Would $55.00 a week after taxes be enough for a family of two, one adult one child, no car?
Easy walk to stores.
Rent was $22. a week; all utilities included so that would leave $33 a week for everything else.
Mid 1963 Hartford, CT.
People collecting unemployment made $45 a week. That would have been mid-fifties.
I remember being astounded in the late 60’s (1968) that a week’s groceries for a family with 2 adults, 2 teens, and 3 young children actually hit $100. That seemed like a magically large sum.
My father earned maybe $5000 before taxes in 1963, he and my mother and I lived in an apartment that cost $50/month, and we were considered working class poor.
We could possibly have shaved down to that $55/week, and given up our car, but it would have been a very tight budget.
So a lot depends on what you mean by “enough.” Enough not to starve to death, yes. Anything more than than, no. Let’s hope that child doesn’t get sick.
Minimum wage in 1963 was $1.25/hr, or $50/week (before taxes). That would probably be close to the poverty line.
In the 1950’s, my mother, a public grade school teacher, came home with $200 per month after taxes on a 12-month basis (some teachers were paid on a 10-month basis with no pay in the summer). She supported (barely) a family of two, but had a car and the house was paid for. Nevertheless, we lived too far to walk to any stores.
From what I recall …
In the late 1950s $60 a week was considered a starter wage for an unskilled worker in a grunge job. Typical for someone who, for example, just dropped out of high school. It was considered too low to support a stay-at-home spouse without getting into really poor quality housing.
By the late 1960s, forget even that unless you had no standards at all for living conditions. (E.g., the classic hippie commune.)
Note that by having several working people sharing a rental home or some such, you could get by. But certainly not a classic 4 person family with one wage earner.
1967 I worked as a stock boy for Blue Chip Stamp co. My pay ws $2.50 an hour.
Hmm. So it looks like you can multiply all the prices and wages by 10 to get today’s conditions. 
I was a small boy in the late sixties, and I remember a carful of food for a family of five, including Christmas dinner, for $25. Upper working class family, smallest house on a well- off street.
I was born in 1953. I grew up through the late fifties and early sixties in a single parent household. My four siblings were older than I, and three of them had married and moved out by the time I started school. Mom did day work, cleaning people’s houses. I am not really sure what she made, but it was not much. We got by, but sometimes it was tight. We had a charge account at the small grocery store a couple of blocks away, and I remember times when I was sent to the store only to be told that Mom had to come instead. I later realized that this meant our account was over due and they were unwilling to let us continue to charge until the bill was paid up.
Times were hard, but we survived.
I’m just a little bit off your timeline. In 1969 I paid $3500 for a new car – a Pontiac Le Mans. 350 engine and tackomenter. Gas was about 25 cents a gallon. My salary for the year was somewhere around $6500.
In 1966, I worked as an editorial assistant for approximately $1.90 and hour (after my first raise.) I was living at the YWCA for maybe an unknown amount a week, but that included an evening meal. Living and working were a blast and I managed to squeak by.
In 1964 and 1965, my allowance from home (if I wrote a letter) was $5. I got by because cigarettes were 25 cents a pack. My room, tuition, and food were already paid for.
A bit later, but I started in 1974 as a grocery bagger earning $2.41 an hour (minimum wage was $2.10).
I remember that each full paper bag of groceries typically amounted to around ten bucks. Someone spending $100 was considered a huge order.
mmm
Using an inflation calculator, $55 in 1963 is equivalent to $418.91 now, so I would think living off $55 was quite possible. The Federal poverty level for a family of 2 is about $300/week.
It was my first summer of college that year, and I lived in a house with 3 other people. We all kicked in $15/week for groceries, and it was plenty. We made our own lunches and rarely ate out. This is 4 young adults with healthy appetites.
In the early 60s, I was making $400 a month in California, full-time salary in a professional job. In 1958, canning factories were paying a dollar an hour.
Cost of living, etc. were not much different in Canada than USA, and the exchange rate until the 1980’s was typically about $1C = 90c US
http://srv116.services.gc.ca/dimt-wid/sm-mw/rpt2.aspx?lang=eng&dec=1
Now that some answers have been given, I find myself wondering the purpose of the OP’s question.
The amount of detail suggests anecdotal evidence that they know someone who did in fact live this way (parent, self?) If so, why the question?
Or perhaps they are writing a book and want to know if they set up a plausible premise?
Or are they planning to time travel back to the 60’s with their kid and need to know how long their cash will hold out?
Anyway, just curious. Feel free to tell me to MYOB. But if it’s not too personal, please share.
In 1966 my wife and I made about $1000 per month combined. I worked as an electronic technician and she was a legal secretary.
We had a new Mustang, a several year old pickup truck and two children. We lived in Mineral Wells TX and bought a new 40 foot long 12 feet wide mobile home in 1966 and had it paid for in 1969 when I quit my job and we moved to Arlington and I enrolled in the University of TX at Arlington. I had the GI bill at that point - about $280 per month as I recall.
We made out okay but didn’t have much left over.
I recall finding some of my father’s old pay stubs from the 1960s after he died. I was amazed at how small the amounts were, considering how much we seemed to have. We were solidly middle class. You’d be living in the street on that amount today. Even taking inflation into account, it was quite an eye opener.
Really? Can you show us your math?