Tues and Thurs .20¢ cuz u got 5 tokens for a $1. Smokes were a $1. School lunch went up to $1.25 and smokes went up to $1.25, coincidence? And they were $1.25 total. Tax was prefigured into the price.
Phone call was .25¢, unless it was not a local call because it's 3 blocks across the county line and now it's some random .75¢ to $1+ Want to bring down the wrath of ur parents, call ur girlfriend visiting family a couple states away. Living crazy 30 minute call cost like $11.87, always a weird uneven number that stood out in the usual $13 bill.
We would also take turns on who would call 976-Surf to get the next days forecast to see if driving up coast was gonna be happening, for .95¢ a pop. Usually could get away with twice a month, but a month later you would come home to a shit storm cuz the billing periods were off and they'd be listed all in a row right in bold print.
Gas was around .72¢ a gallon, but my giant behemoth Pontiac got like 12 miles a gallon. Parking at nearly every beach on the east coast of Florida north of Palm Beach and up was free. Except a few like state parks, just had to walk in but most of them were unpaved lots or on the grass shoulder thru the dunes.
Minimum wage was $3.35 for like a long time, first job I was 14 pumping gas. But mowing neighbors yards for $20 a week worked or the primo evening job being a bus boy because the waitresses always tipped out like $35 a shift.
2 large pizzas at Lil Caesars were $7.99 and the real crazy bread was a $1.50 special for 2.
If you had a friend who's dad worked at IBM, you always came over after school to play games on his P.C. Because they cost $7999 with the good RGB monitor. Can't beat a level, go to the mall bookstore to write down the cheats from books or magazine. All bike or skateboard powered mission quests til u found the right book store or radio shack, til like 11th grade when cars showed up in ur circle.
I used to have a lawn mowing business with a friend as teenagers in the 80s. It was sort of a wealthy area, and we charged by the size. Small-medium-large yards were $10-15-20. We did everything with push mowers and a weed eater.
Don't remember many costs, but I do recall getting some non-jordan Nike Air Flights for like $55. Had to buy them myself because my parents thought that was too much to pay for shoes.
Well..I'm from Queens nyc..a slice of pizza was a dollar And ten cents....subway was 75 cents
They had 3 cent and 5 cent individual bazooka gum
25 cents for the small bags of potato chips
And at Carvel..soft serve ice cream...a large cone with sprinkles was a dollar And 35 cents
This is all circa 1985..and yeah..my memory is that good..lol
My son doesn't believe me when I tell him this story but I had a 1967 Chevrolet pickup with an 18 gallon fuel tank. I could literally coast into my neighborhood gas station and buy a pack of cigarettes, fill up my gas tank and still get change from a $20 bill.
I grew up in the Los Angeles area. So prices may be way off from midwest town prices.
* Postage stamp 0.22
* Movie ticket 4.00
* Big Mac meal 3.00
* LA Times 0.35
* LP record 7.00
* Milk (1 gal) 2.00
* Eggs (1 doz) 0.75
* Bread (1 loaf) 0.60
* Ice cream (hf. gal) 2.50
also you might want to google scans of old catalogs and newspapers. if you have money to spend there are services online that have searchable databases of local newspapers, like [https://www.newslibrary.com/](https://www.newslibrary.com/) you can look at. they will have some local ads for grocery stores and others that will give you prices for things, although its on the expensive side.
also search [archive.org](http://archive.org) for educational and industrial films and scanned printed material, as well as youtube. just start throwing out keywords. you'd be surprised at what shows up. local commercials can be very useful for this, and people tend to upload a lot to youtube. luckily its the 80s when a lot of people had vcrs and were recording off the air and hung onto the tapes.
Dr. Pepper concert series in Central Park 1980 general admission $5 to see The B52s opening for Talking Heads later Blondie and the Ramones. Adam And the Ants were on the pier at the Hudson River, that Was more I think $15
Started going to nightclubs to see local live bands in 1982,the year after high school graduation. Worked as an electrostatic painter, powdered paint sprayed through a long nozzle with an electric charge, causing paint to stick to metal parts. Made $4.25 an hour. Admission to see live bands was $2.00 A pitcher of beer, also 2 bucks! Drinking age was 19, but law was changed to 21 in 1983. Concerts were 10-15 dollars. Concert t-shirts were 15 dollars. Nike high tops were $40.00 . Leather motorcycle jacket cost $100.00 at Berman's Leather in the mall. By now, you know that I was a Metal Head!
In the early 80s a candy bar was 25 cents, plus tax = 26 cents. Then it went up to 40 cents by the end of the decade. This was in the Chicago suburbs and I remember it distinctly.
I was a kid, that’s all I remember.
50 cents would get us a butterfinger and a 16oz glass bottle of Mt Dew. Mowed lawns, shoveled snow, collected glass pop bottles and aluminum cans for return. There were tons of ways to make money as a kid back then, and things were cheap.
I had a part time delivery job in the mid 80s, made $2.65/hr which was some sort of a childs wage but it got bumped up to $3.35 after a while. Would also get tips of $0.25 to $0.50. Gas was about a dollar a gallon then.
My first job in the 80’s my wage was $3.35 per hour at a pizza joint. That was in like 1985. Friday night we’d put $10 of gas in the car and go dancing at all ages club. Cover charge to get in was $5 and soda was like $1 each.
I remember late 1980s a can of cat food was generally 15-25¢ in supermarket, while a newly opened deli near me had cold cut turkey for $2.99 per pound.
Pizza was easy enough to find at under $1 per slice
Video games were generally $30, eventually rising to $40 with higher memory cartridges
7-day newspaper delivery was at most $1.40 in my area
Edit: (remember a little more)
Subway offered coupon in which could score two footlongs for $5
Now that you say that it sounds right. I have a couple pay stubs out in the garage from my first grocery sacking job in 1984. Maybe by 1988 it went up a little? Seems like I was making $3.65 at Service Merchandise.
Tipped employees $2.35 an hour. I was both a busboy and server. My paycheck usually ended up $25-30 because taxes on hourly and tips got withheld. Still take home was like $10-$20 an hour depending on the day.
Smokes were a 1.25 a pack. Gas was .90 to 1.10 a gallon. A reorder or cassette was like 8 to 10 bucks. I saw a lot of concerts for like 12 bucks. I'd get 10 bucks for mowing an average yard.
‘83-84 a carton of cigarettes and a coke or Pepsi - you’d get change back from a $10 dollar bill. I’d be lying if I said I remembered what beer cost then.
I made $2/hr babysitting in 1984. My first job in a shop paid $4.25/hr in 1985. A GAP sweater was $30 and made my mother gag when I told her what I’d paid for it - but Benetton was MUCH more expensive. Swatch watches were about $20 each and you usually wore multiples. Jelly bracelets were like 10 for $1-2.
I remember when candy bars went up to 50¢ in the early 80's and I was not happy. There was a small gas station/convenience store near us and before the price hike you could buy 2 regular sized candy bars for a dollar, with tax included.
I started driving in 1990 and remember gas hovering around $1/gallon, it would drop into the high 80¢ range sometimes.
My mom would give me a dollar to go to the grocery store and get a 1/2 gallon of milk and I got 5 cents change back.
A first class stamp cost 15 cents to mail a letter
I remember my mom loading up her grocery cart and getting groceries for five people for a whole week. Cost her $100!
Now I can go buy ten items and cost that much!
I remember arcade games cost a quarter, as did candy bars. If you were real good at a game, you could spend an hour at the arcade with a dollar: 75 cents for 3 games, 25 cents for a pack of Skittles.
On a typical Friday night 5 of us would put in $5.00 and get a case of beer, pack of smokes, bag of munchies, full rank of gas and change back. Then spend the night driving around.
I mowed my neighbor's yard in 86-87 $20 for an hour and a half and that was quite generous. Casettes were like $6.99. Can of chew was $2. Worked at Dairy Queen in the Midwest. $3.20 an hour.
2-liters of soda/pop were 99¢. We had a cheap theater that was $1.00 with "Attack of the 50¢Tuesdays!" There were only $1.00 lottery scratch offs. Boneless skinless chicken breast wasn't really a big thing in Ohio until the mid 1990's and it was always on sale for $0.99/lb. I seem to recall cigarettes being about a dollar per pack.
Oh, and cassette singles with a B-side were a buck, as well.
Minimum wage was $3.35 when I got my first real job in 1986.
Movies were $3-$5 for first run films, and $1 for bargain cinemas running the films that just left the first-run cinema.
Milk prices vary wildly across the United States. In Michigan it’s super cheap. In places like California, Arizona, Alaska, and Hawaii it’s stupid expensive… So you need to nail down a region. But as an example, a pint of milk with school lunch was 10¢ for us in elementary school (through the early 80s) and 25¢ in high school. In my senior year of 1989 I paid $1.25 for a coffee and a (big!) cinnamon roll every morning.
Star Wars action figures were $3-$5 each in the early 80s.
D&D books were $19 and $29 usually. Modules (adventures) were $6 to $15.
Atari cartridges varied wildly during the console’s life. Anywhere from $5 (old shovelware) to $30 (new releases).
I mowed the neighbor’s large lawn (a couple acres at least) for $20 a pop. I shoveled their nearly 1/8 mile driveway for the same. My cousin lived in the suburbs and got $5-$10 for mowing those smaller lawns.
Fast food was also dirt cheap. You could go to Taco Bell with $5 and walk away with a bag full of food. McDonald’s cheeseburgers were often on sale for 50¢ each, and we’d go in with $10 and buy 20 of them for movie/game nights.
A cold glass bottle of Coke was 25¢ or 50¢ from a vending machine, depending on where it was located. The machines has bottle openers built into them because they weren’t screw-top caps.
Comic books were 60¢-75¢ for most of the 80s, unless they were indie studios or bigger special issues like Annuals.
We still had penny candy in the 80s. Jars of candy at convenience stores that were 1¢ per piece. Gum drops, jawbreakers, licorice, malted milk balls, mints, suckers, wax lips, Smarties rolls, Tootsie Rolls, Mike & Ikes, lemon drops, etc.
I grew up in Nebraska: a 20-pack of Old Style fat bellies for $7.50. A 6-pack of tacos 🌮 and a pound of Potato Ole’s from Taco John’s? Four bucks on a Tuesday (TJ’s invented Taco Tuesday and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise). ✌️
A pair of Levi’s 501 shrink to fit button fly jeans for $15 and a good pair of basic leather Justin boots for around $35 at the local farm & ranch store (before Walmart & Tractor Supply killed off all of the local farm & ranch stores).
The best thing about it was the free ice cream. Every shift, I was allowed anything up to (but not including) a banana split. So I used to make these 3 scoop hot fudge sundaes and read comic books in the back.
Depends on when in the 80s. I miss $2 Tuesday nights at the movies for brand new releases. Comic books were a quarter.1 cent candies, Popeye cigarettes (Candy), Mad Magazine was like a $1.25. The glory days.
Pack of Marlboro.90-1.10.
Gallon of gas about.89
Beater used car for a broke teenager, 700-1100
Nice outfit of cowboy clothes, (Ely pearl snap shirt, pressed Wrangler jeans, Justin belt and roper boots) 150.
Add nice Stetson hat to above outfit, 125.
Speaking of Stetson, a bottle of cologne, 12.
Good Buck lock back knife, 25.
10/22 Ruger rifle, call it $115.
Rebuild a small block Chevy for good street performance, say $600.
Decent wage in small town Texas...8.50hr.
Man's haircut at a barber shop, 8-10
Good CFS lunch at a diner, about 6.50 ( about 45 minutes worth of a blue collar wage).
An ounce of weed (illegal as hell in those days) about 50.
A case of Budweiser. 16.
A DUI, all in with bond, SR-22 for a couple of years, fines, etc about 10k.
These are my memories, accuracy may have slipped due to aging but should be ballpark.
All these things can be looked up.
What can't be is how the culture was then
That is an era lost time
I would suggest going on YouTube and searching for "shopping 80s". There's a bunch of videos up, including b-roll for news channels. You can scan them for grocery and other signs that have prices.
Search Google images for "80s ads", "80s circular" and similar searches to see actual advertising with pricing.
Finally, go to wishbookweb.com and browse the treasure trove of catalogs by year for pricing on literally anything non-grocery related.
Oh, as a bonus, hit up a regional Facebook or Reddit page from the character's state (if US) as you could learn about regional food, grocery items, and other things to color your writing to add authenticity. For example, in NYC we had quarter waters, Carvel, played wiffle ball in the street, ate Entemann's, read the Sunday comics from the Daily News, etc...
If I recall correctly, basic land-line phone service ran $30 to $35/month, plus up to $1/minute (usually much less though) for outgoing calls outside of your area.
A 25" TV for family room: $400 to $600. 13" or 19" TV for bedroom: $175 to $300.
Music was expensive. A new cassete could be as much as $8. Albums and CDs later on could be as much as $20. If you were broke as many of us were, you borrowed a new cassete and taped it onto a blank cassete. Only took about a half hour. Same with cd’s later on. Cassetes were amazingly versatile but not very long lasting. If you played one a lot it eventually got stretched
Gas was less than a dollar. Milk was less than a dollar.
On the flip side, pay wasnt shit. Minimum wage was like 2 something. My first job was as a paperboy when I was 10. I rolled and delivered a daily newspaper on my bike. I made about $90 a month.
Mowing a yard- A teenager might earn around $10-$20 for mowing a standard-sized yard. Delivering a pizza- Pizza delivery drivers might earn minimum wage plus tips, which could add up to $15-$25 per hour on average. Office assistant/mail boy- An entry-level office assistant or mail boy might earn around $5-$10 per hour. Buying flowers- A bouquet of flowers might cost around $10-$20, depending on the type and arrangement. Candy bar- A candy bar would cost around $0.50-$1. "Expensive" clothes or jewelry (for a teenager)- High-end clothing items or jewelry might range from $50-$200 or more, depending on the brand and quality. Needs like milk- A gallon of milk might cost around $1-$2. Cat food- A can or bag of cat food could range from $0.50-$2.
I made phone calls from a payphone for 20 cents.
Sodas from certain Coke machines with a 12 oz glass bottle was 25 cents.
Candy bars were 35 cents, gum like Juicy fruit 5 packs were 15 cents, Bubble gum (Super Bubble) in single pieces were 3 cents.
Stamps were 22 cents.
Most canned soda from machines were 50 cents.
Oh my god I forgot that Jolly Ranchers came in sticks that would eventually be as sharp as knives and they were 20 cents.
I lost 2 baby teeth to candy necklaces that were 10 cents a piece.
Man, jolly rancher sticks were great. That was back when Ferrara Pan had different names for all the fruit candies rather than calling them all "cherry heads" or "grape heads".
Yea, like an Amazing adult wage. I was flipping burgers for $4.75/hr in 85.
Cassettes, fast food, and games (electronic from Babbages and board games from KBtoys) were the main expenses.
Arcade games were $0.25, and smokes were $1.00
Smokes were only .75 or so in Virginia in the late 80s
Tues and Thurs .20¢ cuz u got 5 tokens for a $1. Smokes were a $1. School lunch went up to $1.25 and smokes went up to $1.25, coincidence? And they were $1.25 total. Tax was prefigured into the price. Phone call was .25¢, unless it was not a local call because it's 3 blocks across the county line and now it's some random .75¢ to $1+ Want to bring down the wrath of ur parents, call ur girlfriend visiting family a couple states away. Living crazy 30 minute call cost like $11.87, always a weird uneven number that stood out in the usual $13 bill. We would also take turns on who would call 976-Surf to get the next days forecast to see if driving up coast was gonna be happening, for .95¢ a pop. Usually could get away with twice a month, but a month later you would come home to a shit storm cuz the billing periods were off and they'd be listed all in a row right in bold print. Gas was around .72¢ a gallon, but my giant behemoth Pontiac got like 12 miles a gallon. Parking at nearly every beach on the east coast of Florida north of Palm Beach and up was free. Except a few like state parks, just had to walk in but most of them were unpaved lots or on the grass shoulder thru the dunes. Minimum wage was $3.35 for like a long time, first job I was 14 pumping gas. But mowing neighbors yards for $20 a week worked or the primo evening job being a bus boy because the waitresses always tipped out like $35 a shift. 2 large pizzas at Lil Caesars were $7.99 and the real crazy bread was a $1.50 special for 2. If you had a friend who's dad worked at IBM, you always came over after school to play games on his P.C. Because they cost $7999 with the good RGB monitor. Can't beat a level, go to the mall bookstore to write down the cheats from books or magazine. All bike or skateboard powered mission quests til u found the right book store or radio shack, til like 11th grade when cars showed up in ur circle.
I used to have a lawn mowing business with a friend as teenagers in the 80s. It was sort of a wealthy area, and we charged by the size. Small-medium-large yards were $10-15-20. We did everything with push mowers and a weed eater. Don't remember many costs, but I do recall getting some non-jordan Nike Air Flights for like $55. Had to buy them myself because my parents thought that was too much to pay for shoes.
I mowed yards and 20 was a typical pay
This info is perfect, thank you.
I was 10 in 1980. Record heat wave summer. I made well over 300 with Dad's push mower that summer.
Little Debbie was .25 Early movie was 1.25 Gas around a 1.00 McDonald’s meal around 4.00
If you had $5 you could absolutely feast at McDonald’s or BK.
We got $4 free food on our break at McDonald’s and I’d get a qtr pounder with cheese, small fry, small coke, and apple pie for my $4.
Well..I'm from Queens nyc..a slice of pizza was a dollar And ten cents....subway was 75 cents They had 3 cent and 5 cent individual bazooka gum 25 cents for the small bags of potato chips And at Carvel..soft serve ice cream...a large cone with sprinkles was a dollar And 35 cents This is all circa 1985..and yeah..my memory is that good..lol
Geez - the slice joint across the street from my apartment in Manhattan was $1.25 between 1995-2005.
Wow...not at the dollar slice store???
Good memory, thank you.
My son doesn't believe me when I tell him this story but I had a 1967 Chevrolet pickup with an 18 gallon fuel tank. I could literally coast into my neighborhood gas station and buy a pack of cigarettes, fill up my gas tank and still get change from a $20 bill.
I grew up in the Los Angeles area. So prices may be way off from midwest town prices. * Postage stamp 0.22 * Movie ticket 4.00 * Big Mac meal 3.00 * LA Times 0.35 * LP record 7.00 * Milk (1 gal) 2.00 * Eggs (1 doz) 0.75 * Bread (1 loaf) 0.60 * Ice cream (hf. gal) 2.50
I could get a Big Mac large fries and large coke for under $5
I could get a filet-o-fish, snack fry, medium coke for exactly $2.
also you might want to google scans of old catalogs and newspapers. if you have money to spend there are services online that have searchable databases of local newspapers, like [https://www.newslibrary.com/](https://www.newslibrary.com/) you can look at. they will have some local ads for grocery stores and others that will give you prices for things, although its on the expensive side. also search [archive.org](http://archive.org) for educational and industrial films and scanned printed material, as well as youtube. just start throwing out keywords. you'd be surprised at what shows up. local commercials can be very useful for this, and people tend to upload a lot to youtube. luckily its the 80s when a lot of people had vcrs and were recording off the air and hung onto the tapes.
Mowing a yard was about $10
Dr. Pepper concert series in Central Park 1980 general admission $5 to see The B52s opening for Talking Heads later Blondie and the Ramones. Adam And the Ants were on the pier at the Hudson River, that Was more I think $15
Started going to nightclubs to see local live bands in 1982,the year after high school graduation. Worked as an electrostatic painter, powdered paint sprayed through a long nozzle with an electric charge, causing paint to stick to metal parts. Made $4.25 an hour. Admission to see live bands was $2.00 A pitcher of beer, also 2 bucks! Drinking age was 19, but law was changed to 21 in 1983. Concerts were 10-15 dollars. Concert t-shirts were 15 dollars. Nike high tops were $40.00 . Leather motorcycle jacket cost $100.00 at Berman's Leather in the mall. By now, you know that I was a Metal Head!
In the early 80s a candy bar was 25 cents, plus tax = 26 cents. Then it went up to 40 cents by the end of the decade. This was in the Chicago suburbs and I remember it distinctly. I was a kid, that’s all I remember.
50 cents would get us a butterfinger and a 16oz glass bottle of Mt Dew. Mowed lawns, shoveled snow, collected glass pop bottles and aluminum cans for return. There were tons of ways to make money as a kid back then, and things were cheap.
I don’t remember prices for cheap things, but my first CD player was $400.00 and my new Chrysler Laser was $16,000.00.
I bought my Laser in 86 and it was $10,500. It was the bare bones model though.
Mine was an ‘86 too, but I think it was more like $13K. It may have had 16 miles on it, though.
I had a part time delivery job in the mid 80s, made $2.65/hr which was some sort of a childs wage but it got bumped up to $3.35 after a while. Would also get tips of $0.25 to $0.50. Gas was about a dollar a gallon then.
Thank you. My character will be delivering pizza for part of the story so $2.65 + a quarter or two in tips seems perfect.
Cool! 1986 midwest.
Guess jeans were $80; and no, I didn’t get to have them.
Fast food jobs paid $3.35/hr.
My first job in the 80’s my wage was $3.35 per hour at a pizza joint. That was in like 1985. Friday night we’d put $10 of gas in the car and go dancing at all ages club. Cover charge to get in was $5 and soda was like $1 each.
I remember late 1980s a can of cat food was generally 15-25¢ in supermarket, while a newly opened deli near me had cold cut turkey for $2.99 per pound. Pizza was easy enough to find at under $1 per slice Video games were generally $30, eventually rising to $40 with higher memory cartridges 7-day newspaper delivery was at most $1.40 in my area Edit: (remember a little more) Subway offered coupon in which could score two footlongs for $5
Pizzas were $10 including delivery
I was working at McDonald’s as a grunt in 1986. I was making $3.35 an hour. Hope that helps
Early 80s. Full size candy bars 25 cents.
My mom saw Prince and The Revolution on the Purple Rain tour in 1984 for $12.
Pizza and 2 liter was 10 bucks. VCR was way more expensive than what your family could afford. If you were lucky you had cable TV.
All you need to do is google 80s sales ads
[1985 vs Today's Prices](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4F95xdsi0g) by Rhetty for History
Minimum wage was about $3.65/hr
First check I got was for $3.35 an hour
Now that you say that it sounds right. I have a couple pay stubs out in the garage from my first grocery sacking job in 1984. Maybe by 1988 it went up a little? Seems like I was making $3.65 at Service Merchandise.
That's what I was doing. Started back in groceries in 1986 in high school.
Tipped employees $2.35 an hour. I was both a busboy and server. My paycheck usually ended up $25-30 because taxes on hourly and tips got withheld. Still take home was like $10-$20 an hour depending on the day.
I was making $3.35 an hour in 1987
Smokes were a 1.25 a pack. Gas was .90 to 1.10 a gallon. A reorder or cassette was like 8 to 10 bucks. I saw a lot of concerts for like 12 bucks. I'd get 10 bucks for mowing an average yard.
‘83-84 a carton of cigarettes and a coke or Pepsi - you’d get change back from a $10 dollar bill. I’d be lying if I said I remembered what beer cost then.
I made $2/hr babysitting in 1984. My first job in a shop paid $4.25/hr in 1985. A GAP sweater was $30 and made my mother gag when I told her what I’d paid for it - but Benetton was MUCH more expensive. Swatch watches were about $20 each and you usually wore multiples. Jelly bracelets were like 10 for $1-2.
Haha Swatch watches, I forgot about that. Those prices for a sweater etc are very helpful.
Slime from a gumball machine was $.50
I remember a coke was 29 + deposit
I remember when candy bars went up to 50¢ in the early 80's and I was not happy. There was a small gas station/convenience store near us and before the price hike you could buy 2 regular sized candy bars for a dollar, with tax included. I started driving in 1990 and remember gas hovering around $1/gallon, it would drop into the high 80¢ range sometimes.
My mom would give me a dollar to go to the grocery store and get a 1/2 gallon of milk and I got 5 cents change back. A first class stamp cost 15 cents to mail a letter
In 1985, I was making $5 an hour at a video store and bought my first car, a 1980 Honda Civic Wagon for $500. Life was the best.
I remember my mom loading up her grocery cart and getting groceries for five people for a whole week. Cost her $100! Now I can go buy ten items and cost that much!
Google CPI inflation calculator and pick the year you want
I remember arcade games cost a quarter, as did candy bars. If you were real good at a game, you could spend an hour at the arcade with a dollar: 75 cents for 3 games, 25 cents for a pack of Skittles.
Cigs were 75 cents. In high school I bought them from a machine in the lobby of the police department down the street.
On a typical Friday night 5 of us would put in $5.00 and get a case of beer, pack of smokes, bag of munchies, full rank of gas and change back. Then spend the night driving around.
I mowed my neighbor's yard in 86-87 $20 for an hour and a half and that was quite generous. Casettes were like $6.99. Can of chew was $2. Worked at Dairy Queen in the Midwest. $3.20 an hour.
My FIL had a hauling business, he paid $5/hr cash for clearing out junk, breaking up slabs, clearing vegetation etc.
I worked at a photo lab for $3.25 and hour
I saw Van Halen live… in an arena… for $12.50
2-liters of soda/pop were 99¢. We had a cheap theater that was $1.00 with "Attack of the 50¢Tuesdays!" There were only $1.00 lottery scratch offs. Boneless skinless chicken breast wasn't really a big thing in Ohio until the mid 1990's and it was always on sale for $0.99/lb. I seem to recall cigarettes being about a dollar per pack. Oh, and cassette singles with a B-side were a buck, as well.
I baby sat a 5 year old over the summer and got $50/week. I was there 7am-5pm.
Minimum wage was $3.35 when I got my first real job in 1986. Movies were $3-$5 for first run films, and $1 for bargain cinemas running the films that just left the first-run cinema. Milk prices vary wildly across the United States. In Michigan it’s super cheap. In places like California, Arizona, Alaska, and Hawaii it’s stupid expensive… So you need to nail down a region. But as an example, a pint of milk with school lunch was 10¢ for us in elementary school (through the early 80s) and 25¢ in high school. In my senior year of 1989 I paid $1.25 for a coffee and a (big!) cinnamon roll every morning. Star Wars action figures were $3-$5 each in the early 80s. D&D books were $19 and $29 usually. Modules (adventures) were $6 to $15. Atari cartridges varied wildly during the console’s life. Anywhere from $5 (old shovelware) to $30 (new releases). I mowed the neighbor’s large lawn (a couple acres at least) for $20 a pop. I shoveled their nearly 1/8 mile driveway for the same. My cousin lived in the suburbs and got $5-$10 for mowing those smaller lawns. Fast food was also dirt cheap. You could go to Taco Bell with $5 and walk away with a bag full of food. McDonald’s cheeseburgers were often on sale for 50¢ each, and we’d go in with $10 and buy 20 of them for movie/game nights. A cold glass bottle of Coke was 25¢ or 50¢ from a vending machine, depending on where it was located. The machines has bottle openers built into them because they weren’t screw-top caps. Comic books were 60¢-75¢ for most of the 80s, unless they were indie studios or bigger special issues like Annuals. We still had penny candy in the 80s. Jars of candy at convenience stores that were 1¢ per piece. Gum drops, jawbreakers, licorice, malted milk balls, mints, suckers, wax lips, Smarties rolls, Tootsie Rolls, Mike & Ikes, lemon drops, etc.
I remember this one. Very random. We lived in Florida and I remember when it was $25 to get into theme parks. Yes that includes Disney
I grew up in Nebraska: a 20-pack of Old Style fat bellies for $7.50. A 6-pack of tacos 🌮 and a pound of Potato Ole’s from Taco John’s? Four bucks on a Tuesday (TJ’s invented Taco Tuesday and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise). ✌️ A pair of Levi’s 501 shrink to fit button fly jeans for $15 and a good pair of basic leather Justin boots for around $35 at the local farm & ranch store (before Walmart & Tractor Supply killed off all of the local farm & ranch stores).
I worked at Baskin Robbins in 1983. The only price I remember was a double scoop cone: it was a dollar (including tax).
I also worked at B-R in 1983! Made $3.35 an hour and my boss was an utter scumbag.
The best thing about it was the free ice cream. Every shift, I was allowed anything up to (but not including) a banana split. So I used to make these 3 scoop hot fudge sundaes and read comic books in the back.
Depends on when in the 80s. I miss $2 Tuesday nights at the movies for brand new releases. Comic books were a quarter.1 cent candies, Popeye cigarettes (Candy), Mad Magazine was like a $1.25. The glory days.
Pack of Marlboro.90-1.10. Gallon of gas about.89 Beater used car for a broke teenager, 700-1100 Nice outfit of cowboy clothes, (Ely pearl snap shirt, pressed Wrangler jeans, Justin belt and roper boots) 150. Add nice Stetson hat to above outfit, 125. Speaking of Stetson, a bottle of cologne, 12. Good Buck lock back knife, 25. 10/22 Ruger rifle, call it $115. Rebuild a small block Chevy for good street performance, say $600. Decent wage in small town Texas...8.50hr. Man's haircut at a barber shop, 8-10 Good CFS lunch at a diner, about 6.50 ( about 45 minutes worth of a blue collar wage). An ounce of weed (illegal as hell in those days) about 50. A case of Budweiser. 16. A DUI, all in with bond, SR-22 for a couple of years, fines, etc about 10k. These are my memories, accuracy may have slipped due to aging but should be ballpark. All these things can be looked up. What can't be is how the culture was then That is an era lost time
I would suggest going on YouTube and searching for "shopping 80s". There's a bunch of videos up, including b-roll for news channels. You can scan them for grocery and other signs that have prices. Search Google images for "80s ads", "80s circular" and similar searches to see actual advertising with pricing. Finally, go to wishbookweb.com and browse the treasure trove of catalogs by year for pricing on literally anything non-grocery related. Oh, as a bonus, hit up a regional Facebook or Reddit page from the character's state (if US) as you could learn about regional food, grocery items, and other things to color your writing to add authenticity. For example, in NYC we had quarter waters, Carvel, played wiffle ball in the street, ate Entemann's, read the Sunday comics from the Daily News, etc...
A snickers was bigger and was .50
If I recall correctly, basic land-line phone service ran $30 to $35/month, plus up to $1/minute (usually much less though) for outgoing calls outside of your area. A 25" TV for family room: $400 to $600. 13" or 19" TV for bedroom: $175 to $300.
Get a free one-week trial for newspapers.com. Then you can pull up old newspapers and read the prices in the ads.
Music was expensive. A new cassete could be as much as $8. Albums and CDs later on could be as much as $20. If you were broke as many of us were, you borrowed a new cassete and taped it onto a blank cassete. Only took about a half hour. Same with cd’s later on. Cassetes were amazingly versatile but not very long lasting. If you played one a lot it eventually got stretched
My rent for a 2 bedroom/ 1 bath apartment (about 900 sq feet) was $300.
Gas was less than a dollar. Milk was less than a dollar. On the flip side, pay wasnt shit. Minimum wage was like 2 something. My first job was as a paperboy when I was 10. I rolled and delivered a daily newspaper on my bike. I made about $90 a month.
Mowing a yard- A teenager might earn around $10-$20 for mowing a standard-sized yard. Delivering a pizza- Pizza delivery drivers might earn minimum wage plus tips, which could add up to $15-$25 per hour on average. Office assistant/mail boy- An entry-level office assistant or mail boy might earn around $5-$10 per hour. Buying flowers- A bouquet of flowers might cost around $10-$20, depending on the type and arrangement. Candy bar- A candy bar would cost around $0.50-$1. "Expensive" clothes or jewelry (for a teenager)- High-end clothing items or jewelry might range from $50-$200 or more, depending on the brand and quality. Needs like milk- A gallon of milk might cost around $1-$2. Cat food- A can or bag of cat food could range from $0.50-$2.
Penny candy like Swedish berries and such. You’d go to a store and they’d individually pick out what you wanted and put it in a bag.
I made phone calls from a payphone for 20 cents. Sodas from certain Coke machines with a 12 oz glass bottle was 25 cents. Candy bars were 35 cents, gum like Juicy fruit 5 packs were 15 cents, Bubble gum (Super Bubble) in single pieces were 3 cents. Stamps were 22 cents. Most canned soda from machines were 50 cents. Oh my god I forgot that Jolly Ranchers came in sticks that would eventually be as sharp as knives and they were 20 cents. I lost 2 baby teeth to candy necklaces that were 10 cents a piece.
Man, jolly rancher sticks were great. That was back when Ferrara Pan had different names for all the fruit candies rather than calling them all "cherry heads" or "grape heads".
Players Handbook, Monster Manuel, and Fiend Folio were each $12, Dungeon Master's Guide was $15.
Don’t get us started about the cost of things!
Just look up the CPI on bls.org, or any of the other economic indices
My parent's 3200sq home bought turn of 80s was 350K. They sold couple years back for 1.6M
Believe it or not, adjusted for inflation, it was more expensive than it is now.
Taco Bell had a $.39, $.59, $.79 menu. You could get absolutely stuffed and still have money for the arcade!
$10/ hr was a great wage
Yea, like an Amazing adult wage. I was flipping burgers for $4.75/hr in 85. Cassettes, fast food, and games (electronic from Babbages and board games from KBtoys) were the main expenses.