Davey7:
Don had only been pulling in an ad exec's salary for a few years at that point, plus he had a wife and two children. The house was an expensive one, in a very good Ossining, NY neighborhood.
Added to that, the midcentury years weren't the credit-card society we have today; credit was not as easy to get. You typically had to apply in writing and furnish three local references, which were closely checked, plus a local bank reference. The idea behind granting credit then was to have as few losses as possible and to entice customers with an attractive interest rate. Today, easy credit makes easy profits through high interest - particularly from those who pay minimum payments - and fees for everything. A greater amount of loss is considered acceptable because profits on the rest are staggering.
People then did not charge complete new kitchens as often as happens today because of that. In 1959, my parents rebuilt our house after a fire, and courtesy of the insurance company, most of the kitchen was new, including a 1958 GE Combination (my mother's usual last-year's model savings strategy) that was the envy of the neighborhood. But they couldn't justify a new range, because the old 1948 Frigidaire RK-70 40-incher was still perfectly good, if stylistically outdated. Mom lived with that situation until 1974.
It was a different time, and people then did not put themselves in hock over non-essentials as readily as people do today. One or two luxuries on time payments was okay. Not everything in your house, plus two cars and everything on your back, plus vacations.
