‘I would much rather pay a higher rate for a magazine with minimal ads.’ Are you sure about that? The inflation adjusted price for a year’s worth of Money would be $55.85 today. And even that price assumes that the magazine’s expenses have risen only as fast as inflation (if it costs, say, twice as much to produce Money today as it did in 1972 (after adjusting for inflation), it’s been advertisers who’ve been picking up the slack).

Given these kinds of figures for a magazine subscription, I have no problem with dealing with some extra ads to keep my out of pocket prices lower, but I suppose that’s a personal choice.

Also, even private colleges were more affordable because financial aid was so much better. I was in school from 1980 to 1984 when the change happened (hello, Reagan). The first year I was expected to take out a $1000 student loan and the last year I was expected to take out $3500 in loans.

All forms of communication (except advertising) are much better now.

Wow, I must say that paying a higher rate for less ads seems a bit nuts to me, especially for a frugal person.

Not to me. It falls under the “pay more for higher quality” blanket: more convenience, less distraction. And as you state later, potentially more content.

My favorite magazine, The New Yorker, spoils me in this regard. Fewer ads, strong delineation between ads and content, and no stupid “continued on page…” jumps. (Every article’s pages are printed consecutively to completion.) For these reasons – as well as the stellar content, of course – TNY is the only magazine I subscribe to.

*But*, I think a big part of why women today don’t make much is because of the fields they choose to work in. Colleges are just now starting to get a more even balance of men/women in their engineering programs. I’ve seen that if you account for profession and experience (an engineer with 20 years experience will make more than one fresh out of college, and the engineers with 20 years experience tend to be male), women and men make equal pay.

The actual minimum wage at the time, if I recall correctly was 1.65. My take home was around $50. It made so little difference to our standard of living that it was not really noticeable when I didn’t work. Work was not that easy to come by at the time either.

By the way, discrimination against women in the workforce was blatant in ways that seem quite unbelievable now. I was asked questions such as 1)Is that your natural hair color? 2)What kind of birth control are you on? 3)When do you plan to start having children? I also recall an interview where I was locked in with the interviewer which I realized when someone pounded on the door demanding entrance.

One thing that always cracks me up now is when young people tell me that if I had taken advantage of investing 10,000 or so in a retirement plan I would have millions now and been able to retire early. The fact is that our entire income in those years was around 8 to 10,000 and there was no such thing as IRAs and 401Ks

AS for college expenses, tuition in those days was (personal experience) $220 a semester on the low end ($440/ year) to $400 per quarter on the high end ($1200/ year). We could and did pay for college out of our current earnings. Nobody we knew had any help in either the form of scholarships or loans. Except for the guys who had survived Vietnam and were going on the GI bill.

I was in college when “Money” 1st came out. Yeah, no one had debt to speak of – maybe a car loan or a few items on layaway at a department store. Not nearly as many gadget-y things to covet and fritter money on, either. People were generally happy with less material stuff back in those days. This is a generalization, of course – there was still plenty of poverty then, too.

@icup The median gross wage for working women in 1973 was only $53 per week, so I’m not sure what that $45 per week is net of. If it’s net of child care, transportation, taxes, the whole shebang, then I agree with you that it’s not that terrible a deal. (My wife wouldn’t work for that little net a week, but we can afford it. For many people, an extra $200 a week net would be well worth it. That is, after all, $10,000 a year in spendable or investable cash.) If it’s only net of taxes, I’m not so sure. I couldn’t find any figures on child care costs in 1972, but it would hardly surprise me if that money got eaten up rather quickly by child care and other losses that a household suffers by not having a parent at home.

but it’s expected (by those of us on the phone, anyways) that nobody will return the card. If you’re just cancelling your own, primary user card, we tell you to cut up your card. (no returns!)

This sort of misunderstanding comes from talking to old men with long memories who are convinced that the world is going to hell in a handbasket and things were so much better back in the day. It is shocking to me how little historical perspective even people who lived through the history seem to have.

By the way, icup, using Trent’s 1973-2006 conversion (which is underestimating inflation just a bit, since he actually wants 1972-2007 or 1973-2008), $45 per week equals about $210 per week. The net is still lower than today’s minimum wage, of course.