Grandma's Diaries

When I went back home last autumn, I was honored when my grandmother gave me her mother's diaries.

My great-grandmother kept a meticulous diary, from 1926 well into the 1990's.   Needless to say, these are amazing.  Not just for me to be looking at a piece of my family history, but just in general.

She didn't keep a journal or a "blog," or a long rambling account on her feelings of anything.  Each day's entry is only a few lines. The weather, any visitors or travel, purchases, births, deaths & weddings.  In fact, the most sentimental entry I found was "Albert and I reminisced about the past this afternoon."   No more detail than that.

In the back of every diary, she tracked her spending and income.  Pages for each category, and meticulous records of everything she bought, for a YEAR, fitting onto six of seven pages.  Each child had a page, the car, the house, holidays.  Looking through it, it strengthened my thought that somewhere we all just got too much stuff, and our stuff needed stuff.  And then we needed stuff to store the stuff.  And then we needed new stuff because we forgot we had the old stuff stored away.   Phew!  As frugal as I tend to be, I certainly couldn't write down every item I bought on seven pages.  Even if I only wrote down how much I spent on a given day any time I spent money, I would still probably not fit it all.

But I digress.

Tucked in the bag with the diaries was a small stack of pay stubs from 1944.

My great grandmother, at that time, was bringing home about $20 a week.  I wish I could ask her how her pay was figured, since it is different every week.  Not sure if she was paid by performance/output, or if it was hourly.   At any rate, on her pay stubs, her withholdings are detailed.

I find this amazing, really.

On Aug 18, 1944, she was paid $27 for the previous week.
From that, $5.4 were taken out for federal taxes.

That's 20% to federal tax.
An additional $0.27 went to FOAB (Social Security, effectively).  Or, 1%.

There are fields for additional withholding for retirement plans & insurance, although she was not enrolled.
Her take home was $21.33 that week.

When she spent $15 to license her car, then, she was spending about 70% of one week's income.  By comparison, I would have to spend about $330.

They bought new dining room furniture that year, as well, for $25.  Over one week salary for her.  Not so different then what we might spend today.  About $500 for me.

And those $10 a month car payments are not so far off from the $300 per month payments I once made.

I hear people say that times were simpler, or things were less expensive then, or my personal favorite "people needed less" than.   
Perhaps they desired less stuff.  Or rather, had access to less stuff.  But the same percentage of money was going to the same places it is now.  Perhaps times aren't so different after all.

I don't know if there is a lesson in this, or if it's just interesting to look through.

I wonder where we would be if we all gave up computers and Ipod and "smart" phones and cable television and coffee-house coffee . If we all bought one new outfit a year.

Then again, I wonder what we would do all day.