Most students 'survive' on about A$15-A$20k/yr when they are studying in Uni. That is probably bare minimum you need for a single. It probably means sharing a unit/house with other students. If you are working and single, you probably spend a bit more. Once again it depends on your lifestyle and whether saving for the future is a priority or not. You will probably need about A$20k-A$25k/yr if you want to include a little luxury like eating out.
The govt gives a couple about A$34k/yr in old age pension. This is the bare minimum for a couple to survive (this assumes you own your place and car as this amount will definitely not be sufficiently if rental is required). Most self-funded retirees would use A$50-A$60k/yr as a rough guide for a more comfortable retirement (once again assuming you don't need to pay rent).
Rental in Sydney is the most expensive among all the cities in Australia. If you are sharing a unit/house and you want your own room, you would need to pay minimum A$300-$400/week.
Your may need to add another A$50-$100/wk for electricity/gas and wifi. A typical 2 bedroom older-styled unit close to the city will set you back A$650-$850/week (very average unit) and this does not include electricity or wifi. Units are usually unfurnished and you will find it very difficult to get a furnished unit.

This post has been edited by Garysydney: Jun 23 2018, 07:07 AM

Australia is cutting its migrant intake quietly:
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The 30,000 cut in the immigration intake will cost the federal budget $500 million a year, a Treasury briefing obtained by Fairfax Media shows.

There were 162,000 permanent visas approved in the 12 months ended June 30, a cut from 190,000 the previous year, which Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton described as evidence "the policy is working as it should". The Turnbull government has framed immigration as a key issue for Saturday's byelections, as it road-tested key policies before the next federal election.

Source: https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/imm...724-p4ztaf.html

If you want a good exchange rate, best to take the Aussie dollars and go to a money-changer. One of the best rates are those in mid-valley.

If you are not able to that, you got no choice but to do a telegraphic transfer (fees for tt are also very high) and the exchange rate will be really shitty. Australian banks are one of the most profitable banks in the world and how do you think they achieve that? They have (probably) the world's highest fees but you cannot do anything about it. I use a CBA mastercard and they charge me a 3% fee each time (for foreign currency). I don't use my Australian credit card overseas. I prefer to take Aussie dollars back to KL and change it with the Indian money changers and use my Maybank debit card for all my overseas travel as it still work out cheaper even after converting it to ringgit than to use my CBA credit card.

This post has been edited by Garysydney: Aug 7 2018, 01:10 PM

Thanks Limeuu. Normally, i change money with my uncle who lives very close to me and he loves Aussie dollars (his children are all in Sydney). We use the spot rate but i found on a lot of occasions the money changer in mid-valley (which is very convenient for me as i am in Bangsar Baru) offers even higher than the spot rate so if the spot rate is 3.01, they would be offering 3.035 to sell ringgit. I have noticed this happens quite regularly as i like to frequent mid-valley for my lunches and dinners.

I have lived in Sydney for nearly 40 years now and people like us normally love to whinge about the bank rip-offs. We also hold bank shares in our investment portfolio but we never complain when CBA hit $96 (three or four years ago at the peak). We just love to have a whinge.

Nowadays you got to wait in a queue for about 18 months after you have applied for your Aust citizenship. I have a cousin who applied in Jan 2018 and he probably won't get it till mid-2019. Looks like a lot of people wants to take up Aussie citizenship:

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/afr...815-p4zxl0.html

You can see so many new restaurants open up in Sydney and they are all PRC-owned and selling PRC Chinese food. I think more PRC migrants end up in Sydney than any other cities in Aust which is why the residential property market went haywire for 3-4 years (ended late-2017). All my PRC colleagues at work all have 2-3 investment properties (geared to the hilt!) and they love properties and would buy more if the banks lend them!! I think it is due to all their relatives (in China) convincing them that properties (usually residential) is the way to go. When you see cities that have a lot of PRC residents, you can never go wrong buying properties.

No - super must be left in there till 60. There are ways to get it out (albeit illegal) like moving the super into a SMSF (self-managed superfund) which will allow you to have access to the funds via a savings/statement account. In a SMSF, you are supposed to invest your super according to how you prefer (like buying a geared property if you have sufficient funds) but it is highly regulated via ATO and ASIC plus you need to do a tax-return (which can be quite costly because you also need to get an auditor's report) yearly. SMSF can also be setup via a bank (like ANZ) and they open a share-trading account as well as a savings/statement account for the SMSF fund.

When they quote a package, most of the time, it is the gross pay plus the 9.5% employer contribution. If you have perk like a car, the cost of maintaining the car is added into your package. Smaller perks like mobile phones (together with a plan) and laptops are usually not included.

There are a lot of workers from UK who comes over to Aust to work a few years - some have pr while some are on a working visas. A lot of them have accumulated quite a fair bit of super during their few years here. They can't get their super out until 60 even though a lot of them are not pr. In fact the amount amassed by these people who have left the country is a few billion dollars (Aussie) and there is a group of people fighting for this and are protesting that they should be able to have access to the money since they are not pr and some have given up their pr(s). The govt is aware of this and there was a brief mention about this last year in federal parliament but nothing was passed about this. This amount that is left behind by these people who have left the country is huge and i don't see the govt doing anything about this - you think Aust politicians is always fair?

You can only access the money by illegal means which is to start a SMSF but not many people know how to start a SMSF. Just pop by any ANZ bank and tell them you want to start a SMSF and they will guide you. Having said this, it is illegal and you will be banned from ever doing a SMSF by ATO and ASIC. I know how to run a SMSF as i manage my wife's SMSF so i know all the loopholes but unless you are very sure you are not coming back, don't do it.

This post has been edited by Garysydney: Aug 19 2018, 12:51 PM

Prices only started dropping (9 months later) after the Aust govt tightened lending restrictions and Sydney prices now are off about 10-15% from the peak. A lot of sellers/speculators are rushing to get out because a lot of forecasts is pointing towards further softening of the residential market.

Australia has a new PM - Scott Morrison!!

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/mal...824-p4zzga.html

Peter Dutton was the Home Affairs Minister (which covered Immigration as well) - he was anti-immigration (and he was a racist!!) which was one of the reasons why he challenged Malcolm Turnbull who was pro-migration. It will be interesting to see the direction of Scott Morrison (who used to be a little anti-immigration during the days when he was the Defence minister) as he turned backed a lot of refugee boats which were coming into Aust via Indonesia. Anyway, it is likely that Scott Morrison will probably lose the election next year as voters as fed up with the 'political fracas' as the politicians are all looking after their self-interest and not the public's interest. Labor will most likely sweep in next year when the election has to be called so Bill Shorten is likely to be the next PM. I suspect Labor will probably go with the 'general sentiment' that immigration is too high and he will probably reduce immigration.

This post has been edited by Garysydney: Aug 25 2018, 05:41 AM

Yes - he did indicate that migration was required to be kept high for keeping economic growth up. He was however, not the PM at that time and it will be interesting to see his stance on migration now that he is PM - politicians will say anything (self-interest) as his boss Turnbull was clearly pro-migration and he was not going to rock the boat. It is quite obvious Dutton was not for higher immigration levels (looking at the figures) as a lot of conservative Liberal politicians are anti-immigration. It will be interesting to see the new cabinet line-up.

This post has been edited by Garysydney: Aug 25 2018, 02:25 PM

It was Dutton who dropped the immigration number because he didn't toe party line (which was to keep immigration level at 190k/yr). Dutton doesn't agree with Turnbull's view on migration (as well as a few other issues) and this has caused friction between both of them. There are a lot of conservative Liberals (far-right) that don't agree with the path that Turnbull wants (high levels of migration) because they are afraid of voters backlash and some are just outright racist (racist usually don't want new migrants coming in to Aust because thet feel there are too many Asians coming in).

The path the new PM will go down will indicate whether he is pro-migration - if he keeps Dutton as the Home minister (portfolio also looks after immigration), this may indicate he is not as pro-migration as people initially thought.

Most of the Asian migration comes from PRC and they also find it very hard to get a job initially (breaking through with the first job is hardest in Aust) because a lot of them have poor command of English. However most who get their PRs have studied overseas and usually students who tend to have studied overseas have richer parents. I noticed most of these students tend to buy a property as soon as they get their PRs (with their parents money) because most of the families in China only have 1 child (due to the 1-child policy before). When there is only one child in the family, parents tend to give that kid everything they have because there is no-one else in the family to support anymore.

PRCs also only tend to buy in areas closer to the city - there is something crazy about PRC and properties (they just love buying properties!!).

Dutton is retaining Home Affairs - except Immigration has been removed from Home Affairs so Dutton is no longer looking after Immigration. Good move by new PM - he knows that Dutton will not meet the 190k/yr migrant intake. This goes to show that Scott Morrison is pro-immigration so you probably see the migrant intake go back up again.

This post has been edited by Garysydney: Aug 26 2018, 03:32 PM

First day of spring!! Yeh!!

Got up this morning and Aussie dollar has dropped like crazy (against all currencies).

1 SGD = 1.01313 AUD

Aussie is below parity against SGD!!

This post has been edited by Garysydney: Sep 1 2018, 04:30 AM

Property prices seems to be coming down quite a fair bit. Average 2 bedroom apartments around Randwick where i live were all above A$1mil just end of last year and now they are going for around A$850-900k. In the past week, there seemed to be some 'panic selling' after the report on 60 Minutes that forecast that properties prices in Sydney may fall up to 40%.

Check latest auction prices:

https://www.domain.com.au/auction-results/sydney/

I follow the Sydney residential property very closely - if you guys want to know anything about the areas in Sydney and what prices you should be paying, you can ask me.

I am not a real estate agent but i have a lot of friends (incl my siblings) who have been actively speculating on properties (residential). My closest colleague at work (Egyptian) managed to go from one to 5 properties (speculating) in 4 years and geared himself to the eyeball!! He even set up a self-managed superfund and moved everything into residential properties!!

I have advised him to sell down everything since beginning of this year but people have been still very bullish even going back 3-4 moths ago. It appears there are a lot of 'panic sell' after the 60 minutes program (last week) predicting that Sydney prices may drop by 40%. My Egyptian friend would have easily made A$900k in this last 4years (since he started speculating) but all good things have to end!

P/s: My Egyptian friend is my junior (even though he is older than me) and his pay is a lot less than mine and he managed to borrow A$1.6mil from the banks because the banks were just dishing money out until the Royal Commision (Banking) recently.

This post has been edited by Garysydney: Sep 24 2018, 04:52 AM

I have a few young friends who are in their early/mid 30s who have all bought with interest-only loans. I must say these young(er) are very gutsy - they either buy with interest-only loans (mainly newer apartments) or off-the-plan. They used to brag about their properties but lately, i asked them and they now all keep very quiet!! I know those who bought in the last 2 years are all losing quite a lot of money.

Even my Egyptian friend is now always asking me if i can give him a short-term loan as the banks will not give him any more credit increase (he is so used to bank increasing his loans after a few months because the banks keep re-valuing the property each time you ask for an increase and the values have gone up).

I am sure a lot of borrowers who are geared highly will be crying now.

40% is just the bleakest view.

The thing is if you read only papers like 'sydney morning herald' or 'telegraph', they NEVER tell you the market is going down. They only say market is softening slightly. If you go to the auction rooms (like i do), you know that the market is very weak. The govt is afraid of reports like this in 60 minutes as people will react strongly. I can see a lot more properties being put on the market since this report. People are also taking 'best offer' straight away rather than waiting longer. This shows people are 'panicking' a little more nowadays.

I am in the market for an investment unit (1 or 2 bedder) in my area if the price is good - this is why i have been particularly interested in residential properties lately. I will only buy if it is very cheap otherwise i will wait.