Despite the fact that our parents love to talk about just how hard they used to have it when we stop and think, it becomes depressingly clear that a lot of commonplace things have fallen into the luxury category without almost anyone noticing.
So one internet user wanted to hear others’ thoughts, so people from all over the net shared the items and experiences that used to be downright regular and are now seen as extravagant. We also got in touch with zombiem00se, who made the original post. So read through and prepare a tissue after you weep for better times, and be sure to upvote your favorites. And don’t forget to comment your own thoughts and examples below.
#1
Being left the f**k alone.
Buying something and just like, owning it.
Playing a video game without an internet connection.
*Not* having to provide your email address for every single f*****g thing you do.
Image source: El_Mariachi_Vive, JESHOOTS.COM
#2
Good quality fabric in clothing. I have clothes from the 90s (and 80s from my mother) that still hold up today. These days, I’m lucky if my shirt isn’t saggy and misshapen within a year.
Image source: TheMadLaboratorian, Cristine Enero
#3
Calling a company and getting a *person* on the other end of the phone.
*edit: Thanks for the awards kind people! I really didn’t expect this to blow up like this.*
Image source: AnnieAcely199
#4
Single income families buying a home
Image source: THESSIS, Oleksandr Pidvalnyi
#5
New furniture made out of real wood
Image source: Juls7243, Vlada Karpovich
#6
Items not requiring a subscription each month
Image source: few29er, Ashley Byrd
#7
getting things repaired instead of buying new.
Image source: einRoboter, Kilian Seiler
#8
Not being expected to be reachable 24/7
Image source: Siukslinis_acc, Andrew Neel
#9
Ads only on TV or the newspaper or radio. Now it’s ads EVERY-F*****G-WHERE. YouTube: 1 minute video. Two 15 second ads. Unskippable. Streaming service you pay for: watch promos for shows we want you to watch before you watch the show you want to watch. Music service: pay premium for no ads. Random website: ads + tracking cookies FOR ads. Social media: ad every 3-4 posts + collecting data to show you MORE ads + targeted ads. Amazon: here are some sponsored products you might like.
I’m so tired of everything revolving around ads and collecting data to show you ads that are catered to you. It’s like a freaking hell loop.
Image source: attempt5001, freestocks.org
#10
Being able to dance and have a good time and not have a chance it will end up recorded and put on social media.
Image source: allbright1111
#11
Farmer’s markets. You used to be able to go down and get fruit and vegetables cheaper than the grocery store. Now it seems like they charge 3x more than stores do.
Image source: jrhawk42, Peter Wendt
#12
Owning the software you purchased.
Image source: FinnofLocke, Studio Republic
#13
Legroom on an airplane
Image source: anachronistika, reisetopia
#14
household products that didn’t break within the first few years of use. My grandma had the same fridge from 1993 for a good while before deciding to swtich to a newer, bigger one 2 years ago, yes, it broke within those 2 years; my mom’s wedding cookware is still going strong 25 years later, but whenever she needs new pans they start flaking teflon into the food within a few months
Image source: parangolecomuna, Janaya Dasiuk
#15
paying no more than 30% of your income in rent
Image source: newsaggregateftw
#16
Retirement plan built-in to your job.
Image source: SuvenPan, Anna Shvets
#17
Being able to afford having only one person working in a relationship
Image source: depressedhousewifee, cottonbrostudio
#18
Getting a hand written letter
Image source: riphitter, Álvaro Serrano
#19
Being a stay at home mom.
I’m all for women having the option to work a career and be a mom, but I’ve met so many who hate having to drop off their babies or small children with grandma or at a daycare because it takes 2 incomes to survive because wages haven’t kept up work productivity for the last 50 years.
Image source: smp501
#20
A pension you could retire on
Image source: chalk_passion
#21
Word used to be just installed with your microsoft software. Now you have to pay each month/year.
Image source: OrganizationRare587
#22
Leaving your family behind to start your life at 18 or even younger.
Now, folks be livin’ with their parents until they’re 45, saving up for 100 sq. ft. closet that costs $2000 a month in what barely passes as not a slum.
Image source: Lking4goodargs
#23
Attention spans lasting longer than a lightning bolt.
Image source: nwrighteous
#24
Privacy
Image source: mazokuz
#25
Being able to pay your bills without being charged to make a payment, you want it on paper $2, pay at post office $3, pay using debit card 70c. It’s ridiculous that we have to pay to pay.
Also getting away with doing some really dumb or embarrassing s**t, no phones anywhere to capture and upload the moment you slip on dog s**t or walk into the most beautifully cleaned glass doors that are so clean you don’t see them, it’s just you and those who witnessed the painfully embarrassing moment, not millions of people around the world seeing it.
Image source: islippedonmybeans
#26
Clothing and shoes that last more than a year with regular wear
Image source: SpacePirateFromEarth
#27
Getting prescribed opioids when you need them for pain.
‘War on drugs’ zealotry has created a landscape where even terminally ill patients on hospice are routinely denied the mercy of pain management because of ‘addiction risk’. Acute pain patients are being told to take OTCs for severe injuries and major surgeries, and chronic pain patients are being tortured to death. Those precious few doctors with enough compassion to provide quality pain care are persecuted by drug cops at the DEA who know nothing about practicing medicine whatsoever.
It’s all sickening and depressing. Every year I think it couldn’t get worse, and every year I’m proven wildly wrong. And there is zero upside – the addicts who can’t get scrips just switched to fentanyl and are dying in record numbers.
Image source: babarbaby
#28
Affordable Healthcare
Image source: RNGezzus
#29
Family vacations.
I remember going on road trips regularly and even flying once or twice as a kid. Now that I have kids there’s no way I can afford a week-long trip to the Badlands, Grand Canyon, Disney/Universal Studios etc. Best I can do is a day trip to the Dells maybe once a year.
Image source: M5606, Sergey Makashin
#30
Being able to buy a decent standard home on one modest salary.
Image source: LucyVialli
#31
Avoiding people by simply not answering the landline phone, this would make the person calling assume you are just not home. We introverts no longer have this luxury with cell phones, texting, “online” status when logged into a PC so co-workers can IM you, etc.
Image source: Battery6512
#32
Concert Ticket prices
Image source: Quality_Street_1
#33
Right now, I’m struggling just to own a dog.
Decent dog food is insanely expensive right now. Dog parks are not for every dog, but they’re the only space to let your dog play if you don’t have a yard or can’t walk due to the pavement being too hot (providing the park has shaded areas and water access, which is hit or miss). Vets keep raising their prices to keep up with inflation, which is making it so much harder to keep up with basic care. Same with licensing. Quality dog toys are at least $20 and often don’t last as long as I would like (except MonsterK9 and King Chew, very well worth it) for my heavy chewer. Grooming is costly, flea and tick protection is costly, treats are costly, everything about owning a dog is so much more than it used to be, even though canine care wasn’t as quality as it is now. Heck, my first dog didn’t cost this much to care for and he was a frequent flyer at the vet for his health issues
Image source: magicrowantree
#34
Electronics coming with free headphones and chargers
Image source: DougS9
#35
People making friends with one another purely because they enjoy their companionship and not because of networking
Image source: butthenhor
#36
Boredom.
There’s always something to take your attention nowadays. There’s literal lifetimes of entertainment on a single streaming service. Phones. There’s tons of free and cheap games that can just eat hours of your time. Social media. YouTube, etc etc etc.
20-30 years ago, if there was nothing you wanted to watch on TV, you either sat through it or found something else to do. Games had to be bought in stores, so it was more of a process buying them. Once you had them, you committed to it or bought a new game. Sometimes there was just legitimately nothing to do.
You had to get creative with your downtime. Make your own fun.
Image source: CommercialSkirt2311
#37
House ownership and being debt free.
Everyone has accepted debt as parts of their lives.
Image source: 2xfun
#38
Free driver’s education classes taught in all high schools.
Image source: Working-Finger3500, Ron Lach
#39
Doctor coming to visit you at home when you were sick
Image source: DreamsAroundTheWorld
#40
$1.15 average per gallon gas prices in the 90s
Image source: TrailerParkPrepper
#41
Groceries to last you the week, like nothing fancy or bougie, just enough food to just permit grocery shopping once a week
Image source: Seer77887
#42
Working hard to put yourself through college, buy a house, and a truck.
Surviving on entry level wages
Image source: EmployeeRadiant
#43
Being able to go out every Friday after work and being able to afford it
Image source: M-the-music-guy
#44
I remember as a kid, where I live they would allow people to just visit an area of the airport from where they could see the runway and flights take off – they didn’t have to pay anything for it – people would spend hours just looking at flights take off and land ❤️
EDIT: To everyone saying this is still doable in many parts of the world – that’s great, I haven’t been to those parts of the world yet and where I come from one would still need to pay a certain amount to get in and watch from a glass cabin or so. Back in the day, there would just be a gate on the airport ground, a small barricade where you could just stand for hours and nobody would bother.
Image source: homie93, Stephan Saloth
#45
Pork Belly. Used to be a bad cut of meat that was disposed of or given to the poor for dirt cheap prices. Then rich people realized that the poor made it delicious, which then caused prices to skyrocket.
Image source: PhreedomPhighter, Lucas Vinicius Peixoto
#46
Meals on domestic flights
Image source: Acceptable_Stop2361
#47
Apartments. I could get a one bedroom apartment in the state if Wisconsin back in 1997 for under $500. Now that same apartment $1800.
Image source: Icy-Supermarket-6932
#48
PC games coming with physical media, manuals, and “swag” as standard.
The maps, trinkets, toys, and sometimes even novels came with games. It made the game an event. Now people just download games and they sit unplayed in a digital library until the urge to try them comes along.
Image source: Fritzo2162
#49
Photographs on actual photographic paper. I know its still possible but oh so rare.
Image source: audiofankk
#50
Ooh I love this game!
* Having a hot tub
* Having a boat
* Also: having one boat for lake fishing and another for sea fishing
* Having one working parent and one parent staying home with the kids
* A four bedroom house on a lake in the countryside
* Having a ‘game room’ or ‘play room’ in your house
* Having a bar with a pool table in your basement
* A home cooked meal every night
* Also, getting most of your veggies from the garden because one of your parents has enough free time to spend most of the day gardening
* Situations where the parents take random classes in geology or calligraphy or whatever, just to get out of the house because they’re bored and have too much time
* Every adult in the family has their own car, and sometimes one adult has a ‘project car’
* Having “shopping” or “home improvement” as a hobby. Just buying a bunch of new stuff because you can’t think of anything else to do
I grew up lower-middle class in the 90s, and we had all of these things. My dad made $28-32k depending on the year, and my mom stayed home.
The biggest difference was the sheer amount of free time everyone had.
Edit: The biggest thing I personally miss from that era was the culture of taking classes or going to school just because you want to learn something cool. One time my mom took a six month course on how to make those glass signs with neon gas, for no reason other than “because they’re cool”. Another time she learned how to weld, and there was a solid two year period where she and a bunch of her friends from the PTA took finance/economics courses at a community college just for fun. My aunt got a Masters from RISD when she was in her 60s just because she wanted to.
About a year ago I signed up for a course in auto mechanics just because I think cars are cool and wanted to know more about how they work, and the guy teaching the class was *really* weirded out and didn’t let me join because I didn’t want a career as a mechanic. This whole “education is for a job only” thing is really weird to me.
Image source: NightOnFuckMountain
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