Yahoo Finance $200k income not enough to pull Aussie family out of ‘hamster wheel’
Bec Craig said she and many other families are just getting by despite having a higher than average combined income.
A Queensland mother-of-two said the hard-work and sacrifice her family made to earn $200,000 feels like a waste as once-admirable salaries aren’t enough to live a decent life. Marketing coach Bec Craig’s combined income with her husband might seem incredible to some, but she said they are just getting by.
The family-of-four doesn't splash their cash on luxurious things and moved to an area more than a decade ago where property wasn’t too expensive. Despite that, the rising cost of living and necessary expenses like childcare keeps chipping away at the Craig’s combined income.
“People think that $200,000 looks so amazing, but you've got to factor in so many things,” she told Yahoo Finance. “People work so hard to viciously get to a certain point and a certain number and then it just feels like you're just treading water.”
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Craig said she feels the most financial pressure from growing bills.
“They come in and they're double what they were the month before and you're like, OK, well, I've worked really hard to get to this point and I have sacrificed this, this and this’.
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“I've sacrificed not being home with my kids to get to this position where you think $200,000 is a lot of money.” For Craig, it’s not enough.
Hard work and sacrifice ‘not worth’ the payoff
The median weekly income on the Sunshine Coast where Craig lives is $1,594, or roughly $83,200 per year, according to Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) figures released in 2021. While data from the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) revealed the median Aussie wage was just $50,980 per year.
The Craig’s combined income is much higher, but even taking measures to budget or save here and there, the Queensland mum said she and plenty of others like her feel it’s not enough to live comfortably, particularly given how much you have to put in to earn that amount.
“The system is so broken right now,” she said.
The marketing coach said putting in the hard-yards early on in your career is often done in the hopes there will be some reprieve by the time you decide to start a family. But in Australia, that’s no longer the case.
“People are working so many hours, they're exhausted and people are like, ‘What is the f**king point of this?” she said to Yahoo Finance.
“They get in their cars to get to work to earn the money, to then come home to pay for a house that they're not even spending any time in and kids that they're not spending any time with.
“It does feel like that hamster wheel…I feel like just something is missing right now.”
Craig isn’t saying there are no financial wins in her household, but that each time they start to feel more comfortable in their finances, a new bill or fee or expense comes along and pushes them almost back to zero.
Is the Australian wage keeping up with the cost of living?
Craig wanted to know if she was alone in her financial stress and uploaded a series of TikToks asking if others were experiencing the same thing.
Some agreed that $200,000 dual incomes weren’t enough, however others said they were on a lot less and managed to get by.
“Agreed, over taxed, council rates, GST, income tax. There’s three different governments getting paid a fortune. It’s not worth working hard anymore, no incentives to try to get ahead,” said one.
“Never would have dreamt we’d be saying $200k is not enough to live but it’s true,’ said another.
A third had a bit of a different perspective.
“Husband and I are on under $100K a year combined and we survive because we prioritise where our money goes. We are savers so that helps,” they said.
Craig said everyone is going to have an opinion and be in different circumstances, but for her household, it’s a struggle.
In a study of how much you need to earn to live comfortably, and happily, Australia had the third highest in the world. According to S Money, an individual needs to be earning $184,210 (US$121,191) to be happy. That’s more than London (US$103,083) or the United States (US$105,000)
If we go by that study, happiness would be out of reach for the vast majority of Australians, with the ATO reporting just 4.1 per cent of workers earning over $180,000.
Meanwhile, research from Finder found the average Aussie wants to earn a whopping $345,819 per year in order to feel rich. That’s almost five times greater than the average personal income of $72,753, according to the ABS.
Millennials felt they’d need the most money to feel rich at $418,325, the survey of 1,032 respondents found, followed by Gen Z at $392,077. Baby Boomers said they needed to earn the lowest amount to be wealthy at $273,812, while Gen X thought they needed to earn $307,257 per year to consider themselves affluent.
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