G'Day
Regarding the 'only earning $130,000' comment
According to
http://www.emigratetoaustralia.org/average-wages-australia.html the average Australian Wage for 2010 was Male Full Time $64,641 and Female Full Time $56,950.
Miners are the highest paid at $103,111 per annum
So who are these people who are earning 'only' $120,000 per year?
In all the years I have been in broking, where I get to look right through people's financial sock drawers, I have met one female earning $252,000 pa base salary (plus superannuation) and two males (one of whom was her Husband) and one female, on salary, earning more than $165,000 per annum.
None of these were Doctors or in the medical professions, although interestingly both ladies were highly qualified legal counsels (but neither worked in law at the time).
Some of the highest net worth individuals I have met (and most of whom did not speak English as a first language) have never, ever, earned the Average Australian Wage from their day job, but all of them have bought standard residential property at a level they could afford as often as they could afford to do so.
And their concept of when they could afford to do so was a lot more frequently than many people on higher incomes would ever dream of doing.
Not for them a high disposable income. If they had more than they directly needed, they bought another property and committed the 'loose change' as soon as they could.
Thirty years ago I did the pays for a company which sent crews out to run quality control on the welding of some really major pipelines, on gas rigs and in other inhospitable places.
The men weren't paid an unusually high hourly rate, but were paid for 97 equivalent ordinary hours per week, plus height money, site allowances, skill allowances, remote allowances etc
So in 1980 these men were earning $1,000 per week, and taking home $1,000 per week. It was hard, dirty, remote, and frequently dangerous work.
At the end of each job, most were broke. The earned it, they spent it. They thought the gravy train would roll on forever. Very few even had a house to put the money into the mortgage.
But some did. A few of those men valued themselves, and their families, enough to put that very hard earned money into something valuable.
We all work hard for our money. No body has it handed to them on a plate.
It doesn't matter whether we invest in property because we 'love' houses, or because we 'hate' poverty, or for any number of reasons. We are all here on this board because we can all learn a thing or two and hopefully are humble enough to realise that we don't know it all
It is only when we realise that we don't know something, that we have any chance at all of learning it.
Or, indeed, of earning it.
Cheers
Kristine
