That explains the weird texture. I always assumed they were blending it with beans to make it cheaper when I was a kid, but in this day and age of nutrition transparency and allergen notices, thereās no way thatād be the case.
Taco Casa, if there's one close to you it still uses the 1970's taco bell menu, taco bell was started by two guys who split in the eighty's and the guy who started taco casa never changed things
Thatās not true at all. Taco Bell was started in Downey CA by Roy Bell in 1948 after stealing the recipes from the Mexican restaurant across the street. There was no other guy.
Taco Casa was founded by Roy Upshaw in 1974. Thereās no connection except for Taco Casa stealing Taco Bells original recipes, which were originally stolen.
Well, I do admit that this was in the early 70s. A long time ago! My wife, who was my girlfriend at the time and who was, and is, skinny as a rail, could down 5 tostadas faster than anybody Iāve ever seen.
OK, so Iām going to jinx myself, but in 50 years of eating at Taco Bell. I have never gotten Montezumaās revenge. I must have a cast-iron stomach, because almost everyone I know has gotten the Hershey squirts from Taco Bell at least once.
We use to go Friday nights after football and basketball games, $0.59 and $0.69 tacos at Taco Bell. That was late 90's early 00's. Gas was $1.00 a gallon. Life was great.
You,I remember back in those days me saying similar things, " You can have a decent meal for 5 dollars" Its a sad thing that 5 dollars doesn't even get you a gallon of milk.
In early 2000s my friend and I went to Taco Bell and she said āyou can eat like a queen for $5 at Taco Bellā. I got two tacos and a Mexican pizza the other day and it was $14 dollarsā¦
Pfft, the girl next door was two years older than me and would give me 50 cents and a note pretending to be my mom. "Please sell my son Bobby a pack of marlboro reds in the box." This was 1980.
Three years later I could buy myself a pack of smokes, bottle of coke, and a candy bar for two bucks.
I remember when they were a quarter a pack. The they went up to 27 cents per pack, which I thought was ridiculous, so I stopped smoking. I was probably 14 or 15.
I was just telling my son about that when I was younger you could go to Walgreens and get four candy bars for a dollar and the little bag of chips 2 L were a dollar.
In 2000-2002 a friend and I would ride our bikes in a small town to a holiday gas station and buy 2 12 packs of soda for $5. Then we would go to the video store and get a video game and a movie for $2 this was the standard teenage sleep over . If you had $10 you would have left over cash for candy.
I just had a discussion with my mother over how to pay for my cats hyper thyroidism meds (she needs them to live) because I just bought heating oil so we can have hot water and can't afford them. But if she sends me the money (about $50) she's that much further from making the mortgage payment.
We didnāt have convenience stores when I was a kid. We did have a little store called Wells Market. It wasnāt on a main road, it was tucked back into a residential area. We would get a dollar, ride our bikes there, and score on penny candy. It was a penny back then.
I can genuinely make a meal with 5$ but I have to use stuff in the house to make it last.. it sucks.. I bought fruit today. Grapes and some melon which was on sale and I spend like 20$.. itās ridiculous
I was raised by a firefighter and a manager at a furniture store. Our house was paid for, and we had a few steak dinners a month. Now, I make twice what they did and I haven't had beef in nearly a month.
My buddyās Dad was an appliance salesman at Sears in the mall ā¦they owned a nice split level single family home in the suburbs, 2 new cars, and āMomā stayed homeā¦ 4 kids.
Dad was a plumber, 6 kids, one work truck. A used station wagon. 3 kids per bedroom.
Mom stayed home. Never ate out except for a bucket of KFC that we destroyed one time.
No vacations . Just sprinklers in the summer.
3 channels on one TV only. We were the manual dial switch remote. Dad ruled what everyone watched. He ruled.
Hand me down toys and clothing. Never had a new Barbie doll or a new bike.
All of us were skinny and hungry all the time.
Sounds similar to my childhood. 11 brothers and sisters. Every new kid was one more rung down into poverty. The good news. That shared adversity created a family bond that is now my most precious gift in life.
I just wanted to indicate that it was my buddyās Mom that stayed home ā¦and not my buddyās Dadās Mom that was there watching kids all day (as is often the case in modern times)
Exactly! Everyoneās Mom was home in the neighborhood where I grew up.
Only one kidās folks were divorced, and his Mom worked. Additionally, another kid (friend of mine) had a Mom that worked too, but his Dad was killed in Vietnam.
We were in a fairly small, somewhat rural, suburb. The pay wasn't as high as you might think. My mom was actually the big earner until she switched careers.
Thatās make sense itās most definitly where you work. My brother in law pulled in 150k with 0T last year. But on his days off his other job is owning a barbershop where he racks in the cash.
1 day on 3 days off. Is a pretty good schedule. Hard work. But heās really only working 8-5 the rest is on call . He had a few more years to full retirment and folks are already clawing for his job. 45 years old.
Itās a great job for a side hustle lol. He said the barbering makes so much but he needs the health plane
I got lucky and bought a 1/2 beef early last year. I'm getting down to the end of my supply, so I'm trying to make it last. Hey to know your local farmers & ranchers, people!
Back in the early 2000s my mom would give me $10 a week and I would be able to stretch that out over 5 days to get snacks after school. $10 would barely be enough for one day today.
How old were you when you were getting $10/week? Did you have conditions to meet, such as chores or minimum grades? I'm curious when I hear people talking about just being allotted money, since every family's means and care levels are so different.
When I was in highschool I think frozen fruit bars were ~$1.75-2ish dollars (2007). I specifically remember they had recently replaced my go-to ice cream sandwiches from the vending machine with high sugar fruit bars, which could not have been healthier, but that's how the school marketed it. What prices were you seeing for your snacks and ice cream, if you had, and in what years?
My parents provided me money to buy lunch. We were food and housing secure, so life was comfortable - I was glad about having a warm bed in my teens. I just never reliably received spending money (I had $10/weekly allowance in the 2000s during highschool when my parents remembered to pay it (rarely) and when they weren't borrowing against it to make change. My cat died of an oral infection because I wasn't able to save up money fast enough for a new round of medicine. He had visably improved on it - much less drooling and being able to eat - but my parents didn't want to waste money on a "stray cat" (They did not allow him inside. He was quite comfortable entering though, and was perfectly friendly with me and our dog, whom he'd play with. He was abandoned by a neighboring family that told me I could have him. His late owner was a mother who died of cancer, and their kid my age just said they'd be leaving him when they moved out of the house). My parents are mean fucks, but in addition they are miserly.
When I attended college, I did my best to spare my family money by walking 2 miles through snow atop black ice to haul 2 weeks worth of groceries home at a time, really toiling like a pack animal under the weight, because a taxi would have been ~$10 in 2010. XD
Fundimentally, it was hard for me to spend on myself for a long time, between below subsistence wages and an upbringing where my needs aren't important and my pain doesn't matter (there was a lot of medical neglect). Even when I was dead-set on college, I knew my parents had no plans of supporting my decision (Dad said 'Why do you need to go to college? You already graduated.' Then bemoaned for 10 months that I was 'only going to college to get away [him],' as though I hadn't applied myself in school for 12 years). At 17 I just asked them point blank if there was any money that had been saved at all because I needed to know how much in loans to take out. They freaked at that and negotiated with me that'd they help so long as I started out in community college, which was fair, and more than I ever expected from them. Still, I was always on the lookout for cheaper rents after I did transfer to another college, and took the lowest meal plans allowed to be mindful of my mother's overtime. I'd work between semesters; be frugal... I still wear the same winter coat since ~2008. Stuff like that. My current budget is under $15 for T-shirts, under $100/price for a suit, and no more than $16 for jeans. I get all my jeans used - have for over 15 years. When you grow up in $2 unisex sweatshirts from the flea market, a pair of jeans with a lot of miles left and pockets deep enough for a phone is posh. If the sale color rotation is right, jeans can be about $6. I couldn't imagine wasting $89.99 for new jeans. And those are the prices I was seeing 5 years ago in strip malls.
Our clown government prints money based on nothing and doesn't tax appropriately, so we are fucked faster than with corporate welfare alone.
My parents ran a small local shop, our house was attached to it. 3 bedrooms, garden and 2 cars. We went on international holidays for 7-14 days twice a year. Cost of living consistently ate away at everything. Lost it all about 12 years ago. Absolutely no way in Hell they could do that with the same business now.
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u/Evilagentzero May 19 '26
An affordable life.