Gazza wants to buy ever more expensive houses for doctor's wives.

Housing, like everything, is cyclic. There are times when it seems cheap, times when it seems expensive. Doesn’t matter when you buy if you hang onto it for a while.

In all the noise of house prices, we forget that some other things are very cheap by historical standards. Like cars, electronics, flights, …

Saving, shmaving. Saving is meaningless next to the real point: the average property price in relation to the average wage. It used to be that you could buy a 4 bedroom house for 2 months pay, now its, like, a billion months. Plus university and healthcare should be free. And bacon.

Thumper is spot on about the saving thing. The reality is that most people spend what they earn. Earn more and the lifestyle expands accordingly, earn less and the lifestyle contracts.

Our parents advice was to “live within your means”. Better advice is to “live below your means, and save or invest the difference”.

Some of the very wealthy (and conveniently anonymous) who live in this country used some very creative saving methods when they were younger. Personally I think “not being able to save” has more to do with justifying lifestyle to oneself, rather than reality. Look at many of the migrants who came to Australia in the last 50 years – they get crap jobs and crap pay, and yet many of them seem to be reasonably well off by the time they retire. Interesting.

Our unis are moving slowly towards a similar system, however it is being motivated more by the failure of the school system to teach basic reading, writing and maths. So it is moving more towards 1st year of uni being remedial studies – what should’ve been taught in high school.

Yes Shab, there is merit in the US model of vertically integrated health care as well.

No, only your ID card.

Badda boom.

Unless you’re MacGyver, not especially.

Higher education will not save you, unless you can alchemetically produce biofuel for use in the Thunderdome.

Also, find yourself a nice bladed weapon and put it somewhere you can find it later – high powered weaponry will only last so long.

Agree, JB. I like the US system of undergrad generalisation and postgrad specialisation. I find their system of student loans disturbing from a social cohesion standpoint, not to mention an individual one.

Fewer young lawyers is also a laudable idea (I just hope Mrs Shab isn’t reading this…)

Actually in the USA the profit motivated unis require a generalist undergrad degree before they allow students into the money courses.

This gives them a much more broadly educated professional class AND less young lawyers.

Two top outcomes there…

the accessibility of decent student financing to do the degrees is the tricky bit.

Ralph is that your way of saying you’ve changed your mind?

Yay! Copy the US! Remove most of the financial incentive to go to uni (unless you’re studying Med or Law with a view to working for a big law firm).

Remove medicare too. Just makes people lazy.

Yep – the market will always provide. People acting out of self-interest always make the right choice.

Education is a form of saving. Yes they are living below the bread line now, but by investing in themselves they will earn high incomes when uni is finished (depends on what they’re studying of course).

They get more than enough government welfare as it is. In fact if we slash that altogether we could move to a model like the US where there is an established market for student loans (this is already happening to a lesser extent in Australia).

The article is about ‘youth’. Many of them are studying in order to get better jobs.

But with the rental marketthe way it is, anyone paying rent who is not on a good income will not be saving much money.

This scheme would benefit ‘youth’ who are working and living at home, and noone else.

It is always the way. I still remember years ago going from Austtudy to the dole for the month before I got a job, I was told I had to wait 13 weeks, despite having rent to pay and no income. My friends who all lived at home got it straight away cos they had listed ‘debts’ on credit cards from their recent European holidays. Unbelievable.

I knew we shouldn’t have built that damn statue… oh, hubris! Ye have shown your ugly head! Tell us who to smite and they shall be smoten!!

Thumper – renegotiate your mortgage. The first home buyers grant applies to first time applicants – and if this is your only home in your portfolio, it’s the equivalent of your ‘first home(that you have applied for the grant)’.

This is a loophole that was put in place for those people who had already brought a heap, and were in the process of doing it up in order to upgrade.

I think it’s more that first-home buyers are disadvantaged over second-and-subsequent home buyers in the market (given that second-home buyers do have a previous home to borrow against).

Of course, one could be cynical and think that it might act as a somewhat unnecessary government subsidy of an already overenthusiastic property market, but that would assume that goverments give cash to people who don’t need them. And that never happens, as we all know…

Under the Thumper savings plan only one person in the country will have a job. But at least they’ll be saving.

Welfare goes to the rich now anyway. My wife and I got the baby bonus 18 months ago, and there is no way our incomes should have allowed that to happen. That said, I considered it part of my tax return and took it gladly.

There was a time when welfare was to help those who needed a hand up. Now most families get some form of govt assistance. Running and distributing welfare costs us about 35% of the yearly tax take, I think.

Here’s a novel idea seepi, how about they get off their backsides and study to get better jobs.

So lets give the welfare to those with the most money?

Effing brilliant!

“Many young people, because of all of those pressures on them and costs rising, simply wouldn’t be able to participate in a scheme like that because they wouldn’t have any dollars at the end of the week or the fortnight, or the month, in order to gain the benefit of it,” she said.

Perhaps that’s because they spend all their money on alcohol, smokes and new tyres after doing burnouts behind my house.

They only people who dont have capacity to save are those on welfare – and to them I say get a job.

Non rich kids don’t have a lot to spare after rent, bills and food. As pre the last 4 paras of the article:

But ACT Youth Coalition director Meredith Hunter says many young people do not have the capacity to save.

“If we look at some of these other things like youth wages, HECS debts and rising rental prices, along with the other sort of household bills that people have and the costs of those, then that would probably go a long way to young people being able to have a few dollars at the end of the fortnight to put into a savings account,” she said.

Ms Hunter supports Senator Humphries’ proposal but says the Federal Government should focus on addressing those rising living costs.

“Many young people, because of all of those pressures on them and costs rising, simply wouldn’t be able to participate in a scheme like that because they wouldn’t have any dollars at the end of the week or the fortnight, or the month, in order to gain the benefit of it,” she said.

JB is right on this. All the empirical evidence overseas has shown that schemes that top up peoples saving and pension funds have primarily been taken up by spouses of high income earners.

Have read the ABC blurb a number of times and still can’t see how this only assists ‘rich’ kids

If savings incentives like this are implemented, it will not do jot to help minimum wage employees who spend 100% of their salary just surviving.

If the state governments get rid of stamp duty, the price of houses will just rise by the same amount.

I say release a crapload more land onto the market, and let supply/demand take care of it.

I would have thought that some sort of joint equity arrangement would have been better than doling out our taxes to first home buyers. At least with joint equity the Government would have a share in the investment – that would form an incentive to manage the economy properly and keep interest rates down.

The tax free threshold in Australia is $6,000.

Most Australian’s don’t even notice it happening, because in tax/income terms, it’s peanuts.

8 years ago – I wish! I bought the house about 5 years ago (which admittedly was a cheaper time to buy than today). For many people the only option is to save what they can, and take a low (or no) deposit loan.

A friend who just got back from the UK was telling me that over there you can invest 7,000 pounds per year with no tax implications (not sure exactly what this means). Perhaps the Australian govt should consider this type of approach. Basically giving those people who save for a defined minimum period in an approved account some sort of tax benefit (other than super, that is…).

I agree Mr Shab.
Putting aside 20% (if youre lucky) of your after tax salary these days will not get you anywhere near buying a house as quickly as it would have 5 or 6 years ago.

Jeeze – houses are really friggin’ expensive. How much more incentive to people need to save money for a deposit? How come the only incentives that are ever suggested seem to involve shovelling out yet more middle-class welfare?

VY – I hear ya, but buying a house 8 years ago, and buying one today are different propositions. Kudos to you for being financially prudent at a young age, but I’d suggest that financial prudence has lesser rewards than back then.

if he was serious about home affordability, perhaps reviewing stamp duty might be beneficial – oh wait that won’t happen.

How about we take away some of his wage each fortnight to support this new idea of his and see how he likes living and trying to get aheads on an average wage!

What a complete tosser!
Dont those with silver spoons in their mouths have it good enough already?

Freaking ridiculous!!

JB, I agree with that comment. I save (what I can) But it’s not anything major. I do my best each year to get 1000 into super, so the government gives me a free 1000. It’s probably better to start it now while I can still get it.

While I can see his point to make it an incentive, one must surely agree there is better places our money can go.

I applaud people who choose to save, but giving a Government handout to people already able to put money aside seems like a poor use of resources IMHO.

How many young people genuinely save hard these day? I remember starting my first professional job at 23 years of age and copping crap from all directions because my wife and I were saving hard for a house deposit, and living fairly simply (I was earning about three quarters of the average Australian full time wage at the time)

“You’re too young to worry about that”
“You’ve got ages”
“You’re only young once”
“You should be focussing more on fun”
“You’ll earn more when you’re older, worry about it then”
etc, etc…

On hindsight, those three lean years set us up. I wouldn’t change a thing, even if I could, because of the benefits we are enjoying now (at age 31).

I would advise anyone who is saving hard to ignore the knockers – your tomorrow will be much more comfortable than theirs.