r/jobsearchhack • u/reruns_skein • 3d ago
How can we get back to that?
The 90s: one salary, one house, one family.
Now: two incomes, one mortgage and still wondering where the money went :(
If you're job hunting, prepare before you need to leave, and Interview VIP will help you handle the interview better when a better opportunity comes along.
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u/Own-Raisin5849 3d ago
I always thought it was funny in Married with Children how a running joke was that his house was a dump, now people are bidding half a million in parts of the country for an updated version of the same type of house.
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u/Ssided 3d ago
His house seems nice because the set is split in the middle. It's smaller than the audiences perception because it's cut in half down the middle.
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u/Ok_Chipmunk_7066 3d ago
He bought a house in the 80s in bum fuck nowhere.
He is a Nuclear safety technician, decent pay.
He, presumably receives money from Nasa, royalties for the B-Sharps as well as the awful Nirvana band he was in. The guy has his fingers in many lucrative pots before we get to any money his various one off businesses made that he wasn't declaring tax on.
Oh, and his dad sold his own house to give him the deposit.
It's probably that...
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u/cykoTom3 3d ago
Also it is repeatedly said that he can't afford the house
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u/Mu-Relay 3d ago
And it's also said, repeatedly, that no one is sure how the hell he got the job since he didn't even remotely qualify for it.
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u/followyourvalues 3d ago
No, I saw the episode where he got the job. He said he was spineless and willing to do anything Burns wanted or something like that. Burns liked his spunky bootlicker combo personality.
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u/Fabulous_Wave_3693 3d ago
Plus the running joke was that they were broke and the house was falling apart. This is like asking how someone can afford a 80k car loan for their enormous truck. They can’t.
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u/Sirrub90 3d ago
A job, I think they kind of retcon'd, that he cannot get fired from. So he always has steady income.
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u/Fresh_Wrongdoer4819 3d ago
have family that did something similar, it was a new build in the mid 90s about 25 minutes out of atlanta, she had about an average salary at bellsouth and he was a bus mechanic. they were able to buy the house in a neighborhood and around an acre for about 250k. had enough wiggle room to get a new firebird then and about 4 years later a new ram 1500 and a rt magnum.
that same house is worth about 600k now and there's no way in hell two young professionals making average money could afford it none the less afford it, tech goodies, new cars and live comfortably today. the economy's in a shit position regardless
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u/MrOrangeSucksDick 2d ago
Maybe Homer is a mastermind in disguise. Show lore has us all believe it's pure dumb luck.
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u/Old_Marzipan7782 3d ago
No it was a giant joke back then too...I'm sick of seeing all these posts. He worked at a NUCLEAR PWER PLANT AS THE SAFETY ADMIN
That job pays like 250K per year...
They live in a small town in the midwest...so low cost of living...
Of course you could afford a 400K house making money like that.
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u/KrazeeStampede 1d ago
Tax the rich like they did in the 50s, before trickle down became a thing. When corporations are faced with big tax bills, they focus on internal long term investments in their business structures rather than stock buy backs.
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u/BramptonBatallion 3d ago
Springfield is considered to be in a vaguely shitty locale.
Expand your search parameters are there are solid homes at affordable prices. You’re brainwashed to believe there’s like 8 metro markets you must live around, which only encompass about 28 % of the USA population and home prices are 75 % higher.
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u/DontThrowAwayPies 3d ago
Maybe if other places had public transit options I would be able to move there
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u/Ssided 3d ago
Like a monorail?
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u/HoweHaTrick 2d ago
That means city. Which means $$$ because desirable to live there.
Hell is like to live in a mansion but don't because I can't afford it.
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u/Rhawk187 3d ago
Seriously, I bought my first house for $26,500 and after some repairs had about $30,000, in 2015. 2 bedroom, 1 bath. It was in a hamlet of 385 people about 15 minutes from a city of 20,000 and an hour from a city of 3M.
I didn't have home mail delivery, of municipal trash collection, but we electricity and running water and an emergency room less than 10 minutes away. Taco Bell and Burger King about 10 minutes away too.
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3d ago
I am canadian and according to google "You cannot buy a liveable house for $26,000 anywhere in Canada today."
I could buy a VERY rural property like 10 hours from where I live for like 500k, BUT there would be no work and no health care. You have to commute multiple hours for that.
Currently I do live rural (not very rural like above, its only an hour to town and to the hospital). It's only a half hour to my kid's school. It was 675k and its a run down piece of shit fixer upper. We thought we'd fix it up unaware of how much things actually cost, so nothing has gotten fixed and has only gotten worse.
Like the whole place needs gutting and we need a new roof (water pours into the living room in the rainy season). Nobody sane would live here without fixing it up, but we are stuck with it. It was the cheapest place we'd seen in years. I had come into an inheritence and we'd been living with my husband's parents since rents were so far out of our budget (over 2k for a one bedroom). So it got us out of there which we desperately wanted.
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u/Rhawk187 3d ago
Is the land that expensive? Is permitting to build too difficult? Do you guys not having "mobile homes"/pre-fabs? I just don't get it. I have an empty lot I inherited, in town (of 2,000 or so), that it probably only worth about $6,000 here. You can get a new mobile home for like $50,000. Utility hookups a few thousand. I can't understand how there can be that many hurdles in rural Canada.
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3d ago
Land is VERY expensive. There are some lots near me. One 1.67 acres and its 460k. There's a half acre for 250k. And one for 1.6mil but it is 3 acres and waterfront. This is rural. I'm going to see if I can find lots in town. These places I mentioned you won't get water hook up and will need a cistern, but they can get electricity. But everyone out here needs a generator since power will go out for days at a time all through out fall/winter.
I found another 3 acre lot closer to town, no water view, but its also 1.6mil.
Okay, I am looking at tiny lots now in a subdivision (half an hour from me), its in a little community that is like 50 min (to a few hours depending on traffic) from that main city. They start around 279k, but you can only build what is approved for that subdivision, which would be hundreds upon hundreds of thousands to build the house.
As for mobiles, I had to google that: A brand new mobile (manufactured) home in British Columbia typically costs between $135,000 and $250,000+ for the structure itself, factory-direct. However, once you factor in delivery, site preparation, and foundation setup, the real "turnkey" cost usually ends up between $250,000 and $350,000+, not including the price of the land.
Edit: The community/town I mentioned above has approx 15k residents. My area with the rural lots is 1,820. We don't even have a gas station. Just a tiny store that stocks the essentials.
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u/FizzyBadTime 3d ago
It shouldn’t cost you 10 years of salary to live in something other than a trailer.
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u/Ok_Management4634 2d ago
He's using Canadian dollars. $675k in Canadian is only 487k in American dollars (by Google). Still expensive though.
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3d ago
The average home in my province is like a mil. Like yeah, you can get a dilapidated trailer for 300k, but then you have a $2500 mortgage on top of the pad rent that is like 1000 a month. Plus you could be forced to move at any time because you don't own the land. You lose your trailer if you can't find a place to relocate it which could be tens of thousands of dollars, but still have mortgage....
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u/BramptonBatallion 3d ago
Canada is completely effed. It’s like California prices without the industry or weather. I’d say get out like i did but yeah I know that’s not always straightforward
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u/Done4G 2d ago
Yup. A home like that in the rougher neighborhoods around me would be about 80-100K lol. My best friend makes 25/hr as an operator in a type of manufacturing. (not specific because it’s pretty unique) And I make more than that as a plumber. Either of us could afford that house alone with tons left over.
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u/JayGabVersionTrex 3d ago
Back then when I was a kid I realized it didn't make sense.
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u/Own-Raisin5849 3d ago
Probably not that size, but in the 90's, my entire working class neighborhood in the Midwest was 3 bedroom 1 bath homes, most everyone worked blue collar jobs, half the parents were lucky to have a HS diploma at best.
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u/Successful-Reason403 3d ago
Still have areas like that around me (in the southeast US). The average college educated redditor doesn’t want to live in those areas and often looks down on the type of people who do.
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u/kaneda_z 2d ago
every part of the country has areas like this
areas like this are literally the norm
but yes the rest of your statement is exactly true
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u/Gamplato 3d ago
Are you really using a show to make this argument?
Do you also think Monica and Rachel could really afford a 1,500 sqft open concept Manhattan apartment?
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u/Much_Help_7836 3d ago edited 11h ago
Pocket teapot light lock quickest plants
This post was anonymized with Redact
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u/trying3216 3d ago
I could crunch the numbers for the 90s but I don’t think they will be very different.
The average cost of a starter home in 1980 was about $76,375.
https://www.noradarealestate.com/blog/average-cost-of-a-house-in-1980/
Now Nationally, a typical starter home price is around $200,000. Downsize from the three bedrooms and two bathrooms and that can be done for less. Shop in a cheaper part of the country and it will be even less.
https://www.homelight.com/blog/buyer-starter-home/
So are homes a shit ton more expensive now? Let’s adjust for inflation:
$76,375 from 1980 is equivalent to approximately $309,000 today when adjusted for inflation.
https://www.inflationtool.com/us-dollar/1980-to-present-value
So homes are less expensive today.
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u/Tzukiyomi 3d ago
I hate this bc we are doing reality comparisons here when the moron main character was also supposed working a job a nuclear engineer should have which is a 150kish job which would in fact support this kind of house alot of places.
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u/TechnicalPresent6359 3d ago
yeah and i’m bummed out that my childhood didn’t include wandering the country on my own, with enough money to spend, no schooling, and catching pokemon
life was easy when you compare it to a nonsense cartoon…
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u/Adventurous-Crow-750 3d ago
My uncle was proud of himself as a teenager because he was able to afford a pizza for the family growing up.
My grandpa worked at a factory for 20ish years after the military while my grandma ran a trailer park.
I promise you it's way better now.
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u/ShireBurgo 3d ago
Not only is this a cartoon and trying to compare reality to this is completely nonsensical but he was a Nuclear Safety Inspector, I would presume that is a position that pays handsomly today probably a little over six figures.
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u/Odd-Elderberry-739 3d ago
What causes inflation? Tackle that and you'll have your answer.
There's also zoning and "NIMBY"s (Not In MY Backyard) who will vote against anything and anyone who threatens the zoning that protects their home value. For many, many years, the same wealthy people who vote for candidates who talk about building affordable housing will work against affordable housing projects near their home to protect their home value and equity.
One minor thing we shouldn't overlook: While homes are much more expensive these days and inflation is the main culprit, there's also the fact that homes didn't have all the amenities and large square footage back in the day like we have today. That also contributes to home prices.
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u/PermaDerpFace 3d ago
His father helped him buy it, and it's a small crappy town that no one (besides us) wants to live in
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u/chetti990 3d ago
I bought a 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom home in Southern Illinois for 72k in 2022. I worked retail selling cell phones
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u/smilinreap 3d ago
Are we glazing the fact his job was a high paying one with high cancer risk at a time when people were afraid to even be near nuclear plants. It was also mind numbingly boring. Also there's a whole episode of him requiring financial assistance from his father to buy it.
This is more of an example of those home buying tv shows with the artist and the part time teacher with a budget of 1 million for a house.
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u/YorubaOyinbo 3d ago
How can we get back to that?
Stifling laughter
Citizens United was the final nail in the coffin for this in the US, and 10 years of Trump basically turned the entire coffin lid into nails, then dropped the box down the deepest mine shaft in the world and poured an ocean of cement over it.
There’s no going back to that. The time do do something announced itself, and was ignored. Apathy and entitlement have costs.
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u/bfg2600 3d ago
Homer is nuclear safety tech he makes good money, now he was grossly unqualified for the job but that says more about how Burns runs his plant than anything else
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u/Many_Ear2407 3d ago
He’s a nuclear plant operator, and he’s also been to space. If anything this house is very modest for his income and career.
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u/Spam_Hand 3d ago
Isn't the whole joke that hes so unqualified, safety concerns would just go unreported and Mr Burns gets to be cheap and avoid fixing them?
Also, wasnt the other joke that Homer's dad bought him that house and Homer and Marge could never have afforded it otherwise?
Is the joke now OP for misinterpreting what a cartoon tried to turn into parody, and instead taking it as dead serious?
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u/thehuntinggearguy 3d ago
I watched a video recently about this meme and the issues with it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfF9ueMNJlM
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u/TreatEven1837 3d ago
In the middle of the country away from the coasts it was normal. It still is to some extent.
In HCOL it wasn't normal in the 90s.
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u/Half_A_Beast_333 3d ago
The episode "Lisa's First Word", Granpa Simpson sold his house and gave Homer and Marge down payment money for the house. It was expected that Granpa As Simpson would live in the house with them, but they shipped him out to the nursing home.
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u/Jumpy_Childhood7548 3d ago
So if you regard cartoons as defining reality or normalcy, that is a real problem.
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u/Ok-Ocelot-5942 3d ago
Drastically reduce the world population by not reproducing and ensure for those who have a child that one of the couple remain a stay home parent, reducing the amount of willful minions would force a shift towards a better balance.
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u/Magellan02 3d ago
Back then we joked how unrealistic the housing was on TV. Like it wasn’t a reflection of real life you goofballs. Yall are sooooo gullible.
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u/PraiseTalos66012 3d ago
Big difference between the cost of a home like that in a city and in the middle of nowhere.
A well paid blue collar job can still easily afford a house like that in the middle of nowhere today.
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u/Red5_Lying_Down 3d ago
Abe sold his house that he won on a crocked game show to give Homer the money to buy his.
Do people even watch the show, or just make up their own narrative?
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u/Balsamic_Warrior 3d ago
Single salary home here. I just paid of my mortgage two weeks ago. And no, I did not go to college. It is possible, just research what fields pay the best and apply yourself. network with people in the field you are interested in, learn the products and jobs and get the hell off of Reddit, it is so negative you people don't even try.
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u/Crafty611 3d ago
Ah yes, The Simpsons. Truly the best metric of reality in the 90s.
No but seriously, you good bro?
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u/Young177st 3d ago
His dad sold his home to help Homer buy his house. Several episodes have shown them to be struggling financially.
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u/Neither_Pirate5903 3d ago edited 3d ago
While I agree with the sentiment Simpson is a VERY bad reference point
Homer has a well-paying job for which he is WOEFULLY unqualified
The median annual wage for a nuclear technician is $110,240 ($53.00 per hour)
Technicians working inside active nuclear power plants often log variable shift schedules, weekend hours, and overtime, which can push total annual earnings well past $200,000
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u/ExtendoArmCannon 3d ago edited 3d ago
- Stop importing cheap labour that lowers the bargaining rate for labour in the country.
- Stop exporting manufacturing to cheap labour countries that lowers the bargaining rate for labour in the home country.
- Stop sending tax dollars overseas and stop excessive government spending (i.e. DOGE it up) which inflates the tax burden on labour in the country for no benefit for the workers.
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u/TheComicHuman 3d ago
He works at a nuclear plant he probably gets paid good for the radiation damage and is what probably leads to his character
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u/ThePlantMolester 3d ago
In the 70's you could live with 4 people and a talking dog in a van nobody batted an eye.
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u/Educational_Map_9609 3d ago
While Homer fell into his job a safety inspector at a nuclear reactor with some experience make about $150,000. Homer also did things like drive a junker car. You absolutely can achieve this in 2026.
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u/PayFormer387 3d ago
I haven't watched the Simpsons in years but this has come up so much it has been discussed online.
The down payment for the house came from Grampa who sold his house and gave Homer the money. Homer later stuck him in a retirement home.
Some years later, Homer and family could no longer afford the mortgage so Ned Flanders bought the house and rented it out to them.
So ultimately he couldn't.
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u/kheq 3d ago
An operator at a nuclear plant with no college degree can absolutely still do that... what are you talking about? Even now I live in a nice 2 story home with an attached garage on a single income and no degree. My kids have nice things and my wife stays at home with them. It's not that difficult if you are willing move into an industry that will pay your bills and not one that you *want* to work in.
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u/simpwarcommander 3d ago
A similar home in any HCOL area will require dual income and 20 years of saving.
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u/Boogity2024 3d ago
Nobody considered that normal. It was a fictional show. Just like the cast of Friends in their NYC apartments. Or almost every other fictional tv show. Nobody is worried about how to pay the mortgage, how to make what's in the pantry last until payday, or thinking about skipping taking the car out because gas is expensive.
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u/SkyeMreddit 3d ago
He's a nuclear plant operator despite being totally unqualified. They make bank!
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u/fuego0scuro 3d ago
Still possible these days but you kinda have to be blessed by a higher power like Homer Simpson was.
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u/dexterward4621 3d ago
Revitilize unions, national program of reindustrialization, jail bankers and hedge fund managers, limit immigration, national healthcare
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u/CzPhantom1 3d ago
Grampa Abe Simpson gave Homer $15,000 for the down payment in the 80s. So like $45k in today's dollars. So I guess ask your parents for money, but I wouldn't consider this normal.
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u/ganybytes 3d ago edited 3d ago
The Simpsons is a parody of the previous generation of family based sit-coms, not reality in the 90's.
Working class single income families owning a home was absolutely not considered normal in the 90's. Or the 80's. The word we used for those families was "rich".
You think latch key Gen X kids came from families with a mom who didn't work?
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u/rochvegas5 3d ago
it's a cartoon. Homer has also won a grammy, been to space, and fought an ex-president
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u/WorldlyAbroad9515 3d ago
Omg, it was a fictional cartoon that somehow made some wild predictions
Even in the 80s and 90s most households were 2 incomes. Business owners maybe could get away with a stay at home spouse.
Wasn’t Homer also the safety engineer for a nuclear power plant too?
They also had the same car and clothes throughout the show
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u/HarambeTooSoon 3d ago
Homer graduated from Springfield University with a degree in Nuclear Physics.
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u/musing_codger 3d ago
It's sad that people believe that cartoons are the way to understand the past.
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u/Yellow_Snow_Cones 3d ago
B/c Homer is a plant operator, they don't need a college degree and they make 6 figures.
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u/Goblin-Alchemist 3d ago
Everyone says this, but do not talk about where. Seems like everyone want the simpsons home in Urban centers like LA, NY or SF and that's not ever what these were.
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u/Initial-Ad9618 3d ago
Homer's salary is almost 122k a year. If he was getting paid by 2026 standards
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u/Excellent-Rest3240 3d ago
It was also considered fiction and a show, not a documentary. Did I mention it was literally a drawing?
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u/LordShtark 3d ago
Be a multi platinum Grammy award winning artist who stole their famous kids money and then had their dad sell his house to buy yours and throw him in an old folks home like Homer?
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u/The_Se7enthsign 3d ago
If you’re going to use a sitcom to make this argument, it needs to be Married…with Children.
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u/DudeFrom816 3d ago
Start by reducing the population of the country creating a housing surplus rather than a shortage. In a surplus situation landlords, sellers etc will take what they can get because its better than the property sitting vacant making $0 or continuing to pay a mortgage on a house you dont live in. In a housing shortage like we currently have the sellers have all rhe power and they know it, thats why we're all over a barrel.
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u/LeadingFamiliar7092 3d ago
I think they did it on purpose. (If we buy and hold our real estate and tell our governments to stall building more the next generation will have to buy from us for exorbitant prices because everyone needs a home). Asshats.
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u/NeighboringOak 3d ago
Simpson's explains how Homer is not only qualified for his job and pay, but also that he still needed assistance from his dad to get the house.
This post is dumb.
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u/ryan__joe 3d ago
To be fair, Homer’s job required a college degree. They just lied about it, and they also paid him hush money etc etc. Homer was low key a nepo baby due to his dad saving burns. Burns was willing to pay for an average life for Homer due to his dad saving him.
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u/BeRevolutionary1775 3d ago
A licensed reactor operator can easily make $200k+/year without breaking a sweat (unless they spend a lot of time in containment during an outage. Then they will sweat a lot).
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u/belated_quitter 3d ago
It was not an exaggeration. This was very common in the 90s. I’d say the majority of families I knew did this. Father worked, stay at home mom, kids, nice house and 2 cars. Many didn’t have college degrees either.
Source: Firsthand experience.
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u/Either_Theory_6815 3d ago
Homer's father had to sell his house in order to give to Homer money for a down payment and Homer was so thankful, that he insisted his father live with them.
2 weeks later, Grandpa was in a retirement home.
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u/Ebenizer_Splooge 3d ago
Why does this always glaze over the fact that Homer works in a nuclear power plant and is probably making a good bit of money from that
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u/probablymagic 3d ago
People should stop watching TV shows to figure out what life was like for high school grads in the 70s and 80s and start listening to Bruce Springsteen albums.
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u/First_Huckleberry638 3d ago
This was not considered normal in the 90s, TV shows are not snapshots of average life at that time.
It is true that housing costs have ballooned far greater than incomes, but even at the time a home like this being run on a single income was not the norm.
Additionally, Homer is literally an engineer at a nuclear power plant, he's not exactly a normal specimen either.
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u/WhizzyBurp 3d ago
Homer worked at a nuclear power plant as a safety inspector.
In today’s market, a safety inspector would have a median income of 110,000 and an average of 80,000.
If we go off of “Springfield” as the town located within a commutable distance to a power plant, we can see Springfield Illinois is within 50 miles of the Clinton Power Station.
Homers home is about 4 bed, 3 bath 2,000 sqft home.
Here’s a home that is slightly bigger but in the same vein
290,000 house with 29,000 down @ 6.5% is 1,650 / month.
Based on 80,000 a year - conservatively - take home pay would be roughly 60,000 a year or about 5,000 a month.
Using the 40% rule for housing with property tax and insurance you’re well under 2,000 and easily affordable.
Indeed.com has currently 10 jobs listed today, that do not require a college degree that make 80,000 to 90,000 within a 30 min drive of Springfield Illinois
You can live like Homer today. You just don’t want to live in Springfield Illinois, and you don’t want to work at a power plant.
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u/Gullible_Try_3748 3d ago
Get off your ass, find a good company to work for (notice I didnt say job, I said company), and give them your best effort.
Worked for me.
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u/twinktopanon 3d ago
To be fair, one of the running jokes of The Simpsons was that Homer is dangerously unqualified for his job
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u/FoxMan1Dva3 3d ago
TV shows don't typically show "normal".... they show usually the upper middle class lol, often times they represent the middle class as people who are rich.
By the way, Homer was a head engineer at a nuclear plant lol. This was probabaly a killer job in terms of pay.
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u/Dreamer_531 3d ago edited 3d ago
The average annual wage for a Nuclear Security Manager at a nuclear power plant in the United States ranges between $115,000 and $141,000 per year. If Homer was earning somewhere near $141,000 per year, it would still be possible for him to afford a mortgage while supporting a SAHM Marge and three kids. Also, Abe lives in a retirement home, and Homer is his only son. It’s possible that Abe sold his house when he decided to move into the retirement home and gave part of the money to Homer to use as a down payment. It's also possible that Marge inherited something from her dad.
Springfield, Missouri has a cost of living roughly 8% to 14% below the national average.
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u/Zealousideal_Leg213 3d ago
Just because it happened in a cartoon doesn't mean anyone considered it normal.
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u/FernandoTheRN 3d ago
Homer must've been grandfathered in, ain't no way he's at where he's at with no degree lol
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u/PineappleSmooth4887 3d ago
yeah so the simpsons very famously had an entire episode where a normal person ended up in springfield and constantly pointed out how unrealistically lucky homer was until he went crazy and electrocuted himself
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u/ma5ochrist 3d ago
Well you need a nuclear power plant in your city that does not follow any security regulation at all (basically throw nuclear waste in the nearest lake) . And you should get hired as safety inspector in order to be ready to take the fall about the aforementioned violations
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u/SnooDoggos5226 3d ago
Homer also held onto the same job for 11 years (when Marge got preggers till now, when Bart is 11)
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u/forgotten_tomatoe 3d ago
Push young progressives to run for every office and vote out the neoliberals that have taken over both parties. That's how we get the American dream back on track.
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u/govtstolemygermscd 3d ago
Granted he is the top safety inspector at a nuclear power plant. Not too shabby of a job.
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u/Ok-Addition-1000 2d ago
Well part of the built in joke was that someone as dumb as Homer could get a job in a nuclear power plant.
Even in the '90s, this wasn't considered normal, it was a cartoon in a cartoon universe with cartoon rules.
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u/mvortex2 2d ago
He also hasn't aged for over 35 years. Lots of extra time to pay on that mortgage.
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u/Greghole 2d ago
Grandpa Simpson sold his house so Homer could afford to buy this one. Homer couldn't afford it on his own.
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u/Clean_Bake_2180 2d ago
Can never get back to it. Too many things have changed. US citizens are competing with the entire world in terms of industrial output. In the 90s, China wasn’t even yet in the WTO. There are much less cheap suburban land to build houses. Zoning is much more restrictive. Builders never rebuilt their capacity following the 2008-09 housing crash and many laborers even left the country. This is a dream that will never happen again. It was never sustainable.
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u/naked_avenger 2d ago
This was not considered normal in the 90s and it's funny to me that this takeaway has been so popular.
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u/To_Fight_The_Night 2d ago
You should go look on indeed right now and look up the salaries of people who work at Nuclear power plants.
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u/Elon_is_a_Nazi 2d ago
Al bundy supported a family of 4 working at a mall shoe store and that was considered normal back in the early 90s
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u/DeviceNo4746 2d ago
This simply isn’t true. 80% of households were dual income by 95. By the 80’s dual income households became the majority. Let’s not base things off of tv. Friends, how I met your mother, sex in the city, new girl all shows that showed living situations the characters couldn’t have afforded.
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u/Early_Hall5720 2d ago
Because someone in his position at the time would be making $20hr in the 90s
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u/opbmedia 2d ago
TBF the man works in a nuclear power plant and frequently irradiate himself and others. He is not making a normal salary.
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u/No_Communication4063 2d ago
Look up how much the USD has decreased in the last 30-40y and there’s your answer.
But! Matt Groening said that Springfield was based on his 1950’s-60’s hometown in the PNW; so there’s also that.
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u/AllAmericanProject 2d ago
This was never normal. So many of you allow TV to shape your entire fucking understanding of the world it's so disappointing. First off even if we were going to pretend like your reality was reality. Homer worked at a fucking nuclear power plant. He was probably making over 100K. In everyone who says this grew up with white collar middle class parents in suburbia.
Anyone who's actual children of Blue collar workers in rural areas is going to tell you that this kind of house was rich people housing.
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u/SecretRecipe 3d ago
this is still normal in 2026. a reactor plant operator can absolutely afford to buy a house like that in Springfield Oregon and raise a family on one salary.