Australians getting poorer as the RBA still struggle to deal with inflation.

I have lived and worked in Australia (Melbourne), USA (Atlanta and Phoenix), Singapore, New Zealand (Auckland), Spain (Barcelona), Ireland (Dublin), Italy (Milan), Korea (Seoul).

I joined a multinational tech consulting firm at their Atlanta office right after graduate school. Got transferred to the Dublin office after a few years. Eventually got headhunted by a Dutch firm to work on projects in Barcelona and Milan as a contractor. Eventually joined a firm in Singapore who also sent me to work in Seoul and Auckland. While in Auckland started working on settling down there since I had kids by then but decided to immigrate to Australia instead due to limited career opportunities in NZ. Worked for a company in Melbourne for many years before moving back to Phoenix 2 years back.

Based on my experience, Australia, Singapore, and the USA are the best countries for working professionals based on income potential, career opportunities, and opportunities for building wealth.

Australia is easily the best country for any professional who has not yet reached 100k USD per annum in salary due to universal superannuation and moderately good job market, but housing affordability is a problem. Home payments will eat up a big chunk of your income, limiting your opportunities to save, invest, travel, and consume.

If you start making over 100k USD, USA beats Australia because at this level in most scenarios, you will have access to a 401k plan with a decent employer match. Homes are also more affordable in the US as long as you avoid the HCOL cities on the coasts. This means you will have more money left after housing costs to put towards investing and enjoying life. While healthcare is not guaranteed in the US, at this income level, you will most likely have good health insurance through your employer with low out of pocket expenses. However, everything will be tied to your job, which can be risky.

Singapore is also a great place to be a professional, especially the salaries offered relative to the cost of living are great, and CPF system provides you the opportunity to build wealth. However, getting Singaporean PR and citizenship is very tricky, and being a city-state, space is always a problem.

Working in Korea, Italy and Spain were great experiences but language and cultural barriers limited my opportunities in these countries beyond the niche projects that I worked on. Pay was also considerably lower but was partly explained by lower COL.

IMHO, Ireland and New Zealand offered the worst deals for professionals. Professionals are considerably underpaid in both places, IMHO. Homes are very unaffordable in both places, and retirement schemes like kiwisaver provides considerably less tax advantages than Aussie Superannuation or 401k. Ireland did have the second best job among the countries I worked (only trailing USA), but pay was still bad. NZ had a terrible job market, making it the worst English Speaking country for jobs and hosing affordability.

If you have any more questions, feel free to ask me anything about my experience working overseas and how it compares to Australia.

I've emailed CommSec asking if using their app will be mandatory, and they've said it won't be.

"Customers who only use the CommSec website and do not have the CommSec app do not need to register for MFA. However, MFA provides an additional layer of security for website logins. Customers can access this feature by downloading and setting up the CommSec app."

I've also asked if they plan to support third party authenticators but I haven't heard back on that yet.

Hi all!

I've put on offer on a house that passed in at auction with no bids.

I've said I want to do the usual building & pest, and the vendors have come back basically asking why? And that the house is priced low, and that they will do B&P and make the report available to me.

Is it just me, or does this scream shady & that they are trying to hide something that is potentially wrong?

What other reason would they have for not wanting me to do my own building and pest with my own independent contractor selected by me?

I have not bought a house in almost 20 years.

Hey doing my BAS and trying to understand why the pre-filled PAYGI figure is so large. My accountant is on leave so not available for the next week

Situation:
- Work 2 jobs:
- Full time employed with tax withheld = $100k before tax
- self employed = ~$45k before tax
- total tax FY24/25 = $36k ($25k withheld + $11k bill at tax time)
- minimal PAYGI FY24/25
- haven't done tax return for FY25/26 yet
- total PAYGI throughout FY25/26 to date = $4.3k
- The ATO's pre-filled PAYGI for April-June BAS is $11k

Can anyone explain why the last PAYGI of last FY is so large? I figure the PAYGIs should be something like $11k/4

I understand I can adjust PAYGI, and I will - just trying to understand the why

My premium just jumped by 15 percent for basically no reason. No claims no changes to my car. Its getting harder to justify these costs.

I put in an offer of 630000 for a house i want.
The agent said 640000.
I said no. then the agent asked for 635000 and i said no.
The agent said the owner wants more and put the property back on inspection for the week. it all ready passed in at auction.

Is this a pretty standard post-auction pressure tactic?
I feel like I am bidding against a ghost and he is just trying to squeeze my balls.
The thing is though, I want this house.

What is the proper and smart play here?

RBA Governor, Michele Bullock, explicitly stated during the July Q&A that Australia’s weak productivity is linked to insufficient business investment. She said Australia needs more business investment.

And now the RBA comes out and says the new CGT changes are going to worsen business investment. This is going to make our productivity suffer even more.

Australia needs more business investment to help our ailing productivity and increasing taxes on businesses and productive investments isn’t the answer.

Our real wages will continue to stagnate and COL crisis progressively worse with this change.

I understand a large portion of my what someone used to save will now be going towards the mortgage and potentially additional housing costs, but did anyone take their foot off the gas so to speak?

For context, my house is due to complete construction in next few months. Location is pretty good, 35 mins from CBD. Mortgage approx 260k. I’m a single guy, $95k salary. It’s a modest house but I really have no desire to ever upgrade.

I’m just over living on barely anything week to week. Now that I’ve finally got what I worked so hard for, I feel like throwing some of those financial rules I lived by out the window. I’m 30 and don’t want to spend what young years I have left scraping by just to pay the mortgage off a little sooner…

I don’t know if there’s much of a question here, I guess asking for other people’s experiences or opinions.

Hello, I'm in yr 12 currently debating between the two because my heart goes to physiotherapy, but I'm in a very financially difficult situation where I feel like I have to make some compromises for financial stability. I heard that the pay in physio is awful compared to workload and the salary ceiling is very hard to break through unless you open your own business, which I dont see myself doing. I have heard that radiographers, especially on-call earn more, but I'd like to know to what extent because if there's really no difference then I'd just be better off doing physio. Thanks in advance. edit: forgot to add, I also need to consider how expensive it is to study both of them. From what I heard being a radiography student is crazy expensive.

I just wasn’t expecting “learning your separated spouse has been drawing from your paid off home loan to fund their premium Claude.AI subscription” to be one of ‘em.

Just looked at JB Hi-Fi’s full-year results and the divisional sales charts are pretty grim.

JB Hi-Fi Australia:

Q1: +6.0% total / +5.0% comps

Q2: +6.5% total / +5.0% comps

Q3: +4.0% total / +2.6% comps

Q4: +0.3% total / -0.8% comps

Full year: +4.4% / +3.2%

That’s a proper cliff from solid mid single digits to negative comps in one quarter.

The Good Guys (appliances):

Held up okay earlier in the year but completely stalled in Q4 — 0.0% total and comps. Full year only +2.7%.

Not a collapse but zero growth in the final quarter is weak.

e&s (premium kitchen/bathroom):

This one’s properly cooked:

Q1: +4.1% total / +0.7% comps

Q2: +1.8% / -1.0%

Q3: -1.4% / -4.8%

Q4: -5.2% total / -8.0% comps

Full year: -0.2% total / -3.2% comps

Straight into negative territory and accelerating downward. That’s the kind of number you see when people stop renovating and stop buying big-ticket discretionary items.

JB Australia slowing hard + Good Guys flatlining + e&s in freefall is a pretty clear signal the Aussie consumer is under real pressure. Discretionary spend is getting cut. This doesn’t look like temporary stock issues or cycling product launches it looks like households are tightening their belts.

Hard to see the RBA finding any justification to hike from here. If anything this kind of broad soft retail data points more toward the next move being a cut once they’re happy inflation is dead.

Anyone else seeing this as the start of a proper consumer recession or still thinking it’s just a soft patch?

This isn’t a personal question as much as general finance question;

As we get into our late 40s it is not unusual to have say a 200k mortgage and a 400k value super fund.

Said super at this point might be 50pc cash and bonds versus 50pc equities.

That 50pc cash and bonds is likely paying about 4.5pc yield if it’s Australian bonds. Little less international unless you have gone corpo bonds.

Anyway why doesn’t the government set up an invest in your own mortgage fund… ie you invest 200k of your super into this fund the government runs and this fund is the new owner of the loan asset that is your mortgage. The gov holds your title deed and you pay off your mortgage at 6pc (varies but 2pc over rba rate say)

At present we are paying banks 2pc mortgage margin and getting 4pc odd on our super cash earnings at the same time. It seems pretty fucking stupid to me except for the banks.

Even if it had stupid tight guardrails like LVR no greater than 0.5, max 50pc of your fund etc that would still be billions in net margin saved over the economy that just gets swallowed by banks and would in stead be going into your super fund.

Why I think it’s an opportune time is equities are feeing a little dubious to me. I’d love to get a 6pc guaranteed return on my super and pay myself 6pc interest in stead of a bank. Not saying it’s for everyone but why not have this option?

Hi there, I want to get into investing but I’m getting blue balls about what ETF’s I should invest in. I want to invest a lump sum of $12,500 and invest $1200 monthly and build long term wealth over the next 20+ years. Now I’m sure most people have heard of the saying “VOO and chill” and the Australian domicile of the S&P500 is IVV so is it really “IVV and chill” for us? I was curious to know if there is something better to invest in than the S&P500 or even pair it with? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I have attempted to do my own tax this year but have run into some hurdles.

I receive a Class A pension from Commonwealth Super and the SRDP from the Department of Veterans Affairs. After completing tax form on ATO it comes in with a $1200 debt owing.

I don’t have investments (money or house), wife earns roughly $90K, hold private health and have three kids.

I am not looking to claim anything other than legitimate deductions. Am I doing something wrong or is this a something I’m gonna have to take??

I’m 23/24 and currently working in Level 1 IT Helpdesk / IT Support.

My current financial position is:
$3,000 in cash/savings
$13,000 invested in ETFs
$19,000 in superannuation
$35,000 total across savings, investments and super

I’m still relatively early in my IT career and currently working in helpdesk. I’m hoping to eventually move into Systems Administration / Infrastructure / Cybersecurity and increase my income over the next few years.
I’m curious how this compares to other people around my age.

Am I doing reasonably well financially for my age, or is there anything I should be doing differently?

Would you prioritise building a larger emergency fund, investing more into ETFs, increasing super contributions, or focusing mainly on increasing income/career progression?

Keen to hear honest opinions, especially from people who were in a similar position in their early 20s.

Another non related question should I be travelling whilst young or slave away until I’m older and travel as I love travelling but also want a future