and £1.70 using average wages.

Difficult to compare prices because of different items and values. I can remember petrol being around 3 shillings a gallon in the early 1970s - i.e 15p per gallon. However, before that LPs were considerably more relatively expensive - up to £2 each and then prices gradually came down. Fish and chips were at one time - probably in the 1960s about 1 shilling (5 pence), but it's easy to spend a fiver now. That's a factor of around 100, but then again over a 40-50 year period. Beer wasn't much over a shilling a pint in some of the years before decimalisation - though I think there was a price hike before D Day. That might suggest that beer has only inflated by about 30-40 times in 40 years.

Some of the things we have now weren't even available 40-50 years ago - CDs, DVDs, digital radios and TVs, affordable computers, digital watches, mobile phones.

I can't remember when MacDonalds opened in the UK - maybe mid 1970s. At one time in the 1980s (young) children's parties were sometimes held in MacDonalds - and it wasn't that expensive - though we tended to host them at home. I can remember the Happy Meals and the toys which some children collected.

[jean]

At University, I lived comfortably on a (maximum) grant of £285 a year. Hall fees were £5 a week, which included food.

When I moved into a shared flat, the rent was 35s a week each, though we were more tightly packed than anyone would put up with now.

You could get ten cigarettes and a box of matches and change out of two shillings. I suppose I must have eaten, but I don't remember much about the price of food.

[gurnemanz]

A bag of chips was a bit under shilling in 1970/71.
It was 6 shillings for an adult on the cheap terraces at the Dell. Terrace admission was for a long time broadly the same as a cinema ticket, (through the 70's 80'S) IIRC.

Found an old Palace home programme for 23 Aug 1969 Div 1 v Spurs (Jennings, Mullery, Greaves, Chivers, Gilzean, Mike England et al. Ground entry 5 shillings, programme 1 shilling. Referee: Mr Fussy (true) of Retford.

[jean]

Cheapest seats to see the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra in the late 1950s, two and sixpence. Special student price for the Rodewald chamber music concerts, one shilling, or tenpence if you bought a season ticket.

[Mary Chambers]

Row B of the Amphitheatre at Covent Garden was 10/6 in 1962, I think.

I don't know at what age I first had pocket money, but it was a penny for each year of my life until I was twelve (1952), when I reached the mighty sum of one shilling. Can't quite remember after that. Nor can I remember what I gave my own children, except that in exasperation I gave my younger son an allowance in his mid-teens so that he could buy his own clothes (not school uniform), because I got tired of arguing about what to buy.

What was this thread about again? Oh, paying to go to parties. Never heard of such a thing. It's quite expensive enough to go to a wedding or celebration at a distance without paying for the actual party,

[Honoured Guest]

Paying for parties has been going on for decades. We had a charming near neighbour - a Mrs Payne, I think her first name was Celia or something like that - who was always inviting my husband and me. Unfortunately, they were always on my choral society night so I never got to go, but my husband became quite a regular and he said he met all sorts of interesting folk.

[marthe]

The practice of inviting paying guests to a party exists over here as well. We've never been to a "do" of this sort and might consider declining such an invitation. I agree with Mary that it is expensive to be a guest, especially if travel is involved. The cost of travel, hotel, clothing, gifts, tips etc can mount up. Of course, hospitality is meant to be reciprocal even if it means taking all the boys in your son's class to MacDonalds for a birthday party (guilty of this but it was POPULAR back then.)

[Flay]

my husband

Oh, I thought you were Roger Wight

[Sir Velo]

Oh, I thought you were Roger Wight

No reason why it shouldn't still be. I recall the actor, David Hyde Pierce, on Private Passions referring to his (male) partner as his "wife".

[Don Petter]

Oh, I thought you were Roger Wright

If so, at least it wasn't misuse of BBC Luncheon Vouchers, as CP flourished some ten years before RW joined the organisation.

[ardcarp]

but my husband became quite a regular and he said he met all sorts of interesting folk.

Yes, but dear HG, did he have to pay?

[Don Petter]

Yes, but dear HG, did he have to pay?

See my #28. Luncheon Vouchers were apparently the currency of choice.