My aunt started working as a maid at the Watergate after graduating HS & bought a home in Arlington

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:When I was growing up in the 70s and 80s, Bethesda was full of families with a dad who was a fed. Three maybe four bedrooms upstairs. If you were lucky, a little tv room addition off the side and your parents had their own bathroom.

yes I think about this so often! Grew up in Bethesda in the late 70s through 80s. Back then, there were many single income families with 3-4 kids. A fed salary could buy a 3-4 bedroom house, take 2 modest vacations a year, and send all the kids to college.

Those were the days!

Now you have to be rich to be able to do all those things, especially the college for 3-4 kids part.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When I was growing up in the 70s and 80s, Bethesda was full of families with a dad who was a fed. Three maybe four bedrooms upstairs. If you were lucky, a little tv room addition off the side and your parents had their own bathroom.

yes I think about this so often! Grew up in Bethesda in the late 70s through 80s. Back then, there were many single income families with 3-4 kids. A fed salary could buy a 3-4 bedroom house, take 2 modest vacations a year, and send all the kids to college.

Those were the days!

Now you have to be rich to be able to do all those things, especially the college for 3-4 kids part.

Do you remember the Shakey's restaurant across the street from the Bethesda metrorail station?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My family is much like the maid in the OP. Middle-school educations, came to US in the early 1970s. All bought houses throughout the 1970s and 1980s, are now multi-home owning landlords. Here is how they did it.
1. They WORKED. I don't mean just a single job. Watergate maid was likely doing housekeeping work for other families who (key point) paid her under the table. My family was in various businesses - restaurant, construction, painting. The key thing is that they all ran cash businesses and they worked from 7am to 11pm, 6 days a week.
2. They spent VERY LITTLE MONEY. Think beans and rice, heat set to frozen, cold water showers. No cable TV, no dinners out, no health insurance and no doctors visits unless you were literally dying. Kids activities? LOL. Kids activities was having us join them at their jobs.

Housing now is more expensive relative to wages, yes. But you are still seeing immigrant families buying property, even in many close-in neighborhoods. This is how they do it. They live very spartan existences and work crazy hours. My 9-5 work life is a true luxury. My parents worked their *sses off so that I can experience it!

I agree. I came to US in 2000 as an Au-pair. Long story short, I stayed in US, studies and worked hard, got married to an American, and became eventually US citizen. I live in a house worth about $950000 that will be paid off this year. Yes! And that's working on my and my spouse's combined annual salary of $150000. I grew up without any BS like eating out, nail salons, spas, vacations, kids activities etc. I can live spartan life. I also like luxuries purchases from time to time, don't get me wrong; but am very careful overall with any purchases. I guess, I don't waste money on an everyday basis like most Americans.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My family is much like the maid in the OP. Middle-school educations, came to US in the early 1970s. All bought houses throughout the 1970s and 1980s, are now multi-home owning landlords. Here is how they did it.
1. They WORKED. I don't mean just a single job. Watergate maid was likely doing housekeeping work for other families who (key point) paid her under the table. My family was in various businesses - restaurant, construction, painting. The key thing is that they all ran cash businesses and they worked from 7am to 11pm, 6 days a week.
2. They spent VERY LITTLE MONEY. Think beans and rice, heat set to frozen, cold water showers. No cable TV, no dinners out, no health insurance and no doctors visits unless you were literally dying. Kids activities? LOL. Kids activities was having us join them at their jobs.

Housing now is more expensive relative to wages, yes. But you are still seeing immigrant families buying property, even in many close-in neighborhoods. This is how they do it. They live very spartan existences and work crazy hours. My 9-5 work life is a true luxury. My parents worked their *sses off so that I can experience it!

I agree. I came to US in 2000 as an Au-pair. Long story short, I stayed in US, studies and worked hard, got married to an American, and became eventually US citizen. I live in a house worth about $950000 that will be paid off this year. Yes! And that's working on my and my spouse's combined annual salary of $150000. I grew up without any BS like eating out, nail salons, spas, vacations, kids activities etc. I can live spartan life. I also like luxuries purchases from time to time, don't get me wrong; but am very careful overall with any purchases. I guess, I don't waste money on an everyday basis like most Americans.

It amazes me that people can tell stories like this and actually believe that it was cutting coupons that allowed them to own a million dollar house and not marrying someone with a much larger income and having the luck to be born at a time where that house that costs $950,000 today probably cost $400K or less. It's like those people who credit God with curing their cancer and not their Oncologist or the scientists who spent millions of man hours and billions of dollars coming up with state of the art therapies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When I was growing up in the 70s and 80s, Bethesda was full of families with a dad who was a fed. Three maybe four bedrooms upstairs. If you were lucky, a little tv room addition off the side and your parents had their own bathroom.

yes I think about this so often! Grew up in Bethesda in the late 70s through 80s. Back then, there were many single income families with 3-4 kids. A fed salary could buy a 3-4 bedroom house, take 2 modest vacations a year, and send all the kids to college.

Those were the days!

Now you have to be rich to be able to do all those things, especially the college for 3-4 kids part.

Do you remember the Shakey's restaurant across the street from the Bethesda metrorail station?

NP. I certainly remember the Shakey's: it was the BOMB! Hot Shoppes wasn't quite so much my taste. Chesapeake Bay Seafood house seemed great, too.

Yeah, as another 70s and 80s denizen of Bethesda, it's odd thinking how many single mothers could afford it. And a lot of those women were still doing 'women's work': nursing, nonprofits, etc. There still were big time lawyers and politicians and lots of people who went on to make MUCHO bucks. But it wasn't the current monoculture.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My family is much like the maid in the OP. Middle-school educations, came to US in the early 1970s. All bought houses throughout the 1970s and 1980s, are now multi-home owning landlords. Here is how they did it.
1. They WORKED. I don't mean just a single job. Watergate maid was likely doing housekeeping work for other families who (key point) paid her under the table. My family was in various businesses - restaurant, construction, painting. The key thing is that they all ran cash businesses and they worked from 7am to 11pm, 6 days a week.
2. They spent VERY LITTLE MONEY. Think beans and rice, heat set to frozen, cold water showers. No cable TV, no dinners out, no health insurance and no doctors visits unless you were literally dying. Kids activities? LOL. Kids activities was having us join them at their jobs.

Housing now is more expensive relative to wages, yes. But you are still seeing immigrant families buying property, even in many close-in neighborhoods. This is how they do it. They live very spartan existences and work crazy hours. My 9-5 work life is a true luxury. My parents worked their *sses off so that I can experience it!

I agree. I came to US in 2000 as an Au-pair. Long story short, I stayed in US, studies and worked hard, got married to an American, and became eventually US citizen. I live in a house worth about $950000 that will be paid off this year. Yes! And that's working on my and my spouse's combined annual salary of $150000. I grew up without any BS like eating out, nail salons, spas, vacations, kids activities etc. I can live spartan life. I also like luxuries purchases from time to time, don't get me wrong; but am very careful overall with any purchases. I guess, I don't waste money on an everyday basis like most Americans.

So in other words you hit the working class immigrant jackpot and married a well to do American lad

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My family is much like the maid in the OP. Middle-school educations, came to US in the early 1970s. All bought houses throughout the 1970s and 1980s, are now multi-home owning landlords. Here is how they did it.
1. They WORKED. I don't mean just a single job. Watergate maid was likely doing housekeeping work for other families who (key point) paid her under the table. My family was in various businesses - restaurant, construction, painting. The key thing is that they all ran cash businesses and they worked from 7am to 11pm, 6 days a week.
2. They spent VERY LITTLE MONEY. Think beans and rice, heat set to frozen, cold water showers. No cable TV, no dinners out, no health insurance and no doctors visits unless you were literally dying. Kids activities? LOL. Kids activities was having us join them at their jobs.

Housing now is more expensive relative to wages, yes. But you are still seeing immigrant families buying property, even in many close-in neighborhoods. This is how they do it. They live very spartan existences and work crazy hours. My 9-5 work life is a true luxury. My parents worked their *sses off so that I can experience it!

I agree. I came to US in 2000 as an Au-pair. Long story short, I stayed in US, studies and worked hard, got married to an American, and became eventually US citizen. I live in a house worth about $950000 that will be paid off this year. Yes! And that's working on my and my spouse's combined annual salary of $150000. I grew up without any BS like eating out, nail salons, spas, vacations, kids activities etc. I can live spartan life. I also like luxuries purchases from time to time, don't get me wrong; but am very careful overall with any purchases. I guess, I don't waste money on an everyday basis like most Americans.

It amazes me that people can tell stories like this and actually believe that it was cutting coupons that allowed them to own a million dollar house and not marrying someone with a much larger income and having the luck to be born at a time where that house that costs $950,000 today probably cost $400K or less. It's like those people who credit God with curing their cancer and not their Oncologist or the scientists who spent millions of man hours and billions of dollars coming up with state of the art therapies.

Agreed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When I was growing up in the 70s and 80s, Bethesda was full of families with a dad who was a fed. Three maybe four bedrooms upstairs. If you were lucky, a little tv room addition off the side and your parents had their own bathroom.

yes I think about this so often! Grew up in Bethesda in the late 70s through 80s. Back then, there were many single income families with 3-4 kids. A fed salary could buy a 3-4 bedroom house, take 2 modest vacations a year, and send all the kids to college.

Those were the days!

Now you have to be rich to be able to do all those things, especially the college for 3-4 kids part.

Do you remember the Shakey's restaurant across the street from the Bethesda metrorail station?

NP. I certainly remember the Shakey's: it was the BOMB! Hot Shoppes wasn't quite so much my taste. Chesapeake Bay Seafood house seemed great, too.

Yeah, as another 70s and 80s denizen of Bethesda, it's odd thinking how many single mothers could afford it. And a lot of those women were still doing 'women's work': nursing, nonprofits, etc. There still were big time lawyers and politicians and lots of people who went on to make MUCHO bucks. But it wasn't the current monoculture.

Do you remember the convenience store directly across the street?

It was always full of young shady looking individuals who probably went on to inherit their parent's Bethesda houses.

[Anonymous]

Even in 2017 Bethesda was sketchy. Bums piled up sleeping by metro entrance when it closed every night, the low income senior housing ny the HS, sketchy Uber drivers hanging out at 7/11 all hours of the night and the toothless customers at tastee diner. Even BMCC HS has some folks from the hood coming from who knows where everyday. Add in major roads cutting through town and traffic what a piece of crap location.

Bethesda is a mix of yuppie wannabes, low income housing and office buildings and soulless fake chain restaurants

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My family is much like the maid in the OP. Middle-school educations, came to US in the early 1970s. All bought houses throughout the 1970s and 1980s, are now multi-home owning landlords. Here is how they did it.
1. They WORKED. I don't mean just a single job. Watergate maid was likely doing housekeeping work for other families who (key point) paid her under the table. My family was in various businesses - restaurant, construction, painting. The key thing is that they all ran cash businesses and they worked from 7am to 11pm, 6 days a week.
2. They spent VERY LITTLE MONEY. Think beans and rice, heat set to frozen, cold water showers. No cable TV, no dinners out, no health insurance and no doctors visits unless you were literally dying. Kids activities? LOL. Kids activities was having us join them at their jobs.

Housing now is more expensive relative to wages, yes. But you are still seeing immigrant families buying property, even in many close-in neighborhoods. This is how they do it. They live very spartan existences and work crazy hours. My 9-5 work life is a true luxury. My parents worked their *sses off so that I can experience it!

I agree. I came to US in 2000 as an Au-pair. Long story short, I stayed in US, studies and worked hard, got married to an American, and became eventually US citizen. I live in a house worth about $950000 that will be paid off this year. Yes! And that's working on my and my spouse's combined annual salary of $150000. I grew up without any BS like eating out, nail salons, spas, vacations, kids activities etc. I can live spartan life. I also like luxuries purchases from time to time, don't get me wrong; but am very careful overall with any purchases. I guess, I don't waste money on an everyday basis like most Americans.

Did you read the part about no health insurance/doctors, and double shifts 6 days a week? Under the table work and creative accounting? I forgot to mention that they never paid for daycare - daycare was a (barely) older cousin or tagging along at their jobs (you can do that in many manual labor/ blue collar situations). They lived dangerously in order to get ahead. The major reasons (usually white) americans give for not being able to afford housing are: healthcare costs, education costs, childcare costs. They didn't have their own education costs - most of my family didn't even go to high school. They weren't paying for health care, they just prayed no one got sick or hurt. People who needed treatment would sometimes go back to their home country to get it because that was cheaper than paying for insurance/treatment in the US. Other than my mandatory shots for school, I NEVER went to the doctor or dentist until I was 21 and had my own health insurance. I know that now US-born children of low-income people can get WIC/medicaid. If that was available back then, my family was unaware.

It amazes me that people can tell stories like this and actually believe that it was cutting coupons that allowed them to own a million dollar house and not marrying someone with a much larger income and having the luck to be born at a time where that house that costs $950,000 today probably cost $400K or less. It's like those people who credit God with curing their cancer and not their Oncologist or the scientists who spent millions of man hours and billions of dollars coming up with state of the art therapies.

People want to know how it was possible and I'm telling you how it was and how it still is for many immigrants. You are right, it isn't coupon clipping that brings you out of poverty -- it is doing things that most native borns would never tolerate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Even in 2017 Bethesda was sketchy. Bums piled up sleeping by metro entrance when it closed every night, the low income senior housing ny the HS, sketchy Uber drivers hanging out at 7/11 all hours of the night and the toothless customers at tastee diner. Even BMCC HS has some folks from the hood coming from who knows where everyday. Add in major roads cutting through town and traffic what a piece of crap location.

Bethesda is a mix of yuppie wannabes, low income housing and office buildings and soulless fake chain restaurants

C- troll game above!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:When I was growing up in the 70s and 80s, Bethesda was full of families with a dad who was a fed. Three maybe four bedrooms upstairs. If you were lucky, a little tv room addition off the side and your parents had their own bathroom.

yes I think about this so often! Grew up in Bethesda in the late 70s through 80s. Back then, there were many single income families with 3-4 kids. A fed salary could buy a 3-4 bedroom house, take 2 modest vacations a year, and send all the kids to college.

Those were the days!

Now you have to be rich to be able to do all those things, especially the college for 3-4 kids part.

Do you remember the Shakey's restaurant across the street from the Bethesda metrorail station?

NP. I certainly remember the Shakey's: it was the BOMB! Hot Shoppes wasn't quite so much my taste. Chesapeake Bay Seafood house seemed great, too.

Yeah, as another 70s and 80s denizen of Bethesda, it's odd thinking how many single mothers could afford it. And a lot of those women were still doing 'women's work': nursing, nonprofits, etc. There still were big time lawyers and politicians and lots of people who went on to make MUCHO bucks. But it wasn't the current monoculture.

Do you remember the convenience store directly across the street?

It was always full of young shady looking individuals who probably went on to inherit their parent's Bethesda houses.

Are you talking about the old school Dart Drug on E-W HW?

[Anonymous]

In college I lived in a pretty rich area but we had a lot of pockets of middle class folks and folks with HS degrees, with kids and a single family homes

My town had three credit card and bank processing operations centers all 24 hours a day. Citigroup, Barclays and Mastercard.

I worked the 8- 4 shift in summer and during school the 4pm to midnight shift. We allowed folks to do a 45 minute lunch so most folks left at 3:45 pm or 11:45 pm.

We actually had a guy who worked at Master card 8-4 and Citi 4-12. Two jobs!!! I recall he slept in his van at lunch and breaks.

Buy more common we had husband and wife teams. I recall this man I worked with nice guy, lived in a very nice area, but only HS degree.

He worked 8 to 3:45 pm with me. Him and wife would get their two kids on bus by 730 am and wife would drop him off at work, she go home take a nap, get lunch ready next day, get dinner going, she gets kid off bus at 3pm.

She then would drive back to office with kids to go to work as she started at 4pm, husband would come out, get in car, drive kids home, help them with home work, get dinner on table, clean up, get kids to bed, take a nap go pick up wife at midnight while kids in bed.

Would anyone do that today? But think about it bother were HS educated, had their own house in a nice neighborhood.

They had one car, no childcare. always a parent home with kid. Then lived like ten minutes from office. To make things better one worked with me at Master cards and other at Citigroup in office next to us. So they had two companies benefits to choose from and less chance of getting laid off same time.

People today would nevcer do taht.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There must have been some pretty well paid maids back in the 70s. Federal minimum wage in 1973 was $1.60/hour and a basic house in Arlington cost at least $40,000. Maybe if you go back to the Roosevelt years it was different but in my lifetime and my parents' lifetimes real estate in the DC area was never really cheap. The people who like to brag about their amazing real estate deals usually bought houses in former no-go zones like Logan Circle.

People worked multiple jobs back then unlike today’s lazybones. My father in law I recall got married at 21 to a 19 year old. She spoke no English he only HS degree.

They moved in as tenant upstairs elderly women with very cheap rent in return fur doing all maint on house, mowing, snow shoveling, groceries and lived in the upstairs for 7 years while saving. He worked two jobs and wife also was a seamstress. After 7 years of saving they bought a house with two “boarders” meaning two guys lived there in bedrooms and meals were included it so between that rent and dads two jobs they were able after six more years take over while house when third kid was burn.

Today that starter house is worth $650k they still have it. It is a lot cheaper today. I hardly recall folks having to do what they did.

Stuff like this is why so many kids ended getting molested. I’d rather live in an apartment than have two random unmarried men living in my house.

I know people who did well, built brand new houses during the depression (while others were losing their house) - and they did not have any family or strangers living with them, ever. It depends what part of the U.S. and what background - not everyone did that. I know how prevalant presumptions are around here.

[Anonymous]

My then gf and I bought a brick, single family home in Del Ray in 1998 just out of college. I was making 26,000 and she was making 35,000.

One of the luckiest things I ever did. And we only did it because we realized our mortgage would only be $150 more than our rent.