The 1990s have popular culture in a death grip. The fashion is back, Oasis have filled stadiums again, and Love Story – the Disney+ drama chronicling the real-life romance between John F Kennedy jnr and Carolyn Bessette – has become the platform’s most streamed drama.
Life today is astonishingly different from 30 years ago. Things we routinely spend money on now – streaming subscriptions, food delivery, fitness apps, takeaway coffees and online shopping hauls – would baffle our 1990s selves.
So while we go gaga for ’90s culture, are there money lessons to be learned from that decade?
Don’t look back in anger
It’s July 1996, and the Fugees’ version of Killing Me Softly is drifting out from radios all over Ireland. The Celtic Tiger has yet to roar, and households are far less affluent than today.
Household gross disposable income – the money available to satisfy people’s needs and wants for personal consumption and an important indicator of whether we are becoming better or worse off – was €34 billion in 1996, according to figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO). It’s more than €174 billion today.
There were fewer dual-income households then. Women’s participation in the workforce was almost 20 per cent less than today.
Our homes were less valuable 30 years ago too, averaging €88,664 in the 1990s, according to CSO figures. In the 10 years following, however, prices rose by an average of 270 per cent, according to a report published by Permanent TSB in 2006.
The percentage of disposable income required to service a 25-year mortgage rose from 27 per cent in 1996 to 38 per cent by 2006. House prices collapsed again in the financial crash, of course.
The median price of a home purchased in the 12 months to April 2026 was €394,980.
It’s worth noting that rent in 1996 was just 1.7 per cent of household expenditure, says Anthony Dawson, a statistician with the CSO. In 2026, the average household spends 6.3 per cent of their expenditure on rent, he says.
The average number of children per family was 26 per cent higher in 1996 compared with 2022, according to census figures.
Yes, we had more children to feed and clothe, less valuable homes and less money, but there were also fewer things to spend our money on.
Regular Botox and coffee delivery by drone? Our wallets were unperturbed by that.
The CSO basket of goods and services is a representative list the agency uses to calculate the consumer price index (CPI) and measure inflation. It tracks the spending habits and purchasing patterns of an average Irish household.
These habits change regularly, and items are added or removed from the basket to reflect this.
Spending €45 a month on a manicure? Blame it on the grunge or “heroin chic” fashion trends en vogue in the 1990s, but the CSO didn’t collect the prices of those things back then.
“Getting your nails done is something that happens an awful lot now, but you didn’t really have that in 1996,” says Dawson.
“We collect those prices in the basket now, but they weren’t in the basket in the 1990s.”
Items removed from the CSO’s basket in 1996 included jelly, hi-fis, records and heavy overcoats. New entrants that year included muesli, filter coffee, alcopops and condoms.
Eating out
Remember eating out in the 1990s? A kebab shop pit stop en route home from the nightclub doesn’t count. We went to restaurants in the 1990s all right, but not as frequently as we do today.
Household spending on eating out is now three times as much as it used to be. As a category of spending, eating out has gone from accounting for just 4.3 per cent of the consumer basket in 1996 to 14.7 per cent of it this year, according to CSO figures.
The cost of eating out in a restaurant has increased by 162 per cent since 1996, according to Dawson.
“We spend a lot more money on eating out now than we did in 1996, and I think it’s a lot more money than people realise,” he says.
If you want to give your wallet a 1990s summer, then cut back on your dining out by three-quarters.
The cost of alcohol, drunk at home and in bars and restaurants, has increased by 104 per cent since 1996. But we’re drinking less of it now than we used to.
Our consumption fell by more than 30 per cent in the two decades to 2021, according to the Health Research Board. That’s good news for our wallets and our health.
In 1996 alcohol made up close to 12 per cent of the basket. By 2026 this had fallen to 5.7 per cent. The CSO added nonalcoholic beer to its basket in 2023.
There are savings on nightclubs today too.
Entry to the POD nightclub in Dublin, The Kitchen, RíRá or Lillies would have cost you about £10 in old money – but you don’t have to budget for that any more.
“We removed nightclubs entirely from the basket in 2023,” says Dawson. “There were so few left, we were finding it hard to get prices for them.”
Takeaways
We’re spending vastly more on takeaways than we did in the 1990s. Things have evolved from calling a number to order a chicken chow mein for pickup at your local Chinese. Now you can just tap an app to order a world of cuisines and fine dining for delivery.
“The price of a takeaway itself is up 138 per cent since 1996,” says Dawson.
We’re ordering a takeaway 2.9 times a month, spending an average of €46.49, according to a 2023 report by food delivery platform Just Eat. Some 37 per cent of orders are for families.
Spending by credit-card holders in restaurants was up 10 per cent year on year in May and up 7 per cent in fast-food outlets, according to figures from AIB.
If you’re trying to save money, this budget line might be worth a look.
Household spending on food shopping, by contrast, has dropped from 18.6 per cent in 1996 to 12.3 per cent in 2026, according to Dawson. The increase in spending on dining out and takeaways is no doubt contributing to this.
When we do buy groceries, some are paying a food delivery service provider to deliver them – a service that wasn’t available in the 1990s.
Nearly a quarter of people in Ireland used a food delivery service for groceries in 2023, spending an average of €174.30 on grocery delivery services a month, according to Just Eat.
Our total annual expenditure on food delivery and takeaway orders is an estimated €2.2 billion, excluding VAT, according to the report. That’s money we weren’t spending 30 years ago.
Smoking
No one wants to go back to the bad old days when smoky bars, restaurants and hotels were the norm – no matter how cool the Carolyn Bessette character in Love Story looks dragging on a Marlboro Light.
In 1996, cigarettes, loose tobacco and cigars made up 4.8 per cent of expenditure in the shopping basket, according to CSO figures.
Today, that basket now also includes vapes, but tobacco products account for just 1.3 per cent of our shopping basket.
Ireland’s smoking ban in 2004 made us the first country in the world to ban the habit in indoor workplaces.
In 1998, 31 per cent of adults, or almost one in three people in Ireland, smoked tobacco products, according to the Survey of Lifestyle, Attitudes and Nutrition (Slán). That’s fallen to 17 per cent of people today. Kicking the habit has saved money and saved lives.
Music
The top-selling album of the summer of 1996? It was Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill. Fuelled by hits such as Ironic, it became the bestselling album in the UK and Ireland that year. Maybe you bought the CD?
CDs, tapes and videos accounted for about 0.3 per cent of our expenditure in 1996.
In 2026, subscriptions to all audio visual streaming services, such as Spotify and Netflix, were 0.4 per cent – so about the same.
The big difference these days is we don’t really get to own what we buy.
Buying a CD meant a one-time purchase for permanent, physical ownership. Paying a subscription to stream something, an access rather than ownership model for a monthly fee, would have been hard for us to get our heads around in 1996.
Personal stereos were removed from the CSO basket in 2006. Streaming services were added in 2016.
Phone
If you had a mobile phone in 1996, you were a “yuppie”. Carphone Warehouse opened its first Irish shop in Ireland that year.
“Hiya, Kate! It’s me, the guy from the bar!” There are few sentences more memorable than this from Esat Digifone’s 1999 mobile phone ad, showcasing the advantages of text over talk.
Back then we kept conversations short to keep mobile bills under control. Calling overseas or roaming when abroad? That is one expense you don’t want to go back to.
Mobile phone handsets and contracts have dropped in price by 637 per cent since 1996, says Dawson.
Disposable cameras and photo developing were removed from the CSO’s shopping basket in 2016. Digital cameras were removed in 2023, as were landline phones.
Meanwhile, TVs keep getting bigger, says Dawson.
“Every time we update the basket, we have to update the size of the TV. It used to be 28 inches, now it’s 44,” he says.
Swap
While few people would choose to swap 2026 for 1996 entirely, there are some aspects of life 30 summers ago worth revisiting.
Next time you spend your hard-earned money on a takeaway coffee, a food delivery fee, a fitness app subscription, a sleep tracker, an in-app purchase, or you use a buy-now-pay-later service to get a new outfit, ask what your less-wealthy 1996 self would say about it.
Stripping away some of the spending habits that didn’t exist 30 years ago could have a surprising impact on your finances.
