In 1955, my mum began work at the age of 16 as a statistician. She also started a habit that has endured ever since — keeping household account books of all her spending and earnings. It isn’t just my mum. My aunts do the same, and so does my hairdresser’s father.
But I don’t know anyone my age who keeps weekly accounts. In just one generation, we seem to have abandoned regular budgeting.
My mum, Dorothy, 77, and I have been looking through the books recently, and we’ve had a bit of a giggle. In April 1959, she spent 15 shillings and 11 pence on a “roll-on”. I pointed out that this was rather expensive for deodorant, to which mum replied that it was actually a girdle.
But what has surprised me is not my mum’s Bridget Jones-style control pants, but how much things cost. She bought a pair of shoes the same month for £3, which was almost half her weekly wage of £7. That wasn’t because my mum had expensive tastes — she said that there just were no cheap options.
The average full-time wage now is about £530 a week. So in today’s money her shoes cost about £228, assuming she was on the average wage at the time. I spend £30 to £50 on a pair of shoes for work, which may explain why I have so many.
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My parents met in a jazz club and married in 1961, both aged 22. In a small brown notebook, the big moments of their life together were added up and saved for. Buried in the pages of yearly budgets is her handwritten three-year plan for a family: “Spring baby 1965; purchase of a house autumn 1965; car 1966; spring baby 1967.”
My oldest brother, John, was born in May 1965 (the first spring baby), the family house was bought in March 1966, a few months later than planned, and my other brother, Stuart, was also later than planned as he arrived in August 1967. Rather distressingly, I can find no mention of a spring 1970 baby (er, that’s me).
The creation of my family was costed and planned years in advance. In the same book, the budget for 1965 shows how tight money was. My dad earned £65 a month, but the bills — food, insurance, mortgage, utilities, and so on — came to £60. Another £3 was put into savings, leaving just over £2 of “personal allowance”. From that, Dad budgeted £1 of beer money.
Even with money so tight, my parents saved. Right from mum’s first wage packet, something was put away for the future, no matter how small.
Moving on to her accounts for the 1970s, things were still extraordinarily expensive. In 1976, my dad earned £304 a month as an aircraft engineer with British Airways. But my brother’s secondary school uniform cost £50, a sixth of that salary. And John went to a comprehensive school, not a private one.
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The previous year, he had been given a violin, which cost £15. My six-year-old son is learning to play the ukulele — he strummed the three chords he knows to You Are My Sunshine at his school’s Mother’s Day assembly last week. His instrument cost £15, the same as my brother’s violin 40 years earlier.
A bottle of nail varnish was a significant outgoing for my mum, whereas my 12-year-old daughter has at least 20 shades lined up on her bathroom shelf. A bra cost £1 and 5 shillings in the late 1950s, which equates to more than £60 in today’s money. (For those readers not up to speed on the price of lingerie, Marks & Spencer sells bras for about £15 and it is possible to buy one for as little as £5.)
And mum wasn’t extravagant — an occasional purchase of a lipstick, nylons (“horrendously expensive”) or a bottle of perfume once a year. Even the purchase of a toothbrush and coat hangers was noted down.
The next shocker comes from the mortgage statements. In 1980, my parents paid an interest rate of 15% on their home loan. Indeed, until 1990, the lowest interest rate they paid was an astonishingly high 8%. “How would many families cope today if they had to pay the interest rates we paid in the past?” mum wondered.
Mortgages were not easily available, either. When my parents bought their first home, a maisonette in Staines, Surrey, only my father’s salary was taken into account even though my mum earned more. It was assumed that mum would give up work to have children (she did give up her job as a statistician, but then worked freelance as a computer programmer).
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She does not approve of the greater availability of mortgages, lower interest rates and the calculation of income using both parents’ salaries. “All it has achieved is to drive up house prices so they are increasingly unaffordable,” she said.
So what’s changed from generation to generation?
“It was a cash economy when I was growing up,” mum told me. “During my early childhood years, my dad — a London policeman on the lowest rank of constable — got paid with cash in an envelope at the end of the week. We lived hand to mouth and there was little room for error. And he gave a quarter of his income to his widowed mother.
“My aunt Ethel had jam jars on her kitchen shelf into which she put money for all the different bills – electricity, food, gas — to make sure she had the cash available when it was needed.
“There was little credit for the working class, except from the tallyman. Current accounts were rare, let alone credit cards or overdrafts. We had to save for things from our wages rather than buying them and paying back the money. We were frightened of being in debt.”
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Mum was a war baby, born in 1938. Does the deprivation of her childhood — food rationing and lack of even basic toys and clothes — still influence her financial management? “Yes, definitely. I remember as a child, before the NHS, if one of us was ill, the doctor charged for a visit — money the family could barely afford. You had to be really ill to warrant the cost of a doctor.
“It is also possible nowadays to not work at all and still live, whereas that wasn’t the case in my childhood.
“My nan was in service at 14 and then got married. But after her husband died she had almost no money to support herself. Her income came from her two working sons, one of which was my dad. The welfare state existed only in embryonic form.”
Comparing my mum’s careful household management to my rather chaotic efforts and occasional oversight makes me feel a bit incompetent, especially as I am a chartered financial analyst who used to work at the American investment bank Goldman Sachs.
To be brutally frank, I have no idea of the daily or even weekly cash position of our family bank account. We don’t have emergency cash in a savings account, either.
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So does my mum think I’m financially irresponsible ?
When I put the question to her, I was a bit surprised that she said “No” as she’s the one who answers the door to all my internet shopping deliveries. Whenever she is visiting, I can sense her disapproval when packages arrive at the door too frequently. I do like online shopping...
But there are significant differences between our lives. She married at 22 and had her first child at 26. I didn’t have my first child until I was 34, when I was much more financially secure. I got married straight after the baby arrived — for tax reasons!
I got a degree and entered my working life at a professional level, whereas mum left school at 16 and worked upwards, educating herself as she went. Thanks to a well-paid job in the City and great timing, I bought my own small terraced house in London before I was 30.
Mum does think that some members of my generation are careless with cash, but accepts that a lot has changed. “It is too easy nowadays for people to get into financial trouble as credit is so easily and irresponsibly available,” she said.
As for her top tips, I follow four out of the five. I fail on keeping accounts. I don’t keep track of every pound and penny we spend, but that is probably because I have never had to watch the pennies closely, unlike my mum.
During her early adult life, things were very expensive and the country was still recovering from a devastating war.
I may not have weekly account books, but mum has instilled in me her financial values: to earn my own money and not waste it; to always save and plan for the future.
So, on Mother’s Day, I’d like to say, thanks, Mum.
Dorothy’s rules
1 Be financially independent, whether a man or a woman. Do not rely on funding from your parents or your spouse. Earn your own money.
2 Save regularly, however little you can afford to put away. Get into the habit as soon as possible.
3 Keep accounts (which can be very basic) to see where your money is going. You will then know how much you need to live on and where you can make savings, if required.
4 Easy credit and low mortgage rates can give you a false sense of wealth and income. Learn to look carefully at the cost of borrowing and how long it takes to repay a debt.
5 Forward planning is vital, especially for the big changes in life — buying a home, having children and planning for retirement. Tax efficiency is key.
What did your mother teach you about money? Email: money@sundaytimes.co.uk