"Ask him what he was getting paid that year."
I finished grad school in '74 and got a professional counseling job in 12/74. My yearly salary was $9168.
I went out and bought a new Schwinn 10-speed and a new lower-end Datsun (before they were Nissan,for $2200) and was rolling in money. In the spring of '76 I took my girlfriend to Great Britain for 2 weeks to celebrate her college graduation. Heck, I bought her a Pentax SLR and all the Beatles albums too.
Money seemed to last longer back then. Of course, there weren't computers and cell phones to buy and cable bills to pay either.