this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2026
82 points (100.0% liked)
Australia
4739 readers
85 users here now
A place to discuss Australia and important Australian issues.
Before you post:
If you're posting anything related to:
- The Environment, post it to Aussie Environment
- Politics, post it to Australian Politics
- World News/Events, post it to World News
- A question to Australians (from outside) post it to Ask an Australian
If you're posting Australian News (not opinion or discussion pieces) post it to Australian News
Rules
This community is run under the rules of aussie.zone. In addition to those rules:
- When posting news articles use the source headline and place your commentary in a separate comment
Banner Photo
Congratulations to @Tau@aussie.zone who had the most upvoted submission to our banner photo competition
Recommended and Related Communities
Be sure to check out and subscribe to our related communities on aussie.zone:
- Australian News
- World News (from an Australian Perspective)
- Australian Politics
- Aussie Environment
- Ask an Australian
- AusFinance
- Pictures
- AusLegal
- Aussie Frugal Living
- Cars (Australia)
- Coffee
- Chat
- Aussie Zone Meta
- bapcsalesaustralia
- Food Australia
- Aussie Memes
Plus other communities for sport and major cities.
https://aussie.zone/communities
Moderation
Since Kbin doesn't show Lemmy Moderators, I'll list them here. Also note that Kbin does not distinguish moderator comments.
Additionally, we have our instance admins: @lodion@aussie.zone and @Nath@aussie.zone
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
You understand that buying a house requires good credit and a sizeable deposit? Both of which are things that many Australians are struggling to earn with the increase in rent and cost of basic needs.
If it were easy to “pay their own mortgage”, don’t you think more people would be doing that?
Even the people with deposits and pre-approved loans are struggling to find homes when well established slum-lords can outbid them by 100k on even the saddest 1x1.
Honestly, I do not know. Twenty years ago, when I bought my house, I had a choice: continue to rent or buy a house in a place from which I had to commute 1.5 hours one way to get to work. I chose to buy a house. I guess many people are not willing to make such a sacrifice. But the relative cost of houses has gone up. Back then, I paid four times my pre-tax yearly salary for it. These days, it would be eight times, so we can’t really compare. But when I look at young people whining about not being able to buy a house while changing their iPhones every year and driving new, expensive cars, it raises a question.
How many young people have you actually spoken to? Or is this just casual observation from Sky News? Because I know a whole bunch of younger people now that I've gone back to uni to switch careers after 20 years in the work force, and I can tell you that they're absolutely struggling.
They're on 2hr commutes one way, facing a job market that asks for senior roles only or entry level jobs that barely allow for any savings. They've got broken phones that they've been using for years because it's too expensive to get new ones. They don't drive because they can't afford upkeep on a car. They either catch public transport or ride bicycles and work their arses off while their employers take advantage of them by firing them when they reach 21, which is the age where employers are legally required to pay you the national minimum salary.
They're bloody thankful when they get offered a job paying $55k/year before tax.
So, I don't know about you but these younger people are massively screwed and we'll be screwed as retirees because there will be more oldies than there are young in the work force.
Ok. Under young I meant < 35 yo. Anyone <21 are just kids, no one expect them to make long term financial decisions. By 35 you should set on the trade and have decent salary. My observation comes from observing "young" guys in IT. Shiny iPhones, but no though about house.
Dude. You're spouting iphone line? seriously?
A new phone on a plan costs less over a year than one months rent. Get that into your head.
Is “new phones” the modern “avocado toast”?
A lot of the younger generation has given up on home ownership. If they saved their ‘shiny phone’ money, it still wouldn’t put a scratch on the increasing price of buying property. The phone might not be a sound financial decision, but it’s the only joy and control some people can get.
And coming from a ‘young’ guy in IT with a 5 year old phone (that replaced his 10 year old phone when it completely carked it): it’s not the phone that’s making it hard for me to buy a house.
Shiny new iPhone i think he wrote 😉 It's something I've noticed too. People buy the shiny phones, then the head phones, then the screen, the laptop, the glasses, the cloth; spending thousands of dollars in the process. Multiply that each year, as many do, and there is no savings. Nothing growing at all in their accounts. That growth long term can put a deposit on an apartment or a outer suburb house.
Smart kids get jobs in the field that give them free phones and sometimes cars. Bonus points if its a unionised position.
That's a very big generalisation though right; just some blokes in IT with shiny phones.
And, further, even if they stopped getting new phones, that's hardly going to equate to a 5, 10, 20% deposit on a $500k studio apartment. Maybe it's not that they're lazy, maybe they've just given up.
And with AI muscling people out of that industry, can you even blame them?