In the days of the rotary phone, households lacked things like cell phones and cable bills.
In response to Friday's post about "10 good things about a down housing market," one reader wrote in and mentioned how these days, when each member of a household has his or her own broadband connection, laptop, cell phone and TV with cable or satellite, we lose sight of how much many of us do have, despite today's tough economy.
Which got me to thinking -- maintaining a home is a lot costlier these days than it was when I was growing up. And some of it is not because we need to spend more, but because we want more. (I will show my age here, but….)
When I grew up, all we needed to do to watch a TV was simply plug in the TV and adjust the rabbit ears. There was no cable bill. (On average, Americans pay $59 a month for cable or satellite TV, according to a story by Bankrate.com.) Granted, we could only get a handful -- I really mean a handful -- of channels on my home's TV. (At first, we had just one black and white TV when I was growing up -- we eventually got cable and a color TV.)
More families (than they do today) only owned one car -- my family only had one for a while -- so we just needed a one-bay garage and spent less money a month to fuel and keep those cars running.
Homes were also smaller on average, so there was less space to heat and cool. (The average U.S. home has more than doubled from 983 square feet in 1950 to 2,349 today, according to the National Association of Realtors.)
We didn't have the Internet and laptops, so there weren't any Internet bills.
With home prices currently falling, we talk about how houses are becoming more affordable (with one economist suggesting that homes are reaching 1970s affordability levels). But perhaps our residences could become even more affordable if we dropped at least some of the extras and perks that we have come to see as "must haves" in our homes today.
Apparently, even the wealthy are looking to cut back on housing costs these days. In Sunday's New York Times, Geraldine Fabrikant wrote that hard times have even hit Fisher Island, a wealthy enclave of homes just off of Miami, Fla.
There, where Oprah Winfrey and Mel Brooks have owned a home, the number of homes for sale is about double what it's been in recent years, and there's even one foreclosure. On the island, the annual costs (including taxes, insurance, condo fees, club dues and dues for island upkeep) of owning a condo there is between $60,000 to almost $300,000 a year. Talk about high household expenses.—Lauren Baier Kim