I remember hearing women in the late 80's saying make sure to have your own name on bills during marriage. These women had learned the hard way that if all of the bills are in your husband's name, you have no credit after divorce.
My mother was widowed in 1973. She was 38 with two teenagers. She had a masters degree and tenure. When she applied to get a shell oil card, Shell told her that they didn’t give credit to women. The point was that they *could* legally turn her down just for being female. That doesn’t mean women didn’t get credit cards but they could be turned down. Mom was always loyal to Sears because they gave her credit and she was loyal ever since.
When we first tried to get a credit card in 1970, we were refused because my husband was in Vietnam and they considered him a "bad risk". In 1975 when we bought our first home, my income wasn't even permitted to be shown on the loan papers. I remember the loan officer laughing and saying 'that wasn't necessary'. Ironically, I had a steady job that I had been at for five years while my husband was in construction and worked about eight months a year due to the ups and downs of the industry and weather. But he was considered 'more stable'.
They told my husband to get letters and proof of his bonuses at work so we would hit enough money to qualify for our loan, but warned us to not put my in home childcare business on the application at all (I was a registered business and paid taxes.) That was 2005.
My grandma worked at a grocers as a teenager in de early 50s. She told me that people buying on tab/credit was very common and they even had specific families where a certain amount was taken off every week because the owner knew they were too poor to ever really repay it. It's only tangentially related, but I was reminded of this, haha
A grocery store in my neighborhood that’s been owned by the same family since it opened in 1924 STILL offers customer accounts where people buy on credit and are billed once a month.
@dragonmagelet we did that until we closed in the 80s. People still owed us money and we just burned the tabs, like my grandfather did after the Depression. There were people who couldn't pay and people who wouldn't pay and we lived among them. No need to go after money people didn't have and those that had it and wouldn't pay lived with that.
The humanity of those in a financial position to help, sometimes anonymously, speaks to the failings and greed of large corporations today. I think your point and others' in response to mine is very important.
You are exactly right. Credit cards were barely invented in the 70s. This BS about women being constantly oppressed is just more toxic feminism. If u told my grandma she was oppressed , she should probably have kicked your ass.
My first charge card *in my own name* was from JC Penneys in the early 80s. The credit limit was $200. My first purchase was a sewing machine. I felt so independent!
I love that you bought a sewing machine first, so practical! Ahhh, to be that young and full of life again. My grandma got all of our Christmas presents at jc penny's until I was maybe 17. I'll always have a fondness for that store because of her. She took me to buy bed sheets there when I got my first apartment.
When I was 16 JC Penny's sent me and my grandma a letter saying if she cosigned I could get a credit card. I had a job, she read the pamphlet that explained it would help my credit and if I paid it off every month when I turned 18 they'd switch it to just my credit history. My limit was also $200. Guess where I bought all my clothes 😂
When I was divorced in the mid 1980s and went back to my maiden name, I found it impossible to get a credit card. I'd had cards under my husband's name, but of course, that did not count towards my own credit worthiness. My mother finally talked the loan manager of our local bank, where our family had banked for decades, to give me a card. But they required me to deposit $900 into a locked savings account--meaning I could not withdraw it--in order to secure a $300-limit credit card. It seems a terribly patronizing thing to do to an adult woman, but at least it got my foot in the door.
@@scarling9367 Having to pay a 300% security deposit and beg is patronizing. Modern secured cards can be obtained with 100% + perhaps a small premium deposit without ever interacting with a human using a smartphone. That is an excellent way for newbies and the recently bankrupt to rebuild credit. Younger people don't understand how societally acceptable racism and sexism were even a few decades ago, at least on an unspoken basis. My childhood was spent around people with the ideological views that get the most engagement on Twitter in 2024.
@@soneil7745 not really.It's mostly women trying come up with any story that they can exaggerate or twist around, in some way to make it sound like a day where their mom or grandmom was discriminated against for being a woman, and the occasional man and sometimes woman calling them on it. I'd hardly call this a reliable source of historical information.
1975, I was a newlywed and had a job at a local bank. Wanted to buy a used vehicle to use to commute to work. My new husband had to come in and co-sign the loan for me to get said loan. From the bank. Where I was working.
When my great granddad died a hundred years ago, his widow sold their house in the city and moved out in the country and bought a farm that she she managed. All on her own name. Simular story with my grandmother on the other side 30 yrs later.
Forgive me, but isn’t that fair? Wouldn’t spouses want to both be on the documents for big purchases? I understand the frustration. We had a landlord that required rent be paid in cash. My husband worked right next to the bank and down the street from the landlord’s office. So he would withdraw the cash once a month. Every month he would be nagged by the ladies behind the counter, “does your wife know about this?” I offered to go down there and explain that, yes I am highly aware that my husband is paying our rent and the riot act isn’t necessary. He assured me, it was fine and I didn’t need to do that for him. Banks are just annoying like that. The same bank also will not allow me to request a new debit card for my husband. (They like to cut access with no notice. Very annoying.) They claim I can only receive my own debit card. I told them, “it’s withdrawing from the SAME, shared account. So WHAT does it matter? It would be much more convenient if we both had a card for the ATM!” They said each card is associated with a SSN. To which I said, I know his number, he’s my HUSBAND. To me, banks are designed to inconvenience you, regardless of gender, and in your case, employment.
I remember my mom in the mid-70s fighting with our local dairy because they wouldn’t put her name on the bill for milk delivery. She had a professional job and a graduate degree and it infuriated her.
We also had a thing called layaway when I was a kid which was like an installment plan except you didn’t get the goods until it was finally paid off. I don’t know if that was a regional thing or was widespread in the 70s.
So many of the articles that interviewed stores had them claiming "Women just don't care what name is on the card! It doesn't make a difference and is just too expensive to offer it another way..." Tell me you have no interaction with your customers without telling me.
@@NicoleRudolph Oh yeah. That stuck with me so hard that when I got married and planned to take my husband's last name, I threatened our minister with violence* should he introduce us after the ceremony as "Mr and Mrs . Bad enough I lose my last name I grew up with, you're not taking my first name too. Very sticky point for me. * he is a third dan black belt at the dojo where we both practised Aikido and could easily have fended off anything I could have done to him. And then during he got my first name wrong anyways cause he's used to calling me by my initials... then my husband repeated it wrong with a sh!#eating grin so there's this photo of me with The Finger of Warning as he said, "I was just repeating what he said!" "But you know better!" and everyone had a good laugh. And now several of my closest friends call me the wrong name on my anniversary :)
My cousin canceled one in the late 80s or early 90s because the store (G. Fox and Co.) wouldn't put the name she wanted on it. It was after she married and they wouldn't put her changed name on it. She had changed her social security card and everything.
@@NicoleRudolph In the early 80s, my parents typically listed their names in the format "Mr. John and Dr. Jane Smith." They consistently got mail addressed to "Dr. John and Mrs. Jane Smith"--or worse, "Dr. & Mrs. John Smith". Even long after they divorced and my mom had changed her surname, she sometimes still got mail addressed to Mrs. John Smith.
Oof yeah I have a similar vivid memory of my mom going off on the phone at a bank for continuing to send her new cards w my dad’s first name instead of hers 💀 they tried telling her “Well no one else is complaining about this issue but you,” didn’t go over well 😅
My mom divorced my step father in 1975. She ended up with the debt on their shared JCPenney card. She paid it off because he didn’t have a job at the time. She tried to get her own card but was denied because she was a divorced woman with kids. So yeah. Corporations were a-holes to women.
@@toomanymarys7355then they’ll justify it saying you wanted equality you got it but it’s frankly inequality! And if she has children then she has to take care of them
My husband died this September. Along with all the other trauma, a week out from his death, “our credit card” was cancelled. Turns out I was an authorized user but the account was not joint. I had to go to cash/checks to pay off a funeral home, cemetery, caterer and all the things that go into a funeral. My current credit card limit is 30% of our previous limit. Adding insult to injury I had been the primary breadwinner in our household for over a decade, and had had my own good credit as a single person. So life lesson women: have your own credit card.
My husband is on my Discover because thet refused to raise his limit when we asked a few years after marrying. It was still at student levels, and we spent more than that in a month.
It’s an archaic system that most people have no idea persists. I worked at two major banks (here in Australia) in the mid 2000s, and the whole credit card system was based on a primary cardholder whose credit history was actually the one assessed and impacted by the account, and then anyone else added was an additional card holder who was NOT a joint account holder. It was obviously made for a time when it was assumed a (male) single income earner would hold the account and a courtesy additional card was issued for the presumed wife to use. Can’t they just change the system? Well I can tell you I worked with the underlying software (super old but robust) and no, it wasn’t something that could be changed. Even if you applied as joint card holders at the bank, it was still processed the old way in their back end, leading to exactly your scenario.
I don’t know about credit cards, but I distinctly remember my mother’s attempt to finance a car in the 70’s, only to be told that she would have to have my father co-sign. My mother happened to make more money than my father. Note: my father would not have had to have my mother co-sign. My mother was outraged.
In 2020, my husband and I got a VA mortgage to buy our house. We frequently get various mortgage companies offering to refinance our VA Mortgage. Those offers are all addressed to my husband. I'm the Veteran, not him, so my name is first on our mortgage. Those offers all go promptly into the trash, as I won't do business with a company who either is (a) so misogynistic to think only men can be veterans, or (b) are simply too lazy to note which name is first on the paperwork.
@@firiel2366 I get this kind of junk mail today, on the car initially only purchased in my name (hubby added to title later when we registered it) in late 2022. Hi name wasn't added until 2023. So last year. And I'm with you Quilted Kitten! if they can't send me the vehicle maintenance offers they can go straight in the shredder. But Imma about to have a go at Honda who decided to address official recall communications to my husband only since those are LEGAL documents and by not putting my name on them they failed in their LEGALLY required notifications.
💡 5:24 No wonder women had pressure to be perfect. If they werent "liked" they wouldn't have access to basic necessities. Obviously I understood that being well liked opened more doors. But I never really considered that being disliked would limit access. I suppose that blind spot comes from the thought that "the customer is always right".
Some of the articles I read talked about how early credit systems helped to enforce societal norms, which is something I am really going to spend time thinking about.
This was true of church attendance too. Because most social services were arms of the church until the 1920s or so, if you were poor and needed assistance you went to the church. The large donors or even sometimes benefactors outside your congregation but known to the local diocese or synod sometimes were brought to the poor families' homes to be shown the conditions in which folks lived. If the family was well liked and did their best to dress up, attended church and volunteered, and had well behaved kids, they were provided with support by these donors. Other families especially those where their poverty was related to an alcoholic family member, gambling, or other vice, there may not be much sympathy or support available for the family. Even in cases of domestic abuse, there were families left without support because they "should have known" or warned against marrying their spouse. Worse still if a woman had a child out of wedlock with a known drunkard. This could leave them with few supports and little options for help other than soup kitchens or begging. At some level being a widow or widower could be helpful in that it gave them additional sympathy being left without the essential other adult to care for the children while working. A widow would have to now find work and needed family or neighbors to help care for her children while she did so. A widower was left to try to do all the daily chores, would need to learn to cook or hopefully had family or a sympathetic neighbor who could help with the daily errands from stores that may not be open while he was at work.
@@rugbybeef Ah yes, the term used was "the deserving poor". Those who were poor because the man of the family died or was injured on the job vs. those who were lazy or drunk or "bad blood".
The concept of everyone having a credit score (and needing to always be in some amount of debt) in the US is always very wild for me as a French. But this video helps me wrap my head around how it came to be, thank you !
If you buy a new car with cash in the US, they still have to run you credit report....I wonder if they would still refuse you if your credit wasn't good but you have cash.
@@ulrikeberndt8573basically it's like this- if you've never owed anyone any money then there's no record of how reliably you would pay someone back. There's no proof that you know how to be responsible with money or debt.
My grandmother was a single mom of two in the 60s and 70s. My father remembers her struggle as a low income widowed mom of two, how she didn't have reliable access to a bank account, and had to deal in cash. It was a major problem.
@@EffdaBlx You were there in that woman's life at the time? Are you not noticing all of these other comments confirming similar experiences that women of previous generations experienced? Way to be weird, dude.
@@EffdaBlx She didn't have reliable access to a bank account, which would have meant she couldn't write checks, deposit/save the money somewhere safe, and would always have had to carry enough cash on her (which risks theft).
Once upon a time, I was a freshly divorced mother of two, recovering from 2 bankruptcies in 4 years and a year of homelessness while we sheltered with my parents. I had zero credit anywhere. None. My ex had pretty thoroughly scuttled my reputation and it took over 10 years and a new marriage to begin rebuilding. Along the way I learned patience and moderation and the joys of lay-away. Big box stores like K-mart would allow shoppers to choose items for purchase and store them on site while they made payments over several months, usually for a fee to cover storage and bookkeeping. I bought a coat, dresses, and other items this way until I had saved up enough to get a secured credit card from my credit union. I miss lay-away!
@@corvidsRcool I've used it before to buy especially expensive tickets to a once-a-few-years show. Otherwise the tickets+ camping fee would've been well out of reach
Clothes shops used to do this for me in the 90’s I would pay a deposit and then I would pay for the item over a few months and collect it once I had paid for it, I think it could still be done if they get to know you x
My mom divorced in the mid 60s. She had to return all her credit cards and start over. My father got a fabulous credit rating which he managed to blow in a very few years. My mom finally found a furniture store that would extend credit because of a very understanding female credit manager.
@@razor191919 It had nothing to do with credit scores, but a history of moderate use and prompt, consistent payment. One by one, he managed to destroy the image presented by that history.
@@razor191919what are you spamming about? No one is saying FICO scores were the problem. It’s the systemic problems that caused the high number of issues people are sharing in these comments, and that you are spamming without addressing anything.
My grandfather ran the family bank in the 60's. My mom once described the proto ATM that he installed: people could purchase pre-paid cards inside the bank and then put them into a machine when the banks was closed and the machine would then spit out cash. He also installed a vacume-tube computer, the first computer in that city, to help with this. You video just reminded me of that.
Was the Act necessary? Yes. Did it solve everything? Not even close. Simply, without any regulation there was no consistent availability of ANY type of credit. Anyone, for any reason, could be denied the effective and safe credit options. So they turned to much more difficult, and sometimes deceitful, options that would accept them. Which means that decades and generations of debt and poor credit experience were embedded in our system. Regardless of what answers we started putting into the computer credit scores of the 1970s, the numbers were based on the old system of prejudice. We're still dealing with the baggage of our family debts even in todays credit scoring system.
@@NicoleRudolph Exactly. And it's still much harder to get and establish credit as a woman, especially if you get married early and/or come from a controlling family. Like it or not, credit cards are essential for establishing oneself as an adult.
Yes, you score higher if you are married. It’s the same for for insurance companies, like for car insurance, life insurance, things in your house insurance.
It's surprising how short-term America's "national memory" is. Numerous legislative acts from years past - specifically those guaranteeing protections to women and minorities - now are being challenged. Various Congressmen assert that society no longer has any need for such laws; as if no rights would be threatened now.
Thank you for having this very important discussion. It is good that you explain that the law did not resolve everything. I am glad you discussed the consumer credit part of this. I work with this issue as it relates to mortgages. Mortgage underwriters ignored the income and wealth of the wife; this law changed this. I recommend Chloe Thurston's book At the Boundaries of Homeownership as a good source.
The modern credit system is far from perfect, but one thing that I thought about while watching this video was how much less judgement people are subjected to when shopping today. My credit card is accepted almost anywhere. I don't have to convince every store that I am trustworthy and they should extend credit to me. Could you imagine a woman in the 50s going into a hardware store and trying to convince them that she needed credit to buy power tools? I can walk into Home Depot, pick up a drill and pay for it with my credit card without ever interacting with an employee. With mail order, we don't even have to worry about being judged by the cashier for our purchases or having nosy neighbors looking into our shopping cart. Obviously online retailers are collecting your purchase history and using it for things like targeted ads, so someone is watching, but there isn't the same level of community oversight.
From what I've read that advantage of mail order being relatively anonymous has been important from when it first became big. Someone who had the money could buy whatever it was they wanted and not have to deal with bigotry (including racially based price increases) or judgement.
@@EJAnonymus That was a major factor for SR&Co. (Sears) They sent the catalog to everyone, so even my Lithuanian great grandmother could have her children read it out to her and know that the prices wouldn't change based on her fluency with the language or if it looked like she could afford it.
@mwater_moon2865 Exactly this. I believe they even employed translators, which is huge considering the time period. And a lot of what I read focused on how black Americans seriously benefitted from the anonymity, allowing them to get what they needed without extra bullshit even in harshly segregated communities.
This video was amazing and helped me understand so many things that my mom had complained about in relation to credit/credit cards in the 60s-2000s. I’m super grateful that my parent’s credit helped me build credit, but it sucks hearing why my mom and aunts had it so rough. My mom and aunt’s constantly had their parents stealing their cards/information because they were unmarried, and it definitely crippled my mom and aunts’ ability to build credit for over two decades. Because they were unmarried my grandparents (who were not great people obviously) would lie to banks and say that my aunts and mom lived at home and would just be given bank info and money with NO STRINGS attached. All of them eventually moved out of state for a few years just to prove to the banks that it was not legal/permitted. For my dad’s side, I know credit was not something my grandma was literate in and she built up debt like crazy until my grandpa found out and she had to get a job. Both my parents came from very poor areas and did not have parents with a great education. It’s wild how long the government went without protecting the poor folks credit/banking info, and obviously they still don’t well
I still remember my first credit card in the early 80's, a Mobil gas credit card. It was my savior. I had just started working in retail and lived an hour away from the job. That card my my life so much easier. I never knew what schedule or how much I would be working, but I could always get the gas to get there.
In the 1940s, my mother's mother had her own house, ran a small business. On paper, she was married, by her and my granfathwr were seperated. Seperated to the point to where by the time my mother was born she'd probably see him every few weeks or so. The oldest child was 10 something years between the youngest child, my mom. Also to add, she was black woman who survived Black Codes and Jim Crow with 8 children. 3 of those children became millionaires in the 1990s. 1 died in a fight. 1 became a perenial alcoholic. And the other 4 liv3d middle class lives are doing pretty well for themselves to this day. I'd say she did pretty well.
My goodness. This takes me back. It was somewhat of a big thing for my mother being able to cosign on my first bank account at 16, but I was not able to get my first credit card until I entered the workforce at 27. The credit score scheme was such a hassle, but I had no idea how new that system was since it was all I knew. 1989, seriously?! My mind was blown when I moved to a country that has no system of credit scoring what-so-ever. Looking awestruck at the bank clerk: "You mean, you'll give me a credit card and just trust me with it?! Why, thank you!" International credit cards are less stress...as long as you're timely with your payments.
I’m Australian. Our credit cards are issued in a combination of factors, as we don’t have one single credit reporting agency. We have about 3, with 2 of them being major. The banks keep trying to implement a single credit score system here, but Aussies don’t love that. So if you have no credit anywhere it is still possible to get a credit card, though most people would build a credit history here by paying their utility bills and maybe being a mobile/cell phone plan.
1989 was the FICO system, credit scoring existed before then, it was just piecemeal. Shoot, didn't she say there was a credit bureau in the 1840s? found it around 3:52
My mother was shopping in a major department store in the mid-70s and tried to open a credit card there. Despite her having her own job and income she was told they would have to get permission from my father first. She told them to keep the stuff and never shopped there again. Happened to lots of women.
Fascinating video. Interesting bit about there being something of a stigma to using credit, and it has lasting effects to this day. If you've ever seen those "culture shock" videos with Europeans wondering why American restaurants take your credit card away from the table, well that stigma is the root of it. It's to be discreet. It's so you're not announcing to the whole restaurant that you're using a credit card. Department stores used to do this too. You'd get that same leather folder thing that you still see in restaurants and the salesperson would whoosh behind a partition to process it. I worked at Belk when they finally switched to customer-operated swipe pads in the early 2000s, and there were a lot of older customers who thought they were actually kind of trashy. I specifically remember one older lady in a sable coat and mile-high perm looking at the swipe pad and remarking "oh, just like K-mart!"
That's interesting, I always assumed it was for security. I thought, probably overkill, but okay? The legacy of stigma and need for discretion actually makes a lot more sense, and helps explain why more and more places just bring a card reader to the table.
@@stuffinsthegreat I hate when they bring the reader to the table, now I have to interrupt my conversation/ end meal and calculate your tip on the spot! I assumed Europe could do the tableside thing since they don't have tips to the extent the US does.
I love your videos where you dive into the deeper context of society. My mother divorced in 1968 and the only reason she could open a bank account was that we lived in a small town with small financial institutions and they knew her and her character.
First-rate economic and social history! Highly entertaining, too. It made me imagine the credit histories of some of my favorite female TV characters… “That Girl” and “Julia” from the 1960s, Mary Tyler Moore (newly divorced and starting over), “Mad Men’s” Joan and Peggy, Laura from “Remington Steele” (who had to create a fake male figurehead for her detective agency to be taken seriously circa 1980). Hmm, maybe that’s a premise for a follow-up to this video!
I clearly remember my parents burning the actual card on which the local small grocery store owner kept the running credit tally for our groceries and payments. (circa 1960) We then switched to a more modern grocery store where the prices were lower. They never looked back. They should teach this in high school. Thank you for the wonderfully informative lesson! As someone says below, the oral history provided by the elderly in this group is certainly interesting. Young people - learn about credit and how to use it. It can make a very big difference in your life.
Now I want to ask my MIL about her experience. My mother was 30 years older than my MIL and a housewife in the 60s & 70s, so that would be interesting to hear if she were still here.
@dominaevillae28 The small groceries mostly went out of business in the 40s. They were dying in the 20s, but the great depression saved them because new style groceries didn't offer credit.
I worked in a pharmacy in high school (late 90s/early 00s) which kept house accounts. We had paper slips to write up the purchases and used plastic cards for the account and a credit card imprinter machine (the thing that goes chunk-chunk as you ran it over the card and it used the raised letters on the credit card to print the info on the paper slip). Every afternoon we had to type the purchase slips into a computer where the accounts were kept. Once a month the 30 or so families (of about 100) who used their house account were billed for the outstanding balance. This put us in the awkward spot of cutting people off or where a family member (say a wayward son or daughter who no longer lived at home and may be struggling in one way or another) would come by and put purchases on the family account. It was super awkward to have to explain to someone that the store wasnt taking charges from their family until the debt was paid down or that their parents had called and told us to not allow that person to use the house account anymore.
My mother ended up with her name on my parent's Sears card when they got married because my father and some other account had the exact same name. She was the first woman she knew of to have a credit card in her name and the first woman at that store to get one.
The cool thing about the Charge-A-Plate was the series of cuts in the edges. Each department store had a special place for their "bites". You had your plate cut for each store you wanted credit in and the plate would drop into the machine. The Charge- a-Plate billing system knew which store you used the plate in.
Community property states operated rather differently, so much of this doesn't really apply to me as a woman who has married, divorced, re-married, ang been widowed in Texas. Even with divorce decree or letters testamentary in hand, I've had so much trouble continuing accounts, changing names on accounts, canceling accounts.
Oh lordy! when we moved to Texas I had so much trouble just getting a driver's licence so I could vote! It took me 3 visits and over 6 months to get all the paperwork. Evidently my passport and SS card weren't good enough to prove that my last name was mine, nor was my marriage certificate enough proof that I'd been married, it HAD to be the notarized marriage license, which was more than Homeland security needed for my passport.... I warned my mom she could never move here since the registry office she got married through had burned down and they wouldn't have her original records to send to her!
I love this video! I collect historic catalogs and the ordering/shipping pages are my favorite section. So interesting how ordering slowly went from cash only to credit. Sears went from "absolutely no installments" in the 1880s to credit/installments in the 1930s.
Though we think of them as a department store, they didn't even have physical locations until the 1920s! So it's no wonder they didn't have good systems for that in place. Hard to do a credit check on a person you can't verify exists.
In the early 1980's I graduated college and was hired (along with several classmates) for a job that required travel. The company had us all apply for credit cards. We all had the same salary. Only one of us was denied, the only woman in the group. The owner of the company had to contact the bank to personally request that I get that card.
I remember my mother being very upset that she couldn't even get her own bank account in the early 80's. My parents had a joint account, and she couldn't even withdraw money for groceries without his signature (which she consistently signed herself). My mother controlled my father's finances, paid all the bills, but she wasn't capable enough or trustworthy enough to control her own. I remember the day she explained to me that she couldn't get an account without a husband or a father to sign for her. Hey father was dead and her husband was abusive, so even if she worked, she was out of luck. I was *furious* that I would never have the same access in life as my brother, simply because he was born male. I'm still furious for all the women who came before me, and I respect and admire their strength, and appreciate their fighting for me and for the future.
Really. I had my own bank account at 18, in the 70's. I also had my own credit cards, in my own name without my husband. I had a job and I had the credit.
In the early 80s plenty of banks were offering accounts to single women. She could have shopped around & found one- but nobody should HAVE to do that, ya know? No good reason she shouldnt have been able oopperate with the same local institution as her husband.
@@JakeysMom07easy to say unless you lived in rural America with one bank in town. The next bank an hour away. My mother had the same problem with her paying bills and everything in my father's name. A lot depended on where you lived as well.
@@paularies3282 NE Lincoln area's in 2011~ and marriage husband i couldn't have a separate account and or wife had to signing knowing that i/husband/boyfriend's had it somehow she ended up getting one by herself and or hiding marriage assets ect
My mother was born in 1920, and worked as a clerk in a hosiery store where she met my dad in 1946, and worked as an accountant for a dry cleaners after they got married. She had the old metal charge plates from the 1950's from local Nashville department stores, but everything she had was as "Mrs (Dad's full name)". I vividly remember her excitement at getting the first credit card that had her own full name on it, in my senior year in 1979. She had never had one issued in her own name, until she was almost 60 years old. She told how she'd bought things on layaway plans and had dealt with putting dairy and butcher bills on her "tab", to write a check for each month. But she really didn't have a credit card in her own name until 1979. My fraternal aunt, on the other hand, lived in a small town in Colorado, and never married, and she had credit in her own name from having worked for the Missouri-Pacific railroad, going way back.
In the late 60s, my psychologist mom made much more than my minister dad, and she could not get a credit card in her name. period. All her cards were ones where my dad would open the credit account and my mom could use it as his wife. And yeah, she paid the bill.
Very interesting review of the credit process. I remember shopping for my senior High School clothing with my mom's J. L. Hudson charge plate in 1962. I had seen her use it of course, but it made me feel quite adult to do it on my own.
This is so good, as always the level of detail and the delivery of everything and the inclusion of original adds and newspaper comics is flawless and so well done but I also love the addition of the little bloopers section at the end. Its so fun. I already knew about 40% of any given part of this story and it was so cool to get a more complete view, really enjoyed this one.
I couldn’t get a drivers license in WI without my husband being there to vouch for me. This was 2008. I was employed full time (same company for over 5 years), my name was on the lease of the WI home we were living in and I had a US passport.
Just 7 years ago I couldnt get my drivers license without my marriage certificate and they said it didn't look legal 🤨. I'd changed my name had my ss# and had been married for 5 years. In Arizona it was no problem but Kansas was an asshole about it. I had to drive across state boarders 45 min north sit for 2 hrs at the records office to get my marriage certificate stamped with a special seal from the state to get legal to drive. My husband didn't have a damn problem. He was in and out the same day
@@HosCreates It took me over 9 months and 3 separate appointments to get my DL in Texas (required to vote), my husband took 2 hours of waiting but since my US PASSPORT didn't match my birth certificate I had to have the notarized copy of my marriage licence, NOT the marriage certificate that the SS admin and passport used 20 years earlier to change my name. Thank goodness the registrars office in MO could send me an official copy (for a fee of course) but I had to warn my mom she could never move here since the location they got theirs from burned over a decade ago and they don't have those documents to copy!
My grandmother-in-law was alive for this and still repeats what is commonly said on the internet now about women and credit. So she would have been the type that would have not been offered credit based upon her husband because he was not upstanding in society. This also left out another form of credit that might have been available but I'm not sure how common it was: pawn. Because an item of value was needed, anyone could take advantage of it. But you still had the barrier of needing to pawn in the first place.
I believe the "loan shark" section basically covers this !? Pawn shops/loan sharks are almost the same thing. Still to this day if you go to poor neighborhoods, you see "payroll loans" (legal loan sharks ) and pawn shops - where folks dump valuables & hope they can - someday - but them back. Both basically parasites on the poor.
When my mom moved us to Phoenix in 1976 after my parents' divorce to be near her mother, she told me about property laws in Arizona at the time. Women who held property before marriage were stripped of ownership, which was given to her husband. Her husband could force her to quit her job, close her bank accounts, and seize her credit cards. Women at that time were classified in Arizona law with children, animals, and the criminally mentally ill. Those laws didn't change until sometime in the 1980s.
I remember in the mid 80s my mother couldn't get a credit card because all of her credit had been when she and my father were married. She finally went to work for the payroll department of a department store and they gave her a store card at the end of the decade and that finally let her build up her credit record.
Hmmmm. I am very much into the history of sewing machines (I own more than 42 vintage Singer machines). I have always heard that the reason Singer beat out rival manufacturers of the era was because they set up an easy payment plan for thier machines, while other manufacturers wanted payment in full. So even if the fictional young lady in your scenario decided to whip up a homemade wardrobe, she could have purchased her lovely sewing machine with a tiny down payment and recurring small payments, which would be easy to manage because she would have a well paying job and the wardrobe to wear to work.
She still would have had to purchase all the fabric and supplies from local stores! And find the time. And sewing patterns for gowns weren't around in the 1860s (really didn't start up until the 1900s). Nor instructions.
They would have to have sewing skills to make their clothing. 1. Sewing machine cost as much as what a teacher made in a single year. 2. Apartment living really wasn't a thing. They would have rented a room at a boarding house and usually wouldn't allow the machinery and furniture. 3. Time to sew. The 40 hour work week wasn't a thing and spare time was really a luxury. Also sewing by candle and gas lamps would have been very challenging
@@somethingclever8916Apartments were very much a thing by the 1880s. Almost none have survived outside a very major cities, but they absolutely were. Read Sister Carrie for a book in 1900 that talks about apartments in some detail. Boarding houses were rare by 1900. Rooming houses were extremely common.
Thanks for covering this. I didn't know about the earlier reform acts before 74. I have been arguing this for a while with people. My parents, especially my Mother, taught me how to build credit. First you get a charge plate (credit card) with a local department store. I think I had to take them a paystub. Then you go up to an American Express card. You paid a yearly fee and the balance had to be paid off every month. Then you can get a bank card (Mastercard, Visa). These usually did not have a yearly fee. They made their money off of the interest and the card fee from the merchant. As you have them for awhile they will increase your credit limit. There was also lay-away for the cash shoppers. You pick your winter coat out in August and they store it with your name on it. You pay towards it, in cash, weekly for several months. I think there was a card where they gave you a stamp or receipt everytime you make a payment. Your example of the suit is buying on-time. You could furnish a whole apartment on-time but you ended up paying twice the value of the goods.
Layaway didn't charge in the 80s, but you didn't get the item until you finished paying and if you missed a payment, you lost it. Insane system for people terrible at money.
They still have the furnish an apartment thing for more than twice the cost, it's called rent to own. I explain it like a car lease for a couch. A leading US version called Rent A Center just changed their corporate name last year, but they're still around.
@@mwater_moon2865 Thanks. I'm living in the 'burbs now so I don't walk around a city as much and see these things. I wasn't sure because we have all that cheap walmart furniture now.
My 21 year old sister bought her $17k house in the early 70s by threatening the builder with suing him if he didn’t sell her a house. He had refused to sell her a home because she wasn’t married, even though she had a good job and had bought a car on credit before. My parents had their Sears metal charge plate taken away in the 80s and replaced with a plastic credit card, and were pretty pissed about it lol.
In 2015 (!), when I went to get pre-approved for a mortgage, the man at the bank asked me about my fiancé's income. I told him, "what ABOUT his income? He's not the one buying this house, I am!" I ended up getting a mortgage from a different credit union, from a very nice woman who never once assumed that I needed a man to buy a house!
If in the US, I'd err on the side of the bank trying to ask every potential question that could benefit you in this case. I have an explaination below if interested because my spouse and I ran into through moving states for work: Some US states make it illegal to purchase property without notifying your spouse regardless of if your gender. The spouse of the purchaser still has to sign a document stating that they are aware of the sale and don't want their name on the property in those states for the sale to be finalized. (CA is the worst offender) Because of the beurocratic nightmare some states are, if you move to one of those states later and keep your property, it could be seen as an intentionally hidden asset that the state will penalize you for later, if high value property is purchased within a certain time frame before a wedding without a spouse's signature included in the sale. Without a prenuptual all assests become group owned by default regardless and might have to be reassigned if the marriage is annulled. We are still married so we didn't have to deal with this, but heard horror stories from locals where we are working temporarily.
@@Gabonro "Without a prenuptual all assests become group owned by default regardless and might have to be reassigned if the marriage is annulled." Not QUITE, depends on the state you get married in. In some states only assets purchased or improved upon after the legal date of marriage (might vary from the day of ceremony) count as community property (joint assets) while anything before is individually held unless otherwise "mingled" as common property, ie. bills/ upkeep are paid by both parties. My mom clerked for a family court lawyer in Mississippi and this came up once with a couple who had built a house on long held family property. Basically, ALL of the land that had been his before they married, was still his, (taxes on it had been paid out of a trust) EXCEPT the house itself and "improved" land (ie. driveway and lawn). Since the private road the driveway connected to was still his brother's, they could legally charge a huge fee to anyone who purchased the house for use of said road. Made it a real pain the behind to sell. On the other hand she was legally able to keep all of the wedding gifts that were not explicitly addressed to both of them -- including cash she had placed in her personal account-- because the common practice at that time/location was gifts were to the bride, and because their official filing date wasn't until the Monday AFTER the weekend they had the wedding.
Excellent video. I particularly like the initial setup of the young woman moving towns for a new job. One of the things critics of the credit score system never acknowledge is that America is an extremely large and mobile society compared to others and that mobility, together with no centralized identification methodology, meant that the opportunities for persistent fraud were huge.
@@toomanymarys7355 Waiting until you can afford it is the best option in most cases. Layaway was the best option at Christmas time. This way the gift is not in the house to be discovered. All credit cards encourage people to spend more than they can afford. Cash back is just a hook to get someone to pick that card. I was able to retire early because I listened to Dave Ramsey.
@@toomanymarys7355 It adds up. And the financial insulation. Loose a debit card and either your rent, mortgage, autoloan, etc. bounces and everyone's is pissed or your paying through the nose for the overdraft loan. Someone swipes you CC and you're legaly on the hook for a small amount total ($50, I think?) and my cards wave that.
I worked at Montgomery Ward in the 1990's. We had a few senior aged women customers who still had cards in their (often deceased) husband's names. They kept up the account, paid the bill, etc. Had they tried to get an account in their own names, they never would have been able to. It was an unspoken rule amongst us on the floor that we accept their cards. I was sad when corporate began shutting down their accounts, knowing they would not be able to get their own accounts.
Merchant credit still happens at local convenience stores. I lived in a more rural suburb of Chicago, and for many years we had only one convenience store. The family who owned it offered credit until around 2015ish. They received a lot of pushback when they stopped, but people weren’t able to pay them and it was putting the business at risk. Just the other week, our local convenience store here in Michigan let my husband pay for something the next day. We have lots of different stores, so it’s a different situation.
Back when I was young & broke (making min wage which was 2-4 dollars an hour at that time) I would use Lay Away. I don't know if any stores offer this anymore. It used to be very difficult to get a credit card & it was considered neccessary to have to build credit. (Things have really changed & lending is very pedatory now) A few years back, PBS had a dramatic series all about the first actual department store in England (London) that was actually conceived by an American. Selfridges. The show was a dramatization about the family & the store employees & covered multiple decades. It was a fascinating show since it showed how much social change occurred at the turn of the 19th into the 20th century which included how people shopped. Once upon a time you would go to the general store with a list & a clerk would go in the back & get everything you needed. Credit was basically a "tab" You did not putter around & touch the merchandise. Shopping was a different experience. Considering it was usually the lady of the house who ran the household & was in charge of the finances, it seems odd that women would not have credit scores.
Layaway used to be the key to a good Christmas when I was a kid. Even when my firstborn was little. I was really disappointed when Walmart stopped offering it.
@yensid4294 Shopping is going back this way in some areas due to theft. I paid for my luggage and wedding reception table cloths at a BX in Germany in 2000. I think the BX still has layaway because of how helpful it is to poor military folk.
Layaway was around til at least the turn of the century (1999-2000, not 1899-1900) since I worked for a company that made software for tracking it. That and rent to own (like a car lease but for household goods basically). The stores doing that sort of thing got in more than a bit of trouble for some of the predatory behavior. Things like keeping all payments if one was late or huge re-stocking fees for cancelations, employees committing fraud at the stores, etc.
I opened my first account as a minor (17), thus my mother had partial control over it even as I aged out. I eventually decided to take the small hit to my account length and open up a new account so that she couldn’t have access anymore since she refused to take half a day to come with me to the bank and take her name off. She had stolen money from my older brothers before and excused herself by saying she put it back later, but I wasn’t going to do that dance. Still, I can’t imagine her leaving her family home before 18 and eventually having to deal with the fallout from a now divorced husband screwing up her credit by proxy from his addictions.
i bought a lot of my clothes on lay-a-way in the 70's it was super common at all kinds of stores. even in 1984 when i needed to buy a car, my husband had to co-sign the loan.
In the early 2000s, a local bank (still a national company) did a giant system update and my mom's separate and personal bank account got rolled into my father's. My mom was told she couldn't separate out her account without my father's signature "because it was in his account." My mom tore them a new one, got my father to sign, and got her account separated out the way it should have been. Then she tore them a new one again, closed up all her accounts, and moved them to a different bank. My dad and I did the same because fuck that noise.
My family runs a small grocery store in a tiny rural town. We still have credit accounts that people use because most people don't carry their wallets around on the day-to-day, and when we had to switch to a new point-of-sale system this past year, we had to look for one that specifically still had the account functionality (it was super difficult to find).
Let’s not forget the predatory lending practices of the 1990s. Credit cards were pretty easy to get. I made $9 an hour and every few months one of the major credit cards companies raised my Limit until it was at $30,000. I wasn’t the only one. I knew a lot of people who had crazy high limits. Some never went close to the limit but a lot of people just kept spending themselves into bankruptcy. Sometimes repeatedly, as there were high interest companies who preyed on people who just filed bankruptcy and couldn’t file for so many years. So instead of keeping their limits at reasonable levels the CC companies got congress to make getting a bankruptcy where the debts are fully discharged almost impossible. At best someone would be made to pay a certain amount back.
when my aunt told me about how credit scores work this summer (I don't live in the US) I was absolutely flabbergasted, you mean actually paying off my debts makes me look bad?? but this video has made me understand a bit better how this system came to be, it's super interesting!
This is misunderstood. Paying off the card increases you rating. However, cancelling the card does. It has to do with the ratio of borrowing power to ability to pay. When you close your credit card account, you decrease your borrowing limit, thus reducing your overall score.
Americans think they live in paradise when in fact they're getring robbed daily. My third world country has mandatory free bank accounts for ALL workers to receive their wages, and also a FREE bank acc for any citizen even if you're not formally employed.
@@sherrillsturm7240it also affects your credit history length. Close an account or loan? The credit age decreases and your score goes down as well. This is why I keep my student loans open with small balance. My student loans have been around decades.
The Bank of Nova Scotia refused to allow my mom to open a checking account. They wouldn't do it unless her husband came in and signed. To this day our family does not deal with the Bank of Nova Scotia. Both Bank of Montreal and Royal Bank would allow women to open accounts.
Interesting. I had the exact opposite experience. I was going into the Ivey MBA and all major banks offer a $100K credit line to us bc they know we’ll be good for it upon graduation. Well, RBC and BMO wanted my father to sign as guarantor. He was perfectly happy to do so but I was mortally offended. I was 29, divorced, employed - did not want daddy to sign up for my “good behaviour”. Scotia was the only bank that handed me the papers and said “done”. I’ve stayed with them even though our joint (married) account is with a different bank where my husband used to work. Took my son to Scotia, too.
My mother got her first job in the mid 1970's and went to open her own NYC bank account and the man at the bank refused to open an account for her without my father's signature. She came home and cried.
In the same time period, I don't remember having any trouble with that. It was a passbook account. I think that was somewhat regional. I lived in New England.
@@anastasia10017 When I went for a bank account at Chase in the Village in 1999 they refused me. I went around the corner to HSBC and no problem. I was 40 at the time.
When my parents moved together in the early 1980s, they didn't have credit cards. My dad applied for one and was refused even though he had a good job. My mom went shopping, was offered a card by a clerk, and got accepted.
My mother, who is not white and married at 22 feels a lot like that law changed this for her, to the extent she remembers what music was playing in the store the first time she used a credit card in her own name
This made me rethink that credit card that Barbie had (which she had before 1974). So it wasn't exactly a mark of the future aspirations, but rather a mark of current affluence back then (imagine how flush and reputable you had to be to be able to own a credit card as a single woman, hmmm.... 🤔)
If I remember anything from Debt:The First 5000 Years it's that you could make a notch on a piece of wood that the store owner keeps behind the counter or other highly concrete methods of keeping track of all sorts of kinds of debt.
When I bought my first house in 2001, the deed stated my name “[comma] a single woman.” I asked if I could have it removed and was told “no, that’s the law.” Years later, I got married, sold the house, bought a new one, the new deed did not state our names “[comma] a married couple.” Now, in 2024, I’m divorced I filed a quit claim deed to get the house back in my name, the deed once again states my name followed by “a single woman.” It’s a small thing, but the law still requires only single women state our marital status on property we own!
I’ve seen deeds that say “a single man”. Actually, when I bought my house, the two owners were business partners, and it said “So-and-So, a married woman, and So-and-So, a single man.” This was in 2014.
I actually had a version of this. When I was around 19-21, I tried to get a credit card through the bank I had been with since I was 13 (my parents were trying to teach me). However, since I was under 25, the bank had to fax my information to their hub. I tried twice, never got the card. Finally, a different credit card company sent the thing in the mail saying "Want a credit card?" So I signed up for it. Bad part is, this was like 2015ish, so pretty recent
In Australia, it is still legal to deny a woman a loan/mortgage if she is taking maternity leave. Even if the leave is paid and she has a return date to work.
Apparently in Canada too. We had an offer on our house 2 years ago but their financing fell through because she was on paid maternity leave. It had been pre approved before the baby came....
When I bought mine, I recall there being very specific verbiage about my being unmarried in the paperwork, which felt very weird, I'm gobsmacked that just because someone is/gets pregnant that can cause everything to fall through.
I’m retired now and I’ve been advised to NEVER cut up my credit card. I have more than enough Superannuation but, because I don’t have a job, I can’t get a credit card.
@@bellablue5285spouses may have property rights in property even if not on the title, so someone’s marital status is always listed on residential property deeds. If you are not listed as unmarried, the title examiner has to investigate whether a spouse could have a claim any time you go to sell or mortgage real estate. It actually helps protect the spouse with less financial power from the other spouse mortgaging or selling marital property.
My first credit card was a Carson’s credit card. I remember mentioning to my boss at the time, that I was having difficulty getting the credit card. He was a nice guy, so he actually called their customer service, talked to them, and was able to persuade them to give me a credit card. That was in 1980. Which would be considered modern times. 😳
It's all so dependant on her country, or even where in her country a woman lived too. My mum began working in Australia in the early 60s and never needed a man's involvement for her to have her own bank accounts, purchase vehicles or property.
in the UK, you could not open a bank account as a woman, without your father or husband counter signing for you until 1975, we were the last in the west
@@mojrimibnharb4584 it was law, i am not sure if banks ever made exceptions before this, or could for some women. My Grandmother never had a bank account, until after my grand father died at the end of 88
My mom got her first charge plate in 1969 as a divorcee, but also had a lot of money, owned a house that she bought in cash, and had wealthy connections.
Ha, I think I actually recall that happening, it was a shocker then! I seem to recall there was a lot of discussion about stopping the banks increasing credit limits whenever they liked also to stop people getting unnecessary debt (fellow Kiwi ❤)
This is insane. I'm 35 I got a store credit cards at 20 by myself. I got a bank credit card at 28 and had no problems getting it. I didnt need my husband to sign up for any of them. I now have two bank credit cards. I didnt want to hurt my credit closing the first one. I now have excelent credit and im saving for a house. Ive a savings account my husband can't access. Im glad we arent living in the past! #vintagestylenotvintagevalues!
Employers can also check the credit scores for applicants as well. I think because they believe that if your credit score is bad, you're more likely to steal? It's bullshit, but I have definitely had jobs warn me that credit checks would happen when I applied.
@@christineg8151 If your score is low, you are not likely to be as conscientious. But that's the problem with these kinds of statistics that even if they hold for the average, there are a lot of cases that it doesn't apply. I have this concern with car insurance monitoring drivers behavior. Maybe speeders are more likely to get into an accident, or maybe they drive on roads where you have to speed to keep up with traffic. Are they dangerous or not? Doesn't matter, if on average they are dangerous, they all will be considered dangerous.
Not too long ago, the local corner store would extend up to about $20 of credit to their regular customers for the week. I knew of one which would do that the last week of the month, and they would get the foodstamps at the end of the beginning of the next month. This I witnessed in the 1980"s. Just like we could see in the show Little House in the Prairie. This is how most started credit weather married or not.
In the 1940s, it was too dangerous for women to carry money, even in our little rural Missouri town. My grandmother, the wife of the local grocery store owner (and also co-owner) had credit accounts at the local stores downtown and my grandfather paid them regularly.
This video actually confirms my mother's claims about credit, something I had a discussion with over someone my mothers age the other month claiming that "women could get credit since the 70s". My mother has constantly told me she wasn't able to get credit until the early to mid 90s, and by then her credit score was horrible and she wasn't ever able to recover it. The negative on the argument claimed that my mother "should have had" credit in the 70's, that she just "didn't use it right". Which, from who it was coming from, annoyed me. (Also another woman, however, not my mother -- my partners).
Great grandma Edie, b. 1901, immigrant from England with her American Army husband has 3 children by 1925. Her daughter, grandma Mabel, told me about great grandma's credit: "She used it the way credit is supposed to be used. She went and paid it off the next day." Fast forward to today: Myself, at 56, have never had a credit card, so with no credit history, cannot get credit, even though I have a very low, stable income through my disability stipend. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Hugs
I remember in the late 1960s, my parents all of a sudden started getting a flood of credit cards in the mail. Without applying for them. They just showed up.
That still happens. They will target newly 18 year olds and people with poor credit by sending credit cards in the mail that you can activate over the phone or online
My mother recalls that she was not able to get a credit card or open a bank account without my Dad coming in to the bank. This was from the 1960s to the 1980s.
25:52 it's not the same as credit...but my grand parents applied for a Mortgage together...and the banker refused to take my grandmother's income into account because "she's just going to get pregnant and stop working" this was in new york in the late 50s early 60s...
Just because there is anti-discrimination legislation in place, did not mean it did not happen. It did. I am a lot older, I remember the 1970s, 80s, and even into the 90s, just how much discrimination still 'lingered' (like the question on most companies' minds was what I intended to do with my uterus). Also during that time, the pay gap was huge, just by virtue of being female, they paid you less. Nor do I believe that the historic credit systems went as smoothly as narrated here.
Problem is men were easily given credit regardless of their actual creditworthiness. Many stories wherein woman was the one working, the husband unemployed, yet credit was extended on his behalf and not hers.
Hello Nicole, I’m old enough to remember the 70s and remember the amount of work women have done to gain all kinds of freedoms of rights in my country and in the United States. Just to see in 2024 to see the clock has turned back to the 60s. I’m sorry to rain on your parade.
I was born in 2001, Australia, and I’ve only ever used debit cards my entire life. The sheer concept of having credit with a store itself is so interesting. Services like Afterpay have taken over, but I’m not sure if merchant credit could ever come back with banks handle it all. Would people trust it? Maybe?? But nobody would risk it. Fantastic essay on the history of (American) credit cards. I’ve learnt a lot :)
Hi! I love your videos and I was wondering if you could make one about the history of the poster girl dresses that we’re seeing everywhere now or maybe just like women lingerie outside and what culturally was going on to prompt it because I’m positive this isn’t the only time in history where this type of this has happened. Hope you see this :))
I remember hearing women in the late 80's saying make sure to have your own name on bills during marriage. These women had learned the hard way that if all of the bills are in your husband's name, you have no credit after divorce.
See there’s.. *sigh* there’s enough here that gets me frustrated about double standards.
My mother was widowed in 1973. She was 38 with two teenagers. She had a masters degree and tenure.
When she applied to get a shell oil card, Shell told her that they didn’t give credit to women. The point was that they *could* legally turn her down just for being female. That doesn’t mean women didn’t get credit cards but they could be turned down.
Mom was always loyal to Sears because they gave her credit and she was loyal ever since.
When we first tried to get a credit card in 1970, we were refused because my husband was in Vietnam and they considered him a "bad risk".
In 1975 when we bought our first home, my income wasn't even permitted to be shown on the loan papers. I remember the loan officer laughing and saying 'that wasn't necessary'. Ironically, I had a steady job that I had been at for five years while my husband was in construction and worked about eight months a year due to the ups and downs of the industry and weather. But he was considered 'more stable'.
They told my husband to get letters and proof of his bonuses at work so we would hit enough money to qualify for our loan, but warned us to not put my in home childcare business on the application at all (I was a registered business and paid taxes.)
That was 2005.
My grandma worked at a grocers as a teenager in de early 50s. She told me that people buying on tab/credit was very common and they even had specific families where a certain amount was taken off every week because the owner knew they were too poor to ever really repay it.
It's only tangentially related, but I was reminded of this, haha
@Rhaifha my grandfather's and my parents grocery store did that clear until they closed in 1985.
A grocery store in my neighborhood that’s been owned by the same family since it opened in 1924 STILL offers customer accounts where people buy on credit and are billed once a month.
@dragonmagelet we did that until we closed in the 80s. People still owed us money and we just burned the tabs, like my grandfather did after the Depression. There were people who couldn't pay and people who wouldn't pay and we lived among them. No need to go after money people didn't have and those that had it and wouldn't pay lived with that.
The humanity of those in a financial position to help, sometimes anonymously, speaks to the failings and greed of large corporations today. I think your point and others' in response to mine is very important.
You are exactly right. Credit cards were barely invented in the 70s. This BS about women being constantly oppressed is just more toxic feminism.
If u told my grandma she was oppressed , she should probably have kicked your ass.
My first charge card *in my own name* was from JC Penneys in the early 80s. The credit limit was $200. My first purchase was a sewing machine. I felt so independent!
Ok? congratulations on coming if age
I love that you bought a sewing machine first, so practical! Ahhh, to be that young and full of life again.
My grandma got all of our Christmas presents at jc penny's until I was maybe 17. I'll always have a fondness for that store because of her. She took me to buy bed sheets there when I got my first apartment.
Mine too in the 80's! I was so afraid to use it. But my mom made me get it so I could build credit.
When I was 16 JC Penny's sent me and my grandma a letter saying if she cosigned I could get a credit card. I had a job, she read the pamphlet that explained it would help my credit and if I paid it off every month when I turned 18 they'd switch it to just my credit history. My limit was also $200. Guess where I bought all my clothes 😂
im proud to say my first purchase on a credit card was robux
When I was divorced in the mid 1980s and went back to my maiden name, I found it impossible to get a credit card. I'd had cards under my husband's name, but of course, that did not count towards my own credit worthiness. My mother finally talked the loan manager of our local bank, where our family had banked for decades, to give me a card. But they required me to deposit $900 into a locked savings account--meaning I could not withdraw it--in order to secure a $300-limit credit card. It seems a terribly patronizing thing to do to an adult woman, but at least it got my foot in the door.
I also had a secured credit card for my first card, not much has changed except for the judgement.
The FICO credit scores system didn't exist on a national level until 1989.
Secured credit cards are fairly common way to start building or rebuilding credit. Not patronizing in the least bit.
@@scarling9367 Having to pay a 300% security deposit and beg is patronizing. Modern secured cards can be obtained with 100% + perhaps a small premium deposit without ever interacting with a human using a smartphone. That is an excellent way for newbies and the recently bankrupt to rebuild credit. Younger people don't understand how societally acceptable racism and sexism were even a few decades ago, at least on an unspoken basis. My childhood was spent around people with the ideological views that get the most engagement on Twitter in 2024.
Guess what? Young men with no connections or credit history had to go through the same thing.
Only 66 comments so far, and there's already an amazing oral history collection growing under this video!
I noticed this too! What a fabulous tableu of tangible memories~ So grateful that they've shared with us :)
@@soneil7745 not really.It's mostly women trying come up with any story that they can exaggerate or twist around, in some way to make it sound like a day where their mom or grandmom was discriminated against for being a woman, and the occasional man and sometimes woman calling them on it. I'd hardly call this a reliable source of historical information.
1975, I was a newlywed and had a job at a local bank. Wanted to buy a used vehicle to use to commute to work. My new husband had to come in and co-sign the loan for me to get said loan. From the bank. Where I was working.
When my great granddad died a hundred years ago, his widow sold their house in the city and moved out in the country and bought a farm that she she managed. All on her own name. Simular story with my grandmother on the other side 30 yrs later.
@@ronfox5519that doesn't disprove discrimination just because she was able to do it
🥲
Forgive me, but isn’t that fair? Wouldn’t spouses want to both be on the documents for big purchases?
I understand the frustration. We had a landlord that required rent be paid in cash. My husband worked right next to the bank and down the street from the landlord’s office. So he would withdraw the cash once a month. Every month he would be nagged by the ladies behind the counter, “does your wife know about this?”
I offered to go down there and explain that, yes I am highly aware that my husband is paying our rent and the riot act isn’t necessary. He assured me, it was fine and I didn’t need to do that for him.
Banks are just annoying like that. The same bank also will not allow me to request a new debit card for my husband. (They like to cut access with no notice. Very annoying.) They claim I can only receive my own debit card. I told them, “it’s withdrawing from the SAME, shared account. So WHAT does it matter? It would be much more convenient if we both had a card for the ATM!” They said each card is associated with a SSN. To which I said, I know his number, he’s my HUSBAND.
To me, banks are designed to inconvenience you, regardless of gender, and in your case, employment.
@ronfox5519 how does that invalidate the other persons personal experience?
I remember my mom in the mid-70s fighting with our local dairy because they wouldn’t put her name on the bill for milk delivery. She had a professional job and a graduate degree and it infuriated her.
We also had a thing called layaway when I was a kid which was like an installment plan except you didn’t get the goods until it was finally paid off. I don’t know if that was a regional thing or was widespread in the 70s.
Nobody cares about your degree.
@@PwnageFurylayaway was a thing when I was a child in the early 2000s. Is it still a thing?
I do recall my mom telling me about very loudly cutting up her Sears card in the 1970's (Canada) in the middle of the store because they had put "Mrs.
So many of the articles that interviewed stores had them claiming "Women just don't care what name is on the card! It doesn't make a difference and is just too expensive to offer it another way..." Tell me you have no interaction with your customers without telling me.
@@NicoleRudolph Oh yeah. That stuck with me so hard that when I got married and planned to take my husband's last name, I threatened our minister with violence* should he introduce us after the ceremony as "Mr and Mrs . Bad enough I lose my last name I grew up with, you're not taking my first name too. Very sticky point for me.
* he is a third dan black belt at the dojo where we both practised Aikido and could easily have fended off anything I could have done to him. And then during he got my first name wrong anyways cause he's used to calling me by my initials... then my husband repeated it wrong with a sh!#eating grin so there's this photo of me with The Finger of Warning as he said, "I was just repeating what he said!" "But you know better!" and everyone had a good laugh. And now several of my closest friends call me the wrong name on my anniversary :)
My cousin canceled one in the late 80s or early 90s because the store (G. Fox and Co.) wouldn't put the name she wanted on it. It was after she married and they wouldn't put her changed name on it. She had changed her social security card and everything.
@@NicoleRudolph In the early 80s, my parents typically listed their names in the format "Mr. John and Dr. Jane Smith." They consistently got mail addressed to "Dr. John and Mrs. Jane Smith"--or worse, "Dr. & Mrs. John Smith". Even long after they divorced and my mom had changed her surname, she sometimes still got mail addressed to Mrs. John Smith.
Oof yeah I have a similar vivid memory of my mom going off on the phone at a bank for continuing to send her new cards w my dad’s first name instead of hers 💀 they tried telling her “Well no one else is complaining about this issue but you,” didn’t go over well 😅
My mom divorced my step father in 1975. She ended up with the debt on their shared JCPenney card. She paid it off because he didn’t have a job at the time. She tried to get her own card but was denied because she was a divorced woman with kids. So yeah. Corporations were a-holes to women.
Before 1974, she couldn't have gotten stuck with debt. :)
@@toomanymarys7355spouses i believe have always had such responsibility (divorce/death doesn't matter).
@@toomanymarys7355 ????
@@toomanymarys7355world's made for men to win. Idk why they're whining so much nowadays. Everything is literally easier for them.
@@toomanymarys7355then they’ll justify it saying you wanted equality you got it but it’s frankly inequality! And if she has children then she has to take care of them
My husband died this September. Along with all the other trauma, a week out from his death, “our credit card” was cancelled. Turns out I was an authorized user but the account was not joint. I had to go to cash/checks to pay off a funeral home, cemetery, caterer and all the things that go into a funeral. My current credit card limit is 30% of our previous limit. Adding insult to injury I had been the primary breadwinner in our household for over a decade, and had had my own good credit as a single person.
So life lesson women: have your own credit card.
Im sorry that happened to you. 😢 I'm glad I've a joint acount I've control of and my own credit card.
My husband is on my Discover because thet refused to raise his limit when we asked a few years after marrying. It was still at student levels, and we spent more than that in a month.
It’s an archaic system that most people have no idea persists.
I worked at two major banks (here in Australia) in the mid 2000s, and the whole credit card system was based on a primary cardholder whose credit history was actually the one assessed and impacted by the account, and then anyone else added was an additional card holder who was NOT a joint account holder. It was obviously made for a time when it was assumed a (male) single income earner would hold the account and a courtesy additional card was issued for the presumed wife to use. Can’t they just change the system? Well I can tell you I worked with the underlying software (super old but robust) and no, it wasn’t something that could be changed.
Even if you applied as joint card holders at the bank, it was still processed the old way in their back end, leading to exactly your scenario.
@@marabanara So the software was written in COBOL? Yes, it still exists!
@@EileenMeehan-q4g that's an oversight on yours and or your husband's part, not sexism
I don’t know about credit cards, but I distinctly remember my mother’s attempt to finance a car in the 70’s, only to be told that she would have to have my father co-sign. My mother happened to make more money than my father. Note: my father would not have had to have my mother co-sign. My mother was outraged.
Was your mother's credit trash ?
In 2020, my husband and I got a VA mortgage to buy our house. We frequently get various mortgage companies offering to refinance our VA Mortgage. Those offers are all addressed to my husband. I'm the Veteran, not him, so my name is first on our mortgage. Those offers all go promptly into the trash, as I won't do business with a company who either is (a) so misogynistic to think only men can be veterans, or (b) are simply too lazy to note which name is first on the paperwork.
Good for you!
At first I misread your comment as saying "In 2000" and I thought "yikes that's only 25 years ago, haha wow things were bad!" and then I realised 💀💀💀
@@firiel2366 No, it was only 4 years ago! That makes it even more egregious!
@@firiel2366 I get this kind of junk mail today, on the car initially only purchased in my name (hubby added to title later when we registered it) in late 2022. Hi name wasn't added until 2023. So last year.
And I'm with you Quilted Kitten! if they can't send me the vehicle maintenance offers they can go straight in the shredder. But Imma about to have a go at Honda who decided to address official recall communications to my husband only since those are LEGAL documents and by not putting my name on them they failed in their LEGALLY required notifications.
💡 5:24 No wonder women had pressure to be perfect. If they werent "liked" they wouldn't have access to basic necessities. Obviously I understood that being well liked opened more doors. But I never really considered that being disliked would limit access.
I suppose that blind spot comes from the thought that "the customer is always right".
Some of the articles I read talked about how early credit systems helped to enforce societal norms, which is something I am really going to spend time thinking about.
This was true of church attendance too. Because most social services were arms of the church until the 1920s or so, if you were poor and needed assistance you went to the church. The large donors or even sometimes benefactors outside your congregation but known to the local diocese or synod sometimes were brought to the poor families' homes to be shown the conditions in which folks lived. If the family was well liked and did their best to dress up, attended church and volunteered, and had well behaved kids, they were provided with support by these donors. Other families especially those where their poverty was related to an alcoholic family member, gambling, or other vice, there may not be much sympathy or support available for the family. Even in cases of domestic abuse, there were families left without support because they "should have known" or warned against marrying their spouse. Worse still if a woman had a child out of wedlock with a known drunkard. This could leave them with few supports and little options for help other than soup kitchens or begging. At some level being a widow or widower could be helpful in that it gave them additional sympathy being left without the essential other adult to care for the children while working. A widow would have to now find work and needed family or neighbors to help care for her children while she did so. A widower was left to try to do all the daily chores, would need to learn to cook or hopefully had family or a sympathetic neighbor who could help with the daily errands from stores that may not be open while he was at work.
And unfortunately if you weren't viewed as pretty by society standards, that would also work against her in being "well liked" 🥲
@melissacritell3291
The customer is always right in matters of taste, not everything 😉
@@rugbybeef Ah yes, the term used was "the deserving poor". Those who were poor because the man of the family died or was injured on the job vs. those who were lazy or drunk or "bad blood".
The concept of everyone having a credit score (and needing to always be in some amount of debt) in the US is always very wild for me as a French.
But this video helps me wrap my head around how it came to be, thank you !
German here - I too find it very confusing and I'm not sure if I really understand how this works.
That is my sentiment exactly as a Polish person. Realy strange that a person who never needed to go into debt would be seen as less trustworthy o_O
Australian pretty much the same, it just seems odd to me.
If you buy a new car with cash in the US, they still have to run you credit report....I wonder if they would still refuse you if your credit wasn't good but you have cash.
@@ulrikeberndt8573basically it's like this- if you've never owed anyone any money then there's no record of how reliably you would pay someone back. There's no proof that you know how to be responsible with money or debt.
My grandmother was a single mom of two in the 60s and 70s. My father remembers her struggle as a low income widowed mom of two, how she didn't have reliable access to a bank account, and had to deal in cash. It was a major problem.
On the 60 and 70s it was all cash anyway to begin with so way to lie
@@EffdaBlx what is wrong with you? people - men - having bank accounts in the 60s was very common
@@EffdaBlx You were there in that woman's life at the time? Are you not noticing all of these other comments confirming similar experiences that women of previous generations experienced? Way to be weird, dude.
Credit existed prior to the 60s. What are you talking a out, dude? Leave OP alone @@EffdaBlx
@@EffdaBlx She didn't have reliable access to a bank account, which would have meant she couldn't write checks, deposit/save the money somewhere safe, and would always have had to carry enough cash on her (which risks theft).
Once upon a time, I was a freshly divorced mother of two, recovering from 2 bankruptcies in 4 years and a year of homelessness while we sheltered with my parents. I had zero credit anywhere. None. My ex had pretty thoroughly scuttled my reputation and it took over 10 years and a new marriage to begin rebuilding. Along the way I learned patience and moderation and the joys of lay-away. Big box stores like K-mart would allow shoppers to choose items for purchase and store them on site while they made payments over several months, usually for a fee to cover storage and bookkeeping. I bought a coat, dresses, and other items this way until I had saved up enough to get a secured credit card from my credit union. I miss lay-away!
Lay-away was the best! It pretty much enabled Christmas for my family.
@@corvidsRcool I've used it before to buy especially expensive tickets to a once-a-few-years show. Otherwise the tickets+ camping fee would've been well out of reach
@@Kehy_ThisNameWasAlreadyTaken That's neat! I didn't know it was available for tickets.
@@corvidsRcoolsame for my family growing up (1980s). Then when I was working and buying my own things, I bought my first winter coat on lay-away.
Clothes shops used to do this for me in the 90’s I would pay a deposit and then I would pay for the item over a few months and collect it once I had paid for it, I think it could still be done if they get to know you x
My mom divorced in the mid 60s. She had to return all her credit cards and start over. My father got a fabulous credit rating which he managed to blow in a very few years. My mom finally found a furniture store that would extend credit because of a very understanding female credit manager.
My best friend’s mom had the same issue when her husband died during the 60s. Trying to find a business to give her credit was very hard.
Yeah, credit and bank accounts were NOT easily accessible to the average woman!
What? Credit scores weren't a thing until the late 70s for individuals and weren't nationally accepted as standard practice until 1989.
@@razor191919 It had nothing to do with credit scores, but a history of moderate use and prompt, consistent payment. One by one, he managed to destroy the image presented by that history.
@@razor191919what are you spamming about? No one is saying FICO scores were the problem. It’s the systemic problems that caused the high number of issues people are sharing in these comments, and that you are spamming without addressing anything.
My grandfather ran the family bank in the 60's. My mom once described the proto ATM that he installed: people could purchase pre-paid cards inside the bank and then put them into a machine when the banks was closed and the machine would then spit out cash. He also installed a vacume-tube computer, the first computer in that city, to help with this.
You video just reminded me of that.
Wow! That right there would make a great TH-cam video.
Was the Act necessary? Yes. Did it solve everything? Not even close. Simply, without any regulation there was no consistent availability of ANY type of credit. Anyone, for any reason, could be denied the effective and safe credit options. So they turned to much more difficult, and sometimes deceitful, options that would accept them. Which means that decades and generations of debt and poor credit experience were embedded in our system. Regardless of what answers we started putting into the computer credit scores of the 1970s, the numbers were based on the old system of prejudice. We're still dealing with the baggage of our family debts even in todays credit scoring system.
@@NicoleRudolph Exactly. And it's still much harder to get and establish credit as a woman, especially if you get married early and/or come from a controlling family. Like it or not, credit cards are essential for establishing oneself as an adult.
Yes, you score higher if you are married. It’s the same for for insurance companies, like for car insurance, life insurance, things in your house insurance.
My husband is 3 years younger than me-his car insurance dropped like a stone when we married.
Yet there are people in the US want to deregulate things like banking. Regulations are a good thing.
It's surprising how short-term America's "national memory" is.
Numerous legislative acts from years past - specifically those guaranteeing protections to women and minorities - now are being challenged. Various Congressmen assert that society no longer has any need for such laws; as if no rights would be threatened now.
Thank you for having this very important discussion. It is good that you explain that the law did not resolve everything. I am glad you discussed the consumer credit part of this. I work with this issue as it relates to mortgages. Mortgage underwriters ignored the income and wealth of the wife; this law changed this. I recommend Chloe Thurston's book At the Boundaries of Homeownership as a good source.
The modern credit system is far from perfect, but one thing that I thought about while watching this video was how much less judgement people are subjected to when shopping today. My credit card is accepted almost anywhere. I don't have to convince every store that I am trustworthy and they should extend credit to me. Could you imagine a woman in the 50s going into a hardware store and trying to convince them that she needed credit to buy power tools? I can walk into Home Depot, pick up a drill and pay for it with my credit card without ever interacting with an employee. With mail order, we don't even have to worry about being judged by the cashier for our purchases or having nosy neighbors looking into our shopping cart. Obviously online retailers are collecting your purchase history and using it for things like targeted ads, so someone is watching, but there isn't the same level of community oversight.
Online shopping app like BJ’s or Costco tell me what is on sale in what isle while I’m in the store. So, no!
@megb9700 so no what?
From what I've read that advantage of mail order being relatively anonymous has been important from when it first became big. Someone who had the money could buy whatever it was they wanted and not have to deal with bigotry (including racially based price increases) or judgement.
@@EJAnonymus That was a major factor for SR&Co. (Sears) They sent the catalog to everyone, so even my Lithuanian great grandmother could have her children read it out to her and know that the prices wouldn't change based on her fluency with the language or if it looked like she could afford it.
@mwater_moon2865 Exactly this. I believe they even employed translators, which is huge considering the time period. And a lot of what I read focused on how black Americans seriously benefitted from the anonymity, allowing them to get what they needed without extra bullshit even in harshly segregated communities.
This video was amazing and helped me understand so many things that my mom had complained about in relation to credit/credit cards in the 60s-2000s. I’m super grateful that my parent’s credit helped me build credit, but it sucks hearing why my mom and aunts had it so rough. My mom and aunt’s constantly had their parents stealing their cards/information because they were unmarried, and it definitely crippled my mom and aunts’ ability to build credit for over two decades. Because they were unmarried my grandparents (who were not great people obviously) would lie to banks and say that my aunts and mom lived at home and would just be given bank info and money with NO STRINGS attached. All of them eventually moved out of state for a few years just to prove to the banks that it was not legal/permitted. For my dad’s side, I know credit was not something my grandma was literate in and she built up debt like crazy until my grandpa found out and she had to get a job. Both my parents came from very poor areas and did not have parents with a great education. It’s wild how long the government went without protecting the poor folks credit/banking info, and obviously they still don’t well
I still remember my first credit card in the early 80's, a Mobil gas credit card. It was my savior. I had just started working in retail and lived an hour away from the job. That card my my life so much easier. I never knew what schedule or how much I would be working, but I could always get the gas to get there.
In the 1940s, my mother's mother had her own house, ran a small business.
On paper, she was married, by her and my granfathwr were seperated.
Seperated to the point to where by the time my mother was born she'd probably see him every few weeks or so.
The oldest child was 10 something years between the youngest child, my mom.
Also to add, she was black woman who survived Black Codes and Jim Crow with 8 children.
3 of those children became millionaires in the 1990s. 1 died in a fight. 1 became a perenial alcoholic. And the other 4 liv3d middle class lives are doing pretty well for themselves to this day.
I'd say she did pretty well.
What a legend. GO MAMA!
My goodness. This takes me back. It was somewhat of a big thing for my mother being able to cosign on my first bank account at 16, but I was not able to get my first credit card until I entered the workforce at 27. The credit score scheme was such a hassle, but I had no idea how new that system was since it was all I knew. 1989, seriously?! My mind was blown when I moved to a country that has no system of credit scoring what-so-ever. Looking awestruck at the bank clerk: "You mean, you'll give me a credit card and just trust me with it?! Why, thank you!" International credit cards are less stress...as long as you're timely with your payments.
I’m Australian. Our credit cards are issued in a combination of factors, as we don’t have one single credit reporting agency. We have about 3, with 2 of them being major. The banks keep trying to implement a single credit score system here, but Aussies don’t love that. So if you have no credit anywhere it is still possible to get a credit card, though most people would build a credit history here by paying their utility bills and maybe being a mobile/cell phone plan.
1989 was the FICO system, credit scoring existed before then, it was just piecemeal. Shoot, didn't she say there was a credit bureau in the 1840s? found it around 3:52
My mother was shopping in a major department store in the mid-70s and tried to open a credit card there. Despite her having her own job and income she was told they would have to get permission from my father first. She told them to keep the stuff and never shopped there again. Happened to lots of women.
Fascinating video.
Interesting bit about there being something of a stigma to using credit, and it has lasting effects to this day. If you've ever seen those "culture shock" videos with Europeans wondering why American restaurants take your credit card away from the table, well that stigma is the root of it. It's to be discreet. It's so you're not announcing to the whole restaurant that you're using a credit card. Department stores used to do this too. You'd get that same leather folder thing that you still see in restaurants and the salesperson would whoosh behind a partition to process it.
I worked at Belk when they finally switched to customer-operated swipe pads in the early 2000s, and there were a lot of older customers who thought they were actually kind of trashy. I specifically remember one older lady in a sable coat and mile-high perm looking at the swipe pad and remarking "oh, just like K-mart!"
That's interesting, I always assumed it was for security. I thought, probably overkill, but okay? The legacy of stigma and need for discretion actually makes a lot more sense, and helps explain why more and more places just bring a card reader to the table.
Agree, its trashy!
@@stuffinsthegreat I hate when they bring the reader to the table, now I have to interrupt my conversation/ end meal and calculate your tip on the spot! I assumed Europe could do the tableside thing since they don't have tips to the extent the US does.
I love your videos where you dive into the deeper context of society. My mother divorced in 1968 and the only reason she could open a bank account was that we lived in a small town with small financial institutions and they knew her and her character.
So basically there was no problem and you gals are just moaning and bitching
First-rate economic and social history! Highly entertaining, too. It made me imagine the credit histories of some of my favorite female TV characters… “That Girl” and “Julia” from the 1960s, Mary Tyler Moore (newly divorced and starting over), “Mad Men’s” Joan and Peggy, Laura from “Remington Steele” (who had to create a fake male figurehead for her detective agency to be taken seriously circa 1980). Hmm, maybe that’s a premise for a follow-up to this video!
Mary Richards and Ann Marie were never married at the start of their shows. Julia Baker was widowed.
I clearly remember my parents burning the actual card on which the local small grocery store owner kept the running credit tally for our groceries and payments. (circa 1960) We then switched to a more modern grocery store where the prices were lower. They never looked back. They should teach this in high school. Thank you for the wonderfully informative lesson! As someone says below, the oral history provided by the elderly in this group is certainly interesting. Young people - learn about credit and how to use it. It can make a very big difference in your life.
The smaller stores were more expensive partly because they offered credit.
@@toomanymarys7355 Exactly!
Now I want to ask my MIL about her experience. My mother was 30 years older than my MIL and a housewife in the 60s & 70s, so that would be interesting to hear if she were still here.
@dominaevillae28 The small groceries mostly went out of business in the 40s. They were dying in the 20s, but the great depression saved them because new style groceries didn't offer credit.
@@toomanymarys7355 Exactly!
I worked in a pharmacy in high school (late 90s/early 00s) which kept house accounts. We had paper slips to write up the purchases and used plastic cards for the account and a credit card imprinter machine (the thing that goes chunk-chunk as you ran it over the card and it used the raised letters on the credit card to print the info on the paper slip).
Every afternoon we had to type the purchase slips into a computer where the accounts were kept. Once a month the 30 or so families (of about 100) who used their house account were billed for the outstanding balance. This put us in the awkward spot of cutting people off or where a family member (say a wayward son or daughter who no longer lived at home and may be struggling in one way or another) would come by and put purchases on the family account. It was super awkward to have to explain to someone that the store wasnt taking charges from their family until the debt was paid down or that their parents had called and told us to not allow that person to use the house account anymore.
My mother ended up with her name on my parent's Sears card when they got married because my father and some other account had the exact same name. She was the first woman she knew of to have a credit card in her name and the first woman at that store to get one.
The cool thing about the Charge-A-Plate was the series of cuts in the edges. Each department store had a special place for their "bites". You had your plate cut for each store you wanted credit in and the plate would drop into the machine. The Charge-
a-Plate billing system knew which store you used the plate in.
Community property states operated rather differently, so much of this doesn't really apply to me as a woman who has married, divorced, re-married, ang been widowed in Texas. Even with divorce decree or letters testamentary in hand, I've had so much trouble continuing accounts, changing names on accounts, canceling accounts.
Oh lordy! when we moved to Texas I had so much trouble just getting a driver's licence so I could vote! It took me 3 visits and over 6 months to get all the paperwork. Evidently my passport and SS card weren't good enough to prove that my last name was mine, nor was my marriage certificate enough proof that I'd been married, it HAD to be the notarized marriage license, which was more than Homeland security needed for my passport.... I warned my mom she could never move here since the registry office she got married through had burned down and they wouldn't have her original records to send to her!
I love this video! I collect historic catalogs and the ordering/shipping pages are my favorite section. So interesting how ordering slowly went from cash only to credit. Sears went from "absolutely no installments" in the 1880s to credit/installments in the 1930s.
Though we think of them as a department store, they didn't even have physical locations until the 1920s! So it's no wonder they didn't have good systems for that in place. Hard to do a credit check on a person you can't verify exists.
In the early 1980's I graduated college and was hired (along with several classmates) for a job that required travel. The company had us all apply for credit cards. We all had the same salary. Only one of us was denied, the only woman in the group. The owner of the company had to contact the bank to personally request that I get that card.
I remember my mother being very upset that she couldn't even get her own bank account in the early 80's. My parents had a joint account, and she couldn't even withdraw money for groceries without his signature (which she consistently signed herself). My mother controlled my father's finances, paid all the bills, but she wasn't capable enough or trustworthy enough to control her own.
I remember the day she explained to me that she couldn't get an account without a husband or a father to sign for her. Hey father was dead and her husband was abusive, so even if she worked, she was out of luck. I was *furious* that I would never have the same access in life as my brother, simply because he was born male. I'm still furious for all the women who came before me, and I respect and admire their strength, and appreciate their fighting for me and for the future.
Really. I had my own bank account at 18, in the 70's. I also had my own credit cards, in my own name without my husband. I had a job and I had the credit.
In the early 80s plenty of banks were offering accounts to single women. She could have shopped around & found one- but nobody should HAVE to do that, ya know? No good reason she shouldnt have been able oopperate with the same local institution as her husband.
@@JakeysMom07easy to say unless you lived in rural America with one bank in town. The next bank an hour away. My mother had the same problem with her paying bills and everything in my father's name. A lot depended on where you lived as well.
@@paularies3282 NE Lincoln area's in 2011~ and marriage husband i couldn't have a separate account and or wife had to signing knowing that i/husband/boyfriend's had it
somehow she ended up getting one by herself and or hiding marriage assets ect
My mother was born in 1920, and worked as a clerk in a hosiery store where she met my dad in 1946, and worked as an accountant for a dry cleaners after they got married.
She had the old metal charge plates from the 1950's from local Nashville department stores, but everything she had was as "Mrs (Dad's full name)".
I vividly remember her excitement at getting the first credit card that had her own full name on it, in my senior year in 1979.
She had never had one issued in her own name, until she was almost 60 years old.
She told how she'd bought things on layaway plans and had dealt with putting dairy and butcher bills on her "tab", to write a check for each month.
But she really didn't have a credit card in her own name until 1979.
My fraternal aunt, on the other hand, lived in a small town in Colorado, and never married, and she had credit in her own name from having worked for the Missouri-Pacific railroad, going way back.
Thank you for the Bailey montage at the end to lighten the mood. Adorable fluffball.
In the late 60s, my psychologist mom made much more than my minister dad, and she could not get a credit card in her name. period. All her cards were ones where my dad would open the credit account and my mom could use it as his wife. And yeah, she paid the bill.
Very interesting review of the credit process. I remember shopping for my senior High School clothing with my mom's J. L. Hudson charge plate in 1962. I had seen her use it of course, but it made me feel quite adult to do it on my own.
This is so good, as always the level of detail and the delivery of everything and the inclusion of original adds and newspaper comics is flawless and so well done but I also love the addition of the little bloopers section at the end. Its so fun. I already knew about 40% of any given part of this story and it was so cool to get a more complete view, really enjoyed this one.
I couldn’t get a drivers license in WI without my husband being there to vouch for me. This was 2008. I was employed full time (same company for over 5 years), my name was on the lease of the WI home we were living in and I had a US passport.
Just 7 years ago I couldnt get my drivers license without my marriage certificate and they said it didn't look legal 🤨. I'd changed my name had my ss# and had been married for 5 years. In Arizona it was no problem but Kansas was an asshole about it. I had to drive across state boarders 45 min north sit for 2 hrs at the records office to get my marriage certificate stamped with a special seal from the state to get legal to drive. My husband didn't have a damn problem. He was in and out the same day
@@HosCreates It took me over 9 months and 3 separate appointments to get my DL in Texas (required to vote), my husband took 2 hours of waiting but since my US PASSPORT didn't match my birth certificate I had to have the notarized copy of my marriage licence, NOT the marriage certificate that the SS admin and passport used 20 years earlier to change my name. Thank goodness the registrars office in MO could send me an official copy (for a fee of course) but I had to warn my mom she could never move here since the location they got theirs from burned over a decade ago and they don't have those documents to copy!
My grandmother-in-law was alive for this and still repeats what is commonly said on the internet now about women and credit. So she would have been the type that would have not been offered credit based upon her husband because he was not upstanding in society.
This also left out another form of credit that might have been available but I'm not sure how common it was: pawn. Because an item of value was needed, anyone could take advantage of it. But you still had the barrier of needing to pawn in the first place.
I believe the "loan shark" section basically covers this !? Pawn shops/loan sharks are almost the same thing. Still to this day if you go to poor neighborhoods, you see "payroll loans" (legal loan sharks ) and pawn shops - where folks dump valuables & hope they can - someday - but them back.
Both basically parasites on the poor.
When my mom moved us to Phoenix in 1976 after my parents' divorce to be near her mother, she told me about property laws in Arizona at the time.
Women who held property before marriage were stripped of ownership, which was given to her husband. Her husband could force her to quit her job, close her bank accounts, and seize her credit cards.
Women at that time were classified in Arizona law with children, animals, and the criminally mentally ill. Those laws didn't change until sometime in the 1980s.
so very little has changed since there hmmm. Seems as though a large contingent of American types want this back.
Holy crap! Im glad the laws changed when my mil left my fil in 2017. she got 50% of assets and alimony.
I remember in the mid 80s my mother couldn't get a credit card because all of her credit had been when she and my father were married. She finally went to work for the payroll department of a department store and they gave her a store card at the end of the decade and that finally let her build up her credit record.
Hmmmm. I am very much into the history of sewing machines (I own more than 42 vintage Singer machines). I have always heard that the reason Singer beat out rival manufacturers of the era was because they set up an easy payment plan for thier machines, while other manufacturers wanted payment in full.
So even if the fictional young lady in your scenario decided to whip up a homemade wardrobe, she could have purchased her lovely sewing machine with a tiny down payment and recurring small payments, which would be easy to manage because she would have a well paying job and the wardrobe to wear to work.
She still would have had to purchase all the fabric and supplies from local stores! And find the time. And sewing patterns for gowns weren't around in the 1860s (really didn't start up until the 1900s). Nor instructions.
They would have to have sewing skills to make their clothing.
1. Sewing machine cost as much as what a teacher made in a single year.
2. Apartment living really wasn't a thing. They would have rented a room at a boarding house and usually wouldn't allow the machinery and furniture.
3. Time to sew. The 40 hour work week wasn't a thing and spare time was really a luxury. Also sewing by candle and gas lamps would have been very challenging
My first ever credit was Singer, for a sewing machine in 1977. I think I paid $25 down and $15 a month until $0 balance.
@@somethingclever8916Apartments were very much a thing by the 1880s. Almost none have survived outside a very major cities, but they absolutely were. Read Sister Carrie for a book in 1900 that talks about apartments in some detail.
Boarding houses were rare by 1900. Rooming houses were extremely common.
Thanks for covering this. I didn't know about the earlier reform acts before 74. I have been arguing this for a while with people. My parents, especially my Mother, taught me how to build credit. First you get a charge plate (credit card) with a local department store. I think I had to take them a paystub. Then you go up to an American Express card. You paid a yearly fee and the balance had to be paid off every month. Then you can get a bank card (Mastercard, Visa). These usually did not have a yearly fee. They made their money off of the interest and the card fee from the merchant. As you have them for awhile they will increase your credit limit.
There was also lay-away for the cash shoppers. You pick your winter coat out in August and they store it with your name on it. You pay towards it, in cash, weekly for several months. I think there was a card where they gave you a stamp or receipt everytime you make a payment.
Your example of the suit is buying on-time. You could furnish a whole apartment on-time but you ended up paying twice the value of the goods.
Layaway didn't charge in the 80s, but you didn't get the item until you finished paying and if you missed a payment, you lost it. Insane system for people terrible at money.
@@toomanymarys7355 OK. It's been awhile. Thanks.
They still have the furnish an apartment thing for more than twice the cost, it's called rent to own. I explain it like a car lease for a couch. A leading US version called Rent A Center just changed their corporate name last year, but they're still around.
@@mwater_moon2865 Thanks. I'm living in the 'burbs now so I don't walk around a city as much and see these things. I wasn't sure because we have all that cheap walmart furniture now.
My 21 year old sister bought her $17k house in the early 70s by threatening the builder with suing him if he didn’t sell her a house. He had refused to sell her a home because she wasn’t married, even though she had a good job and had bought a car on credit before. My parents had their Sears metal charge plate taken away in the 80s and replaced with a plastic credit card, and were pretty pissed about it lol.
In 2015 (!), when I went to get pre-approved for a mortgage, the man at the bank asked me about my fiancé's income. I told him, "what ABOUT his income? He's not the one buying this house, I am!" I ended up getting a mortgage from a different credit union, from a very nice woman who never once assumed that I needed a man to buy a house!
If in the US, I'd err on the side of the bank trying to ask every potential question that could benefit you in this case. I have an explaination below if interested because my spouse and I ran into through moving states for work:
Some US states make it illegal to purchase property without notifying your spouse regardless of if your gender. The spouse of the purchaser still has to sign a document stating that they are aware of the sale and don't want their name on the property in those states for the sale to be finalized. (CA is the worst offender)
Because of the beurocratic nightmare some states are, if you move to one of those states later and keep your property, it could be seen as an intentionally hidden asset that the state will penalize you for later, if high value property is purchased within a certain time frame before a wedding without a spouse's signature included in the sale.
Without a prenuptual all assests become group owned by default regardless and might have to be reassigned if the marriage is annulled.
We are still married so we didn't have to deal with this, but heard horror stories from locals where we are working temporarily.
@@Gabonro "Without a prenuptual all assests become group owned by default regardless and might have to be reassigned if the marriage is annulled." Not QUITE, depends on the state you get married in.
In some states only assets purchased or improved upon after the legal date of marriage (might vary from the day of ceremony) count as community property (joint assets) while anything before is individually held unless otherwise "mingled" as common property, ie. bills/ upkeep are paid by both parties.
My mom clerked for a family court lawyer in Mississippi and this came up once with a couple who had built a house on long held family property. Basically, ALL of the land that had been his before they married, was still his, (taxes on it had been paid out of a trust) EXCEPT the house itself and "improved" land (ie. driveway and lawn). Since the private road the driveway connected to was still his brother's, they could legally charge a huge fee to anyone who purchased the house for use of said road. Made it a real pain the behind to sell. On the other hand she was legally able to keep all of the wedding gifts that were not explicitly addressed to both of them -- including cash she had placed in her personal account-- because the common practice at that time/location was gifts were to the bride, and because their official filing date wasn't until the Monday AFTER the weekend they had the wedding.
Genuinely delusional
Excellent video. I particularly like the initial setup of the young woman moving towns for a new job. One of the things critics of the credit score system never acknowledge is that America is an extremely large and mobile society compared to others and that mobility, together with no centralized identification methodology, meant that the opportunities for persistent fraud were huge.
In the 70s and 80s, I preferred to use layaway to credit. You had to wait to get what you purchased, but it was a lot cheaper in the long run.
Oooooor just wait until you can afford it.
The point of credit cards now is the cash back.
@@toomanymarys7355 Waiting until you can afford it is the best option in most cases. Layaway was the best option at Christmas time. This way the gift is not in the house to be discovered. All credit cards encourage people to spend more than they can afford. Cash back is just a hook to get someone to pick that card. I was able to retire early because I listened to Dave Ramsey.
@@toomanymarys7355 It adds up. And the financial insulation. Loose a debit card and either your rent, mortgage, autoloan, etc. bounces and everyone's is pissed or your paying through the nose for the overdraft loan. Someone swipes you CC and you're legaly on the hook for a small amount total ($50, I think?) and my cards wave that.
I worked at Montgomery Ward in the 1990's. We had a few senior aged women customers who still had cards in their (often deceased) husband's names. They kept up the account, paid the bill, etc. Had they tried to get an account in their own names, they never would have been able to. It was an unspoken rule amongst us on the floor that we accept their cards. I was sad when corporate began shutting down their accounts, knowing they would not be able to get their own accounts.
Nicole this is a great video. Well researched! Fascinating stuff. 5 stars
Merchant credit still happens at local convenience stores. I lived in a more rural suburb of Chicago, and for many years we had only one convenience store. The family who owned it offered credit until around 2015ish. They received a lot of pushback when they stopped, but people weren’t able to pay them and it was putting the business at risk. Just the other week, our local convenience store here in Michigan let my husband pay for something the next day. We have lots of different stores, so it’s a different situation.
Back when I was young & broke (making min wage which was 2-4 dollars an hour at that time) I would use Lay Away. I don't know if any stores offer this anymore. It used to be very difficult to get a credit card & it was considered neccessary to have to build credit. (Things have really changed & lending is very pedatory now)
A few years back, PBS had a dramatic series all about the first actual department store in England (London) that was actually conceived by an American. Selfridges. The show was a dramatization about the family & the store employees & covered multiple decades. It was a fascinating show since it showed how much social change occurred at the turn of the 19th into the 20th century which included how people shopped. Once upon a time you would go to the general store with a list & a clerk would go in the back & get everything you needed. Credit was basically a "tab" You did not putter around & touch the merchandise. Shopping was a different experience. Considering it was usually the lady of the house who ran the household & was in charge of the finances, it seems odd that women would not have credit scores.
Layaway used to be the key to a good Christmas when I was a kid. Even when my firstborn was little. I was really disappointed when Walmart stopped offering it.
@yensid4294
Shopping is going back this way in some areas due to theft.
I paid for my luggage and wedding reception table cloths at a BX in Germany in 2000. I think the BX still has layaway because of how helpful it is to poor military folk.
Layaway was around til at least the turn of the century (1999-2000, not 1899-1900) since I worked for a company that made software for tracking it. That and rent to own (like a car lease but for household goods basically). The stores doing that sort of thing got in more than a bit of trouble for some of the predatory behavior. Things like keeping all payments if one was late or huge re-stocking fees for cancelations, employees committing fraud at the stores, etc.
I opened my first account as a minor (17), thus my mother had partial control over it even as I aged out. I eventually decided to take the small hit to my account length and open up a new account so that she couldn’t have access anymore since she refused to take half a day to come with me to the bank and take her name off. She had stolen money from my older brothers before and excused herself by saying she put it back later, but I wasn’t going to do that dance.
Still, I can’t imagine her leaving her family home before 18 and eventually having to deal with the fallout from a now divorced husband screwing up her credit by proxy from his addictions.
i bought a lot of my clothes on lay-a-way in the 70's it was super common at all kinds of stores. even in 1984 when i needed to buy a car, my husband had to co-sign the loan.
In the early 2000s, a local bank (still a national company) did a giant system update and my mom's separate and personal bank account got rolled into my father's. My mom was told she couldn't separate out her account without my father's signature "because it was in his account." My mom tore them a new one, got my father to sign, and got her account separated out the way it should have been. Then she tore them a new one again, closed up all her accounts, and moved them to a different bank. My dad and I did the same because fuck that noise.
My family runs a small grocery store in a tiny rural town. We still have credit accounts that people use because most people don't carry their wallets around on the day-to-day, and when we had to switch to a new point-of-sale system this past year, we had to look for one that specifically still had the account functionality (it was super difficult to find).
Let’s not forget the predatory lending practices of the 1990s. Credit cards were pretty easy to get. I made $9 an hour and every few months one of the major credit cards companies raised my
Limit until it was at $30,000. I wasn’t the only one. I knew a lot of people who had crazy high limits. Some never went close to the limit but a lot of people just kept spending themselves into bankruptcy. Sometimes repeatedly, as there were high interest companies who preyed on people who just filed bankruptcy and couldn’t file for so many years. So instead of keeping their limits at reasonable levels the CC companies got congress to make getting a bankruptcy where the debts are fully discharged almost impossible. At best someone would be made to pay a certain amount back.
when my aunt told me about how credit scores work this summer (I don't live in the US) I was absolutely flabbergasted, you mean actually paying off my debts makes me look bad?? but this video has made me understand a bit better how this system came to be, it's super interesting!
This is misunderstood. Paying off the card increases you rating. However, cancelling the card does. It has to do with the ratio of borrowing power to ability to pay. When you close your credit card account, you decrease your borrowing limit, thus reducing your overall score.
Americans think they live in paradise when in fact they're getring robbed daily. My third world country has mandatory free bank accounts for ALL workers to receive their wages, and also a FREE bank acc for any citizen even if you're not formally employed.
@@sherrillsturm7240Wrong, if you have less debt your credit score becomes worse. This is to keep americans in debt forever
@@sherrillsturm7240and heaven forbid you prefer to use cash. No credit score for you !
@@sherrillsturm7240it also affects your credit history length. Close an account or loan? The credit age decreases and your score goes down as well. This is why I keep my student loans open with small balance. My student loans have been around decades.
The Bank of Nova Scotia refused to allow my mom to open a checking account. They wouldn't do it unless her husband came in and signed. To this day our family does not deal with the Bank of Nova Scotia. Both Bank of Montreal and Royal Bank would allow women to open accounts.
Interesting. I had the exact opposite experience. I was going into the Ivey MBA and all major banks offer a $100K credit line to us bc they know we’ll be good for it upon graduation. Well, RBC and BMO wanted my father to sign as guarantor. He was perfectly happy to do so but I was mortally offended. I was 29, divorced, employed - did not want daddy to sign up for my “good behaviour”. Scotia was the only bank that handed me the papers and said “done”. I’ve stayed with them even though our joint (married) account is with a different bank where my husband used to work. Took my son to Scotia, too.
@TheResearchMom Huge difference between a loan and a bank account. A loan is the bank's money and a bank account is your money.
THANK YOU
It drives me nuts how the past (even the recent past) gets blamed while the present's aspects also get exaggerated.
Nicole: excellent report. Enjoyed it immensely. Carol from California
My mother got her first job in the mid 1970's and went to open her own NYC bank account and the man at the bank refused to open an account for her without my father's signature. She came home and cried.
In the same time period, I don't remember having any trouble with that. It was a passbook account. I think that was somewhat regional. I lived in New England.
@@kitefan1 this happened at a bank in mid town Manhattan.
@@anastasia10017 When I went for a bank account at Chase in the Village in 1999 they refused me. I went around the corner to HSBC and no problem. I was 40 at the time.
@@anastasia10017 Sad.
how old was she at the time. 14? 16? 18? 22?
sort of makes a difference
When my parents moved together in the early 1980s, they didn't have credit cards. My dad applied for one and was refused even though he had a good job. My mom went shopping, was offered a card by a clerk, and got accepted.
My mother, who is not white and married at 22 feels a lot like that law changed this for her, to the extent she remembers what music was playing in the store the first time she used a credit card in her own name
This made me rethink that credit card that Barbie had (which she had before 1974).
So it wasn't exactly a mark of the future aspirations, but rather a mark of current affluence back then (imagine how flush and reputable you had to be to be able to own a credit card as a single woman, hmmm.... 🤔)
If I remember anything from Debt:The First 5000 Years it's that you could make a notch on a piece of wood that the store owner keeps behind the counter or other highly concrete methods of keeping track of all sorts of kinds of debt.
When I bought my first house in 2001, the deed stated my name “[comma] a single woman.” I asked if I could have it removed and was told “no, that’s the law.” Years later, I got married, sold the house, bought a new one, the new deed did not state our names “[comma] a married couple.” Now, in 2024, I’m divorced I filed a quit claim deed to get the house back in my name, the deed once again states my name followed by “a single woman.” It’s a small thing, but the law still requires only single women state our marital status on property we own!
Wow, that's infuriating! Like, wtf.
I’ve seen deeds that say “a single man”. Actually, when I bought my house, the two owners were business partners, and it said “So-and-So, a married woman, and So-and-So, a single man.” This was in 2014.
Did it strike you that it might also say, a single man for men?
Such bs! Would a single man have to list his being single?
@oooh19 Yes it does.
I actually had a version of this. When I was around 19-21, I tried to get a credit card through the bank I had been with since I was 13 (my parents were trying to teach me). However, since I was under 25, the bank had to fax my information to their hub. I tried twice, never got the card. Finally, a different credit card company sent the thing in the mail saying "Want a credit card?" So I signed up for it. Bad part is, this was like 2015ish, so pretty recent
In Australia, it is still legal to deny a woman a loan/mortgage if she is taking maternity leave. Even if the leave is paid and she has a return date to work.
Hunh. I can sort of see it if the maternity leave is unpaid. Because she has no proof of expected future income.
Apparently in Canada too. We had an offer on our house 2 years ago but their financing fell through because she was on paid maternity leave. It had been pre approved before the baby came....
When I bought mine, I recall there being very specific verbiage about my being unmarried in the paperwork, which felt very weird, I'm gobsmacked that just because someone is/gets pregnant that can cause everything to fall through.
I’m retired now and I’ve been advised to NEVER cut up my credit card. I have more than enough Superannuation but, because I don’t have a job, I can’t get a credit card.
@@bellablue5285spouses may have property rights in property even if not on the title, so someone’s marital status is always listed on residential property deeds. If you are not listed as unmarried, the title examiner has to investigate whether a spouse could have a claim any time you go to sell or mortgage real estate. It actually helps protect the spouse with less financial power from the other spouse mortgaging or selling marital property.
My first credit card was a Carson’s credit card. I remember mentioning to my boss at the time, that I was having difficulty getting the credit card. He was a nice guy, so he actually called their customer service, talked to them, and was able to persuade them to give me a credit card. That was in 1980. Which would be considered modern times. 😳
I loved my Carson’s card. I was mad that the company going out of business hurt MY credit though.
@@megankuchta9145 Wow!
Excellent video! As a certified klutz, I enjoyed the outtakes! Glad to see Bailey too! 🥳
It's all so dependant on her country, or even where in her country a woman lived too. My mum began working in Australia in the early 60s and never needed a man's involvement for her to have her own bank accounts, purchase vehicles or property.
in the UK, you could not open a bank account as a woman, without your father or husband counter signing for you until 1975, we were the last in the west
Was that law or just your experience?
@@mojrimibnharb4584 it was law, i am not sure if banks ever made exceptions before this, or could for some women. My Grandmother never had a bank account, until after my grand father died at the end of 88
My mom got her first charge plate in 1969 as a divorcee, but also had a lot of money, owned a house that she bought in cash, and had wealthy connections.
To this day my mother refuses to have credit cards, she says they’re a scam and will drain you clean lol
Agreed!
I was mailed a credit card in 1985 (Aotearoa not USA), it was so scandalous I made it into the newspaper 😂
Ha, I think I actually recall that happening, it was a shocker then! I seem to recall there was a lot of discussion about stopping the banks increasing credit limits whenever they liked also to stop people getting unnecessary debt (fellow Kiwi ❤)
This is insane. I'm 35 I got a store credit cards at 20 by myself. I got a bank credit card at 28 and had no problems getting it. I didnt need my husband to sign up for any of them. I now have two bank credit cards. I didnt want to hurt my credit closing the first one. I now have excelent credit and im saving for a house. Ive a savings account my husband can't access. Im glad we arent living in the past! #vintagestylenotvintagevalues!
All your insurance companies are using your credit score to give you rates. This is important.
Employers can also check the credit scores for applicants as well. I think because they believe that if your credit score is bad, you're more likely to steal? It's bullshit, but I have definitely had jobs warn me that credit checks would happen when I applied.
@@christineg8151 If your score is low, you are not likely to be as conscientious. But that's the problem with these kinds of statistics that even if they hold for the average, there are a lot of cases that it doesn't apply. I have this concern with car insurance monitoring drivers behavior. Maybe speeders are more likely to get into an accident, or maybe they drive on roads where you have to speed to keep up with traffic. Are they dangerous or not? Doesn't matter, if on average they are dangerous, they all will be considered dangerous.
Not too long ago, the local corner store would extend up to about $20 of credit to their regular customers for the week. I knew of one which would do that the last week of the month, and they would get the foodstamps at the end of the beginning of the next month. This I witnessed in the 1980"s.
Just like we could see in the show Little House in the Prairie. This is how most started credit weather married or not.
In the 1940s, it was too dangerous for women to carry money, even in our little rural Missouri town. My grandmother, the wife of the local grocery store owner (and also co-owner) had credit accounts at the local stores downtown and my grandfather paid them regularly.
Is That why women hid money in their matresses?
This video actually confirms my mother's claims about credit, something I had a discussion with over someone my mothers age the other month claiming that "women could get credit since the 70s". My mother has constantly told me she wasn't able to get credit until the early to mid 90s, and by then her credit score was horrible and she wasn't ever able to recover it. The negative on the argument claimed that my mother "should have had" credit in the 70's, that she just "didn't use it right". Which, from who it was coming from, annoyed me. (Also another woman, however, not my mother -- my partners).
Great grandma Edie, b. 1901, immigrant from England with her American Army husband has 3 children by 1925. Her daughter, grandma Mabel, told me about great grandma's credit: "She used it the way credit is supposed to be used. She went and paid it off the next day." Fast forward to today: Myself, at 56, have never had a credit card, so with no credit history, cannot get credit, even though I have a very low, stable income through my disability stipend. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Hugs
I remember in the late 1960s, my parents all of a sudden started getting a flood of credit cards in the mail. Without applying for them. They just showed up.
That still happens. They will target newly 18 year olds and people with poor credit by sending credit cards in the mail that you can activate over the phone or online
I also call my dog "ma'am" when she's doing stuff like that 😂🥰 (great episode as always!)
My mother recalls that she was not able to get a credit card or open a bank account without my Dad coming in to the bank. This was from the 1960s to the 1980s.
i remember in the 80s not being able to get my own credit card, (in northern bc canada) even though i had my own money.
25:52 it's not the same as credit...but my grand parents applied for a Mortgage together...and the banker refused to take my grandmother's income into account because "she's just going to get pregnant and stop working" this was in new york in the late 50s early 60s...
Wow
As a 61 year old male I have to say despite the historians story, the journey is not over.
Just because there is anti-discrimination legislation in place, did not mean it did not happen. It did. I am a lot older, I remember the 1970s, 80s, and even into the 90s, just how much discrimination still 'lingered' (like the question on most companies' minds was what I intended to do with my uterus). Also during that time, the pay gap was huge, just by virtue of being female, they paid you less.
Nor do I believe that the historic credit systems went as smoothly as narrated here.
Always love your content but I had to comment and say I love that photograph of Bette Davis with her feet up on the desk.
Problem is men were easily given credit regardless of their actual creditworthiness. Many stories wherein woman was the one working, the husband unemployed, yet credit was extended on his behalf and not hers.
Hello Nicole, I’m old enough to remember the 70s and remember the amount of work women have done to gain all kinds of freedoms of rights in my country and in the United States. Just to see in 2024 to see the clock has turned back to the 60s. I’m sorry to rain on your parade.
What kinds of freedoms are now in the 1960s? Are you worried that it's not easy enough to murder children in some places, or what?
women in my state were routinely denied mortgages until after the fair credit act was passed.
I was born in 2001, Australia, and I’ve only ever used debit cards my entire life. The sheer concept of having credit with a store itself is so interesting. Services like Afterpay have taken over, but I’m not sure if merchant credit could ever come back with banks handle it all. Would people trust it? Maybe?? But nobody would risk it.
Fantastic essay on the history of (American) credit cards. I’ve learnt a lot :)
Hi! I love your videos and I was wondering if you could make one about the history of the poster girl dresses that we’re seeing everywhere now or maybe just like women lingerie outside and what culturally was going on to prompt it because I’m positive this isn’t the only time in history where this type of this has happened. Hope you see this :))