Oh my. I commented in this thread before reading the article. It is a goldmine.
Despite pulling in an annual salary of A$190,000 — more than double the national average — Molloy still struggles to put away anything in his savings each month.
I just want to say, I'd be drooling with that type of money.
"Saving is not something I'm good at".
This is the person that
Pay Yourself First was invented for. Spends all his money, regardless of the quantity of it (so might as well 'hide' some of it early).
Every day for the last 10 years I've eaten out for breakfast and lunch, or lunch and dinner. I can't remember the last day I had cereal for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch and something at home for dinner. I just don't do it.
I hate to sound sexist, but I gotta ask, what does the wife do? Ignoring extenuating circumstances, either she's a SAHM, in which case she can cook, or she works in which case they're blowing away even more money.
Every time I go out, I go to a different restaurant. I never really look at the prices, I always eat what I feel like at that point in time — whatever looks delicious.
As a food lover, I'll admit to some envy.
Molloy is one of just over a quarter (26 per cent) of Australians who could easily put money into savings at the end of each month, but don't. Another 25 per cent are living month-to-month, according to research commissioned by ME Bank.
I know little about Australia. I'm going to assume those numbers are absolutely wrong (misleading) though. Molloy in a few years will be in that latter category. Months if he loses his job.
He said he "does the best job" he can in trying to save. "I'll do a big shop on Sunday, thinking that's going to last me the rest of the week, but it comes to Wednesday and suddenly we've run out of food," he said.
🤣🤣🤣 What type of groceries is he buying if it it only lasts until Wednesday despite the fact he eats out for almost every meal? 🤣
"I'll say I'm going to be diligent and bring in my lunch to work, but there might be a work function and you don't want to look stingy at lunch. Everyone's ordering the prawns, you don't want to look like a tight-arse.
Again, I gotta ask (even if this is sexist) what the wife is up to? Again, ignoring extenuating circumstances, why can't see make him some shrimp or lunches? (I hope this isn't a situation where he earns 90% of the income, she earns 10%, he does 0% of the housework, she does 10%, and hired help does 90%.)
Even this afternoon I'm going to buy a A$1,400 mountain bike. It almost feels like, even if I don't buy the bike [I would spend the money anyway]. I end up just thinking, at least if I bought the bike I've still got a bike at the end of it."
The sad thing is most people think like this. Even I think like this. I save over 50% of my net pay; I think I'm only able to do that because the first series of expenses on my budget is 50% of my pay into long-term investment accounts.
"I've got a gym membership with Virgin Active [in Sydney that I] haven't actually cancelled [because of] the time and effort to cancel it," he said. "It works out to be A$60 a week, A$120 a fortnight. It's not a huge amount but when you're not using it, it all adds up.
Frank Chung wrote this article. I hope after writing this he asked for permission, called up Virgin Active, canceled the membership, then sent Molloy a 600A$ invoice through something like Quickbooks.
"Then there's all that stuff like extra data on your phone — when you go over it's A$10 for an extra GB, and you often don't get the notification until you go over"
😑 He's an app developer and he doesn't know how to set up a data limit on his phone? I've never seen a Windows or Android phone without it. I've never had an Apple phone so I'm unaware of its features. (Yeah those are not fully accurate but you can guesstimate the limit to set.)
After a A$50,000 wedding there were Christmas presents and then New Year's Eve and Uber season.
The shocking thing is, this is only double the American average.
He said he was thinking of signing up to a food delivery service like Hello Fresh, YouFoodz or Marley Spoon.
"Maybe if I did something like that it probably might help save a little," he said.
Nope, not going to be sexist this time.
He should learn how to cook. At 1500$ week in grocery/luxury spending, he could pay someone to give expert courses on quick food cooking.
When Molloy does have spare cash, he buys cryptocurrencies — partly because they're harder to cash out. He already got lucky by buying around A$10,000 worth of bitcoin in 2014. Even despite the recent crash, at current prices those 30 bitcoin are today worth around A$270,000.
"That's where I make a lot of my money," he said. "I've sort of moved away from bitcoin. I buy a lot of litecoin. I almost doubled my money, now I buy stellar. I bought a lot of ethereum which halved in price."
Bitcoin millionaire?"The average house was two times the average salary, so it was very easy. It's like if you don't have a house now, 25 years ago [the equivalent would be] like how come you don't have five houses? It's becoming out of reach."
I actually blame the rise in home prices to outrageous spending lifestyles (I feel passionate about this but won't go on a rant). Anyway, his rent is only 15% of his pay. The rent is not
too damm high