A Reddit user recently posted a photo of their late father’s handwritten monthly budget from June 1989. What followed was a flurry of disbelief and discussion.
Instead of marveling at how inexpensive things used to be, thousands of people were shocked by how much this Southern California family was spending.
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A 1989 Budget That Feels More Like 2025
The original post, shared to r/MiddleClassFinance, shows a detailed budget for a family of five. The monthly total? $3,870. Adjusted for inflation, that amounts to $10,024 in today’s dollars.
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“Honestly, not too far off from my current family of 5… still living in LA County,” the original poster wrote.
Among the standout expenses: a $1,500 mortgage, $600 for food, $120 for a gardener, and $200 at Price Club—a predecessor to Costco COST. The list also includes $100 for gifts, $100 for clothes, and even $30 for insulin.
“Some of these aren’t too far off from my current budget,” one person also wrote. Others were floored. “$1500 a month mortgage in 1989 doesn’t sound middle class,” another said.
Many commenters admitted they assumed 1980s expenses would look quaint by today’s standards. “I was expecting to feel shocked by inflation,” one person said, “but after digesting the numbers, I honestly feel that your parents spent more than most middle-class families at that time.”
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A Closer Look At The Lifestyle
Many Redditors immediately zeroed in on the lifestyle this budget seemed to represent. “He had a gardener,” one person commented. Another pointed out the presence of a timeshare, a line item for gifts, and a Los Angeles Times subscription.
“This was an expensive budget for 1989,” one commenter noted. “The mortgage and food bill alone are huge.”
The OP later clarified that the family lived in a new four-bedroom, 2,300-square-foot home in La Verne, California, bought for $150,000 in 1986. His father worked as a tax accountant, and the family rarely dined out. The $600 monthly food bill was mostly groceries, with pizza nights on Fridays.
One person calculated the inflation-adjusted values: “$1500 for the mortgage becomes about $4,000 today, and $600 for food would be $1,590. That’s a $10,000-a-month lifestyle.”
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Health, Humor And Nostalgia
Among the budget’s line items was $30 for insulin and other medical needs. The OP explained that his father was a type 1 diabetic who had lived with the condition since age eight and died at 59. “When he was a kid, doctors told him he likely wouldn’t make it to 40,” he added.
The post also triggered a wave of nostalgia as several people mentioned that their own fathers used the same kind of graph paper or had similar handwriting. Others joked about the mysterious “HOLT” entry, which the OP revealed was an adoption agency called Holt International. The family had adopted one of their siblings.
More Than Just Numbers
The broader takeaway for many was that this wasn’t a typical 1989 budget. “Looking at the numbers, this would have been an upper-class family in 1989,” one person wrote. Another explicitly said, “This isn’t middle-class finance. This is 1% finance.”
Whatever the label, the post gave thousands a glimpse into what financial comfort looked like nearly four decades ago, and how far out of reach it feels today.
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