Transcript of AE 1303 - The Goss: Grey Nomads & Retirement in Australia

G'day, you mob! Pete here and this is another episode of Aussie English, the number one place for anyone and everyone wanting to learn Australian English. So today I have a Goss episode for you where I sit down with my old man, my father, Ian Smissen, and we talk about the week's news weather locally Down Under here in Australia or non-locally overseas in other parts of the world, okay. And we sometimes also talk about whatever comes to mind, right. If we can think of something interesting to share with you guys related to us or Australia, we also talk about that in The Goss.

So these episodes are specifically designed to try and give you content about many different topics where we're obviously speaking in English and there are multiple people having a natural and spontaneous conversation in English. So it is particularly good to improve your listening skills. In order to complement that, though, I really recommend that you join the podcast membership or the Academy membership at Aussie English.com.au where you will get access to the full transcripts of these episodes, the PDFs, the downloads and you can also use the online PDF reader to read and listen at the same time. Okay, so if you really, really want to improve your listening skills fast, get the transcript, listen and read at the same time. Keep practising and that is the quickest way to level up your English. Anyway, I've been rabbiting on a bit. I've been talking a bit. Let's just get into this episode guys. Smack the bird and let's get into it.

Dad.

Pete.

What's going on?

Not much.

I thought we could do one on retirement. Seeing as you recently retired. Mum's retired as well.

Less recently than recent, but. Yes.

Well, recently, all things considered. A few years ago.

Yes. Now.

Do you want to talk about, um, what retirement is like in Australia? Because it is one of those things that growing up here, you just take it for granted that this is a, the way that the world works.

Yeah.

But I would imagine that there are plenty of countries around the world..

Where people just retire..

Retirement. Yeah. Well, you. Yeah, you're always doing something.

Yes. Or you work until you can no longer work.

Yeah, exactly. And it's interesting. I've heard that in China I think they have a very early retirement age. I don't know if it's, if it's in particular for like, factory workers or women, but there was I heard something and again, you guys listening can probably tell me I'm full of it. But I heard something like the age of retirement is in the 50s.

Mhm.

Compared to us, which is normally now what 65.

Well..

But is it moving up?

It's moving up for. It used to be 65 and then the Howard government. I don't know, 20 years ago.

Yeah.

Um, pushed it out to 70. But they didn't do it. They they shifted it slowly.

Yeah.

Um, so it was sort of..

A year, a year or..

Staggered. So somebody my age born in 57.

Mhm.

Um, the retirement age was 67.

So depending on when you were born that decided the retirement age.

Yeah. Sliding up to 70.

Right. Okay. So how did it work? Starting from, like, when you were a kid?

Yeah.

What do you remember about your parents and retirement and, or your parents generation?

Yeah, well, parents generation was, you know, fathers worked, mothers didn't. Was the sort of, you know, obviously there were some professionals and people who, you know, women who worked in shops and things occasionally. But almost all my friends mothers were you know, unpaid work. Home duties was the typical thing, put on a tax return. Um, so but yeah, the expectation was that people would retire at 65 and there was no, there's no set retirement. You know, nobody's forced to retire. Um, typically in government jobs, um, people would be encouraged to retire at the retirement age. But retirement age is is when you're entitled to an old age pension from the government, which is means tested anyway. So if you're if you don't have a significant income, then you're entitled to an old age pension.

I imagine it's just..

Government funded.

It'd be related to not just superannuation or, um, investments in terms of shares or whatever, but also how many assets you have. Like, I imagine you can't just retire with $100 million worth of property and be like, well, I don't actually make any income from this.

No, no. Your residential property is exempt as an asset. So you can have a 500,000. You can have a $500,000 house or a $5 million house. And it makes no difference.

And you get the pension and that's it.

Yeah. Because there's. And look, the pension is not a lot of money. It's it's sort of, it's below the minimum wage.

You wouldn't be able to rent a house with it in most places..

That would be highly unlikely.

Yeah, yeah.

So it's sort of enough for what? Food and clothes.

Yes. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. I mean, what is it? Probably 25,000 a year.

I honestly have no idea.

Yeah.

Honestly. No idea.

Okay, so did, when you were growing up and your parents had that retirement age, you know, around there. Did they have superannuation? Did they have some equivalent?

They did. Most, um, most businesses didn't do it. Private businesses didn't have superannuation.

They're paid in superannuation.

Um, whereas um, certainly when my father worked in a government job, um, and so he, he had superannuation and when he retired, um, he went, you know, they, my parents went on to a superannuation pension.

Yeah.

Um, and then when my father died, my mother had the option of continuing that pension or taking out the lump sum. That is the the current value of the money there.

Mhm.

Um she kept, opted to take it as the pension and keep it going, drawing down on it you know fortnightly payment. Um but then I think it was Paul Keating in the early 90s as treasurer in the Hawke government might have been late 80s or it might have been when he was prime minister, but certainly he made, um, superannuation mandatory so that all employers have to pay their employees. At the time, it was a minimum of 9%.

Yep.

Um, now that's gone up, I think it's now about 10%. It was supposed to go up to 12.

Yeah.

Um, but of course, the previous Liberal government has said, oh, we're not going to back down on that, but we're going to delay it. It was it was intended, it was going to go up by half a per cent every couple of years to get to 12. But that was, you know, implemented. Well, that increase was implemented about ten years ago and it's still not anywhere near 12.

Yeah.

Some businesses pay more. I know when I was working at the university they paid 17% superannuation. Wow. But it's all just considered part of your salary package then? Yeah. You know, they're paying an increase in superannuation. So, you know it's not accessible income, but it's adding to your retirement nest egg.

Do you want to quickly sort of mention how it works? Because I'm sure a lot of people, especially if they don't live in Australia currently and haven't, you know, researched this wouldn't know what. Superannuation.

Yeah. So basically superannuation is a mandatory saving for, um, your retirement. Um, and so if it's as it was when I was at the university, 17% or working for most companies, it was 9% that 9% of your fortnightly salary gets paid into a superannuation fund. Um, there are lots of them. Um, and you say you can add to that yourself? You can. It's called salary sacrificing where you can actually have more of your salary paid into superannuation. There's an advantage to doing that because it comes out of your pre-tax money, so you actually get taxed less.

There's contributions to superannuation and tax free.

Uh..

To a point.

Yeah it's 15% tax. Basically you're paying on on them going in. But um so but you don't pay that your own contributions are not taxed. So, so there's an advantage to doing that. But obviously you've got less income at the same time.

Yeah. At the moment.

So, um, and most superannuation companies have a rule that you can't take your superannuation out until you're 55, regardless of..

I thought there was a government rule. Is that a..

Yeah I think. Well, it's I think it's government rule, but yeah, there are um, so anyway, it's 55. You can't take any money out of your superannuation until you're 55, regardless of your employment status.

Mhm.

Um, and you all. But you also can't take money out of it if you are continue to be employed after 55. So you can't get to 55 and go, oh, I've got half $1 million sitting in a superannuation account, I'm going to keep working, but I'm going to take that half a million out.

Yeah.

Um, it's only to be used to effectively fund your retirement.

Is it a way that effectively, the government is trying to save money on pensions by having you effectively save up your own pension?

Yeah, effectively.

Yeah.

But, you know, if you're doing it for your whole life, your whole working life. Let's say you start working at 20 and you go to 65. You've got 45 years of money being paid into a superannuation account. You should buy that, by theory, have enough money to be able to have more than the pension when you come out. If you don't have a lot of money coming out of a superannuation account, for whatever reason, you haven't got much in there when you retire.

Mhm.

Then you are entitled to have, um, part pension as well. You can get part. The old age pension is on a means tested sliding scale.

But effectively the government will match or not match, but make sure that you end up with the same amount as the pension.

Yes.

So if you had like $10,000 in super and you're getting 100 bucks or whatever.

Yeah.

They would be like, well, we'll bump it up to what the pension is.

Yeah, exactly.

But we're not going to give you the pension on top.

You don't get the pension on top.

Yes.

No. So.

Okay. So is that something that you thought a lot about whilst you were working when you were younger? Is it something that you took more seriously the older you got? Like.

Well, it's.

How do you prepare for it?

How do you. Well, it's that it's always hard when you look at a proportion of your salary that is not yours, particularly when you're young. But at the same time, I always looked at it and thought, well, what are we going to need to retire on? How much money do you need to retire? And when you're in your 20s and 30s, it's hard to predict what the economy is going to be like in 30 or 40 years time.

Yeah. Too long. Didn't read and went fucked.

Exactly. Now, as it turned out, we got it pretty much right.

Yeah.

In terms of the assumption we made about how much we would need to retire.

And the amount you would get..

And the amount that we ended up getting out. Because I say we because your mum was working from the time. Well, she worked before you were born and then after you were, you know, had about 3 or 4 years off full time work when your kids were little. Um, but we ended up with enough superannuation to be able to retire on and basically what we thought we were going to need. So.

And you took a huge hit during the, um, 2008 financial crisis, as did..

Every. Every superannuation fund did.

Yes. Everyone in the world, right?

Yeah. Because most. Yeah. I mean, superannuation funds are not just like a bank. They're not just sitting with cash, sitting there and doing nothing with it.

No, they're..

They're investing it mostly in the property and share markets around the world. Um, now, depending on your fund that you are a member of, um, you you can choose how you want your, uh, funds invested.

Yeah.

Whether..

So you go green..

Yeah, but you can also do it in terms of do you want it, um, invest it aggressively. That is, with the highest potential return, but there's the highest risk of getting no return.

The highest potential for, yeah. No return..

And we always had a mixture between a slightly aggressive and a balanced. So we both your mum and I split our, um, investment options with our funds to have partly, you know, growth.

Yeah.

And partly balanced so that it was, you know, a little bit aggressive, but there was a fair amount of cash which for a long time was earning very little. When, when we were down to one and 2% base, you know, um, rates of return, then you're not making a lot of money. But at the same time, you're not losing any money by the stock market crashing or whatever volatility. The 2008 crash.

Yeah. How much did you lose there, percentage wise? What did that wipe off?..

It probably, I can't remember what it wiped off percentage wise. But to give you a an instance of the effect that had, um, your mum and I had always planned on retiring at 60 or at least having the money we needed to retire on by the time we got to 60.

Yeah.

The crash in 2008 pushed that out five years. Yeah, it took it. Basically, we were it took us five years to get back to where we were in 2008. So by 2013 we'd caught up again. Um, so it just pushed it out a bit. So it was probably about a 25 or 30% drop.

God.

Umm..

Yeah. Frustrating.

Yeah, exactly. But.

That's how it goes.

Life. You know that if we'd had our, you know, people say, oh, well, you know, if you had it in a safer thing, all right, I could have invested all that money and put it in the bank, but it would have been growing for ten years. It would have been growing at 1 or 2% a year.

Well, and if you imagine if you'd been..

As opposed to 10% a year. For most years.

Imagine if you'd been retiring in 2008, nine, as well.

Oh! Exactly.

And you didn't have the interest or potential to.

Yeah. All of a sudden you went to retire. And all of a sudden you're. Yeah. And that could happen to us tomorrow.

Yeah.

Umm.

Because it's still investing.

Because. Yeah, what we've done. Yeah. When you. Yeah. So when you reach retirement age, you decide you're going to retire any time over 55. You can do what you want to do with your superannuation. Typically the options are you can take the money and run. So.

What does that mean?

Well, take the whole lot and do whatever you like..

.. With the money as long as you're jogging.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Run! Um, so you can just you can take your money and do what you like with it.

Mhm.

You can take your money and buy a pension, um, from another private provider, or you can take a pension from the superannuation fund. So your money continues to get invested.

And you can withdraw a certain amount on a regular basis.

And so what we do is we take at the moment and that's regulated as to what you can take out.

How much?

Yeah. The minimum you can take out. You can take more than the minimum. But at the age of 65, um, which is what we were when your mother retired and we. And we decided to kick that in. Um, then we were a we were forced to take out a minimum of 5%.

Yeah.

Per year. Now, fortunately..

Why do they do that?

Um, I think the idea is that it's intended to be an income stream for your retirement. It's not intended to be a tax free investment.

Okay. So that's what they're worried about.

They're worried about people going, oh yeah. And and there's also a cap, a limit to the amount of money you can have in a superannuation fund.

It's quite a lot though isn't it. A few million..

It's $3 million.

Yeah.

Well it's 1.6.

Yeah.

Um, while you're working.

Yeah.

And then after that, they bump it up. I think it's 3 million.

Yeah.

Um..

Is that because you can have consolidated..

You can have 5 million in it if you like, but everything over the 3 million is going to be taxed.

Yeah. And so that's they don't want people.

They don't want people just consolidating their investments at their retirement..

Yeah, about $100 million..

Sticking it, sticking it in there. It's all tax free and I can take out whatever I feel like.

Yeah.

As tax free income.

Yeah. Because initially I'm thinking why wouldn't they just have a maximum. Because you would imagine that the superannuation companies would be wanting to hold on to as much money as possible to invest, to make their own profits and not be like, you can take out as much as you want whenever.

Yeah, but that's a government regulation. Yeah, the minimum thing. So yeah, we take out 5%. I think when you get to 75, then it goes to a sliding scale up until you're 90.

Yeah.

And adding about 1% per year. So I think by the time you're 90 it goes up to about 14% or something.

So what has retirement been like and what do you think it's like for the average Aussie? What does the average Aussie do when they get retired?

Well, it's I used to use the old joke with all my friends and colleagues were starting to retire and saying, you've got an assistant because most people, when they retire end up being busier than they were when they were at work. Not busier in terms of the number of hours a day or a week that they're actually committed to things, but you just do more things.

Yeah.

Because you don't have that. You know, most people would say a 40 hour week, but most jobs these days are 38 or 37.5, but depending on the work you're doing. I mean, when when I was working for ten years for a private education technology company, notionally I was working for 38 hours a week, but I was actually usually working about 80 hours a week.

Yeah.

Umm..

Because it was what, just everything else. You're preparing it..

You're preparing at night. And it was an international company. Head office was in Canada. Um, we had, um, in the Asia Pacific region that I worked in. We had people from India to New Zealand. So you've got about a five hour time span in, you know. Yeah. So, um,

I know what that's like because my team are in India and the Philippines. And so I'm always like, Kate, who's in the Philippines? Um, she doesn't really clock on until about 8 p.m. at night.

Yeah.

She works in the sort of afternoon for herself. But for me, that's like, you know, so I get messages at like 8 p.m., 9 p.m., 10 p.m..

I'm ready to work!

Yeah, exactly. Can you do this? Can you check this? And you just get into that routine. But yeah, it is funny when you have to work across so many different time.

Yeah, yeah. So retirement for me was um, particularly I retired semi in forced retirement. Um, in a sense that because I had a knee injury, um..

You ate shit on a tram, didn't you?

Well, somebody else ate shit and fell on my leg.

Yeah. Gotcha. They fucked you up. Yeah.

Yeah. So, um.

Suddenly stopped the..

The tram came to an emergency stop, and the person next to me just fell and landed, you know, hit my knee on the side. So, um. And that was going to take about 3 to 6 months recovery.

So it was like a tear of one of the tendons or something.

It was it was sort of major ligament damage, but not major enough to require surgery.

Yeah.

Um, and as the surgeon..

It's almost worse..

Because I saw an orthopaedic surgeon and he said, you know, we could operate, but it's unnecessary, and you will recover.

Yeah.

It's about the same recovery time that you'll have. Mhm. Um, but he said effectively you're better off without doing it. You'll, you'll have a bit looser ligaments and a little bit more leg pain forever maybe, but you know you're better off without surgery. Um so yeah. So I had that and then uh, a week later was in hospital with heart problems which I'd had ongoing. They weren't life threatening heart problems, but I went in with severe chest pain. And it turned out that the chest pain was not a heart attack or DVT, deep vein thrombosis, which was what I was most concerned about because I'd, I'd had my I'd had my leg completely. Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, locked up for a week. Um, but it turns out that, as you'd be surprised to hear, I was overdoing it on the crutches. So the chest pain was severe pain in the pectoral muscles and the intercostal muscles.

Yeah.

From the strain of getting up and around on crutches.

Yeah. It must be a bit of a shock, I guess, when you first end up on crutches, because you'd be using muscles in a way that you wouldn't be used to.

Well, you're never going to use them that way.

Yeah. And so you would have, but your body would have to acclimate really quickly. And it's like going to the gym and doing the same exercise all of a sudden every single day. Because you can't it's not like you're doing a few reps a week..

Severe spasms.

Yeah.

Or painful spasms. But, um, yeah. So in the end. But I'd only been working in the job that I was in at that time for about, um, 18 months, 15 months.

Mhm.

Um, and so I ran out of sick leave, ran out of annual leave, um, and I, because I was working with a team of people and managing them and working with academic staff at the university, at University of Melbourne, face to face. Um, it was one of those jobs that I didn't think I could do at home.

Yeah.

Um, and so I just said to them, look, I don't really want to take leave without pay indefinitely and then just have you because you have them holding a position for 3 to 6 months without me being able to do it. So I just chose to retire.

Yeah.

Um, which was sad because I really enjoyed the job. Um, I the saddest thing was that was in September 2019, four months later. Um, early February 2020 Covid hit. And then everybody was forced to work from home. So.

It's like, goddamn it!

Exactly. So I probably would have still been working for a year or two. Um, but in the end, I just looked at it and went, no, I'll retire. Um, I did a bit of consulting work, a few little jobs and things after that. I at the time, though, chose not to take my superannuation just to let it run. Um, even though I was not employed.

Because mum was working. Because her wage.

Yeah. Your mum was working. Yeah. We were. We could live off one salary, but it meant that my superannuation could continue to grow. I wasn't going to be taking money out of it while we didn't need it.

Well, yeah. That's it. If you don't need it for anything because you've got enough money for food.

Exactly.

.. then what's the point.

Yeah. So it probably in that two years before your mum retired, it probably grew by about 10 or 15%, so.

So when did. When was the first generation that kind of got to retire in Australian history? Because I imagine that that would have been what, our grandparents?

Yeah, probably.

And even. Yeah. Because my memory of it is like grandpa would have been a similar. Yeah. Well, you were talking about at the start of this episode, right? Whether the woman was a worker.

They never retired.

Yeah, exactly. They're just doing they're doing home work around the house. And the man was off, you know, in some conventional job of whatever form. And my earliest memory of grandpa was there, picking him up from the train from his engineering job, I think.

Yes.

You know, some of my earliest memories where Nanna are driven out there and we pick him up off the train. And I think pretty quickly, though, like, I don't know how old I would have been. It would have been under ten. He retired, right? He would have retired in his 60s. Yeah. Um. And interestingly, like, you wonder if thinking about like, the economic crisis we have in Australia at the moment, how much your generation or grandpa's generation may have peaked in terms of like, um, the amount of pay they got and the amount of savings they could get for superannuation and everything, and the life, because grandpa, Nana and grandpa have been retired for probably as long as they were working, right. Like they're getting close to being retired for 30 years.

Yeah.

Or in fact. Well, Nana's, you know, probably hasn't worked for about 60 years. You know, maybe give or take. And so, at least, you know, a conventional job. Um, but..

Well, she had a, she went back to work when they bought the farm.

Yeah.

And to pay that off.

That blows my mind. That she worked a few years and they paid the farm off.

Yeah.

You're just like. I can't imagine Kel and I buying a farm anywhere in Australia. Some land. Even if it was just..

It's a lot of working farm. It's a block of land. We call it the farm.

Yeah, but still it's it's sizeable. It's not just a block of land that you would have a house on. It's 100. It's 100 hectares or..

56 hectares. But when they, they bought half of that and then bought the half later, but..

They were in a position where a single wage could pay that off, is mind blowing, right? Because I can't imagine buying land in, I don't know, say Bendigo today and being like, Kel, go back to work, you know, go work, work a bit extra and then we'll pay it off in a few years.

If you if you put an entire a normal, you know, an average salary, if you put an entire average salary into the equivalent of that land now, it would probably take you ten years to pay it off.

Yeah. Yeah, it's just crazy.

Because I think it took 3 or 4.

Yeah? Do, do you. So do you think it peaked at that point? Do you think you guys have like looking at things now like are you sort of skeptical, or not skeptical, but like would you say have a negative view of what it's going to be like in the future in terms of quality of life and what retirement will look like for us, or are we just going to have to adjust the way that we live in the present? And then when we retire, we'll still be able to retire and still be able to do those things. But we may not have multiple properties and a large house that we live in. It's going to all just have to adjust to..

Yeah, it's it's hard to tell. It's really hard to predict what's, as I intimated earlier on, in your 20s and 30s, it's hard to predict what you think you're going to need when you get to retire in your 60s. Um, I can't imagine what it's going to be like in 30 years. I think there will be a, um, an I'm not an economist. Um, therefore, I probably know more don't have a high opinion of economists. And for all you economists out there who are listening, please tell me what you actually do. Um, I, I think there has to be an adjustment somewhere along the line. Um, because at the moment, cost of living is almost entirely driven by cost of housing.

Yeah.

The cost of owning a house, whether you're paying a mortgage or the cost of renting, um, is such a large proportion now of people's income and expenditure. Um, yeah. Food's a bit more expensive than it has been in the past. That's an adjustment related to, you know, where we've got at the moment. We've got, what, about four and a half, 5% inflation?

Yeah.

Um, whereas for 30 years inflation in this country was 2 to 3%.

Yeah.

Um, and yeah, I think there's a, you know, open the rant bracket now. Um, I think there's some gouging from supermarkets in particular. Um, on food pricing.

I- on that note, I couldn't believe that Aldi, you know, and this is a free ad for Aldi, effectively. Um, if you go to Aldi and buy all the equivalent things because they don't necessarily have the same products..

Same brands.

You save 25% on average.

Yeah.

Which is just mind blowing, right. And I think for, for example, Kel being Brazilian loves powdered milk.

Yeah.

It's one of these things that for me as an Australian, the only time I ever had powdered milk was when we were camping.

Camping, yeah.

Because you can't, obviously.

Yeah. School camps.

Yeah. You can't refrigerate milk and you want to have your hot chocolate or your coffee or whatever.

Yeah.

And whereas..

Powdered milk and powdered potato.

Anytime I've been to somewhere tropical. Like in Indonesia too, powdered milk was a huge.

Yeah. They can't keep. They can't refrigerate it.

I don't know. Well it's just expensive, right. But, um. So she's obsessed with it. It's like $10 a kilo, I think. A kilo bag is about ten bucks at Woollies or Coles.

Yeah.

And they're the same. Aldi. How much do you reckon it is?

Six?

$1.50.

Oh, really?

Yeah. I found out it was just like, fuck!

We're shopping at Aldi!

I could get six kilos of powdered milk.

So you've got six kilos of powdered- she still spent $10.

It's unbelievable. So there are certain things I mean, that's not obviously, that's a lot more than 25%. But that was one of those things where I was like, Good God, we're getting the powdered milk from this family.

And look, you can and I think we've had this discussion before. Um, I've got shares in Coles and Woolworths.

As you should.

As you should. Yeah. As my grandfather used to say, don't buy the money in the bank. Buy the bank. Um. They're private. Well, they're public companies, but they're they're a they're a company that only has one purpose, and that is to make money for their shareholders. Um, yes. All companies will say that, you know, we want to be environmentally friendly. We want to give back to the community and all that hoo hah. But in the end, they're there to make money. The challenge, though, is that when they are making money at the expense of people who can't afford it, and there's very limited alternatives, you know, yes, you can go to Aldi or whatever, but..

I know, but I have to go out of my way to get there. It's a lot further. Well, and the crazy thing I think that came out..

I think they're the only Aldi on the peninsula is the one in Ocean Grove, isn't it?

No, there's one in Leopold.

Oh, there's one in Leo as well.

Yeah, but the crazy thing that, um, came out when they were doing, I think it was Four Corners or whatever, was investigating the Colesworth bi-opoly, or duopoly or whatever. Yeah. Um, was that Coles and Woolworths both buy land where you would otherwise put supermarkets and just hold it so that no one else can buy it.

Oh, yeah.

So when Aldi tried to come in and expand for that and there have been there's another German, I think, supermarket that tried to come into Australia, but everywhere that was a good place to set up a supermarket, Coles and Woolworths owned that land and wouldn't develop it. They just kept it in there..

Oh I did, I did some work for a developer, um, a property developer. I did some a single photography job where they'd in one of their developments, they'd put a wetland in, rather than draining the swamp and things, they actually enhanced it. And they put, you know, bird breeding boxes and stuff in. And they just wanted some photographs of them and the birds around. So I did some work for them, but they showed me around their marketing person showed me around and, and ironically, their marketing person was a consultant. He didn't work for the company.

Yeah. So he so..

He was happy to tell you..

He said, I can actually tell you the real stuff here. I'm not trying to sell you the company.

Yeah.

Um..

My job doesn't depend on it.

Exactly. But what they did when they, they bought all the land for the development area and they didn't onsell any of it to any commercial enterprise.

Yeah.

They, so they..

They rent it.

No, they actually, um, sold or rented the areas that they'd set aside as supermarkets to shop holders and things rather than allowing those things, either Coles or Woolworths to come in and buy the lot. Because Coles and Woolworths will typically buy the entire thing.

Yeah. Done.

And then and then they sell and rent the space to other shops.

Whereas if you wouldn't and they're going to want to determine..

Of course. And that's fine. And but but at the same time we sort of digressed here. But but at the same time you could look at it and go, well, they're there to make money. But when the price of, um, fresh fruit and vegetables is a good example, because people always used to say, you know, it's fine, you know, stop whining about the price of things. When you're paying $6 for a bag of chips, you don't need to buy chips. Just go and buy a kilo of potatoes. Um..

How many hours of work would that require?

You don't have to make, but you don't have to make the chips. Just buy potatoes.

Yeah.

Um, you know, don't buy processed foods and things. But when you look at it now and the the the price of fruit and vegetables on the shelves in the supermarket. Um, it's about there's less than 20% of that money goes to the farmers who are growing it.

Yeah.

And they're going to go all the bits in the middle are profiteering off it.

Yeah.

And and so..

It's like the gold miner thing, right, back in the gold rush in Australia. It was like, if you want to get rich, sell shovels.

Yeah, exactly.

Don't don't be the guy for gold. Yeah. The one selling all this. All the middlemen effectively. But it's funny, the argument I would have is I don't buy chips because I'm trying to sustain myself with healthy food. It's not a I really need nutrition. How do I get the best bang for my buck?

I buy chips. I like it. Exactly. I like eating it.

I want it.

I don't eat chocolate for energy. I eat chocolate because it tastes good.

I want to watch a movie. I want to be depressed. And I just want to eat my comfort food and be left alone.

I know.

And unfortunately, it currently costs $6 a fucking bag.

I know, it's ridiculous. Buy popcorn.

Yeah.

Um.

The kids love that at the moment.

Yeah. The microwave popcorn.

What is the average grey nomads life? What's a grey nomad?

Grey nomad? Yeah. So we're back to, back to the retirement story. We'll rewind, and close the rant bracket and rewind. Yeah, the sort of grey nomad stereotype which I. It's an Australian stereotype, but I think it's common in Europe and North America as well.

Do you reckon Brits have grey nomads?

Yeah.

I guess you'd have to leave Britain though.

Yeah, but see, they can travel Europe.

Yeah.

Even though that Britain's no longer part of the European Community, you can still travel in Europe. It's easy. So.

I guess so. To explain, a grey nomad is someone who's retired and generally who has, at least in Australia, has a caravan.

Caravan or..

A camper van.

A camper van or a recreation..

Like someone in this conversation.

Yeah, well, I have a van that I have put a bed in.

So you can camp in the van.

So I can camp in the van! Yes. It is a very mini camper van.

That's it.

That's what I've spent the last week doing, is building a little console at the front of the vehicle.

Yeah.

Um, yeah. So. And, you know, mostly these are people who either the typical the cliched stereotypical grey nomad is someone who, when they retire, they'll either sell their house or take a significant proportion of their superannuation as cash. Spend $1 million on a big caravan and a four wheel drive to tow it. Or on a, you know.

A fucking massive campervan.

A campervan, sort of, you know, bus, um, and spend their life driving around Australia. And you can do it in Australia because Australia is big enough that you could spend the rest of your life driving around and never see the same place twice.

Yeah.

Um, and so you could do it if you, if you lived in Hawaii.

Yeah. You're fucked.

I'm going to buy a car. I'll drive around the island I live on.

Done!

I've done that. What am I going to do the next day? Yeah.

I know it is pretty crazy, isn't it? Like in Australia, you could just. We've got family that are currently on a sort of grey nomad expedition, right?

Yeah.

Bruce and Sandy.

Yeah. Short one.

And they're..

Driving up for..

Is it a few months?

3 or 4 months.

Yeah.

Driving up through Western Australia.

I love how you said that's a short one.

Well, it is..

For me, at least as someone who's not retired. I'm like Jesus Christ.

But but it's short. It's short in the sense that they're not typically grey nomads, in the sense that they haven't sold their house, they haven't bought a monster thing. They've got a small back of the truck sort of camper.

Mhm.

Um, and they do extended holidays.

Yeah.

Yeah. So they're away for three months straight.

I'd see the photos. I'm jealous..

Western Australia.

The stuff they get to see. Are they in the Kimberley or something..

They're heading there. They're not quite there yet. I think they were at El Questro station or something last time I saw it.

Yeah, but. Wow.

Yeah.

So is that something that you want to do? Like, can you imagine doing that kind of lifestyle? I think you said that you. I think you said, like, if so, we had these morbid discussions like, what are you going to do if mum dies and you're left with the lot and you're like, well, I'll probably sell the house, fuck off and never see you again.

See you!

Yeah. That's it. I'll be. I'll see you in the next life. That's it. The next time. I'll contact you. You'll be my lawyer.

I think I'm probably. Well, I'm. I'm tired here because of you and your sister and your kids.

Okay.

Yeah. I love living here, too. But at the same time, if I had nothing tying me here, I would probably keep the house. I'm not a, you know, spin mother. You know, spend half $1 million on a vehicle that's going to drive me around, you know, and then half $1 million on fuel for the next ten years. Um, I, I'd be more inclined to do the 3 or 4 months, a year of every winter, head north.

Rent out the house. Yeah. Just get income whilst you're away.

Exactly. Well, neighbours have done that.

Yeah.

They've been away for three months.

Yeah. And, yeah, it's going to be interesting because I just can't imagine being in a position you're in currently when we retire. So do you think is the average Australian in your position when they retire? Do you think you have it better than a lot of average Aussies?

I don't know what average means, but we well, I do as a statistician, I know exactly what it means, but I don't I couldn't define an average Australian I think is what I'm talking about. But um, we're in we're in a reasonable position because we, you know, we started off behind the eight ball because we were both students when we got married and we were students for a long time. Um, and then I was working, um, and then when new kids were born, your mum was working part time for a while. So it probably took us until our mid 30s for us to be both working full time.

Wow.

Um, but from that time on, we've both worked. Yeah, I've been in and out of work. I've retired from, you know, resigned from a couple of jobs and just been self-employed for a couple of years. Twice. Um, but, Um, I was still working and still earning money, but we were putting money into super. We both were fortunate to work for the university sector. Your mum for 35 years, me for 12 years. Full time for off and on in other places, part time. Um, which gave us the loaded superannuation. Um, you don't get paid a great salary, but you do get a superannuation.

Yeah.

Um, so, you know, we're in a fortunate position that we've got enough money to survive on, but we're not wealthy, you know, we're not, you know.

But it's one of those things that's relative, right? I think if you had the average person listening to this podcast understand the position you're in, the person that they're the average back home in their country is probably not the equivalent, right. And so it is one of those things that it's interesting when it's, you know, talk. I guess it's another conversation about what wealth is and what wealth is. But it is like an 'I see you guys as very wealthy', but you would obviously everyone looks above and sees everyone else is, you know, caning it. But yeah, it is. I wonder how we're going to go. My wife and I and my generation in general, as to getting to the same position that you guys are in. And if that is the peak, because, you know, Rome died, right? Like, all good things come to an end. I've always wonder when it's going to start going downhill. And and you know, if we'll notice, if we're the first generation where that's going to take place.

Yeah.

Look, it'll be harder, no question. It'll be harder. Um, and I think partly that's not it, partly it's economy, but partly it's our society has changed.

Yeah.

Um, expectations have changed. Therefore supply has changed. And so and we've talked about this before when, when we bought our first house, which we still own, the house you grew up in as a young child before we moved down here. Um, it was a two bedroom cement Shake Shack.

I was having this conversation today with someone and they were saying the same thing of like, well, we were talking about housing in, you know, Australia and particularly where we live in Curlewis and Clifton Springs. And he was like, yeah, my parents, you know, grew up in a two bedroom house. And they were like, you know, you could easily afford one of these. And he's like, there are none around.

There aren't. They don't exist.

No one builds a two bedroom house anymore!

They certainly don't build them now. They build two bedroom apartments.

In Melbourne, you know, in the city.

But you. And that's the problem now, is that because we went through this growth phase of expectation, people wanted to buy and were happy to spend money to buy, particularly when interest rates were very low.

Yeah.

Um, you know, when you're paying two and a half, 3% interest on a mortgage, um, you could borrow money effectively. As much money as the bank would lend you. Um, and people wanted the five bedroom house with the triple garage and the three bathrooms and..

Well, why wouldn't you write everything else. As big as you can get?

And therefore, that's what developers built. And now that's all you can buy.

Well, and that's it. If you drive around this estate, which is one of these more modern ones..

Try finding a three bedroom house.

There'd be some, but they wouldn't. The average one is four.

I know.

The average one is going to be four. And it'll probably be this size or bigger, because the one we were renting around the corner was bigger than this. And it had it was a four bedroom, but it had two living spaces. Um, and yeah, but yeah, you look on. I remember looking on, um, when we were trying to find a place to buy, and there was, it was just all four bedrooms, some five, some three, but there's probably as many five bedroom places as three.

Yeah.

And, you know, so the average, unless it's an apartment or a, um..

A unit.

Unit. Yeah, exactly. But it'll be so it'll be interesting to see if that adjusts. And you would imagine the pressures will be that not enough people are buying houses or paying for houses to be built anymore at the current scale that they the plans are. And so you're going to have a lot of these developers have to be like, okay, well, we're going to have to downsize at least the size of the house. We're going to have to minimise costs. You know, if the average person can't afford these houses anymore, how do we bring that down? And apparently Australia is at an all time low of new house builds whilst at an all time high of immigration.

Yeah.

You know, and so the, the pressure on, on the housing market is crazy right now. But you just sort of like how do we get out of this, especially if the government's not doing a great deal.

Yeah. And that's what I was saying. I think that longer term, there's going to be a a reconciliation of the economic situation where we're going to have to go through this monster change. Yeah. Um, of and it's housing. That's the expensive part. We're going and we've had this discussion before. Uh, going into medium density dwellings. Not necessarily high rise.

Do you think UK type thing- because they have a lot of- is it late 19th century, early 20th century buildings where they have these sort of like two storey houses, but there's usually a person living on top and a person living on bottom.

Yeah.

And there's just streets of those.

And they're terraced houses. Yeah. Yeah. There's no no gap between them.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Which is like old- which is funnily enough, what Melbourne was built in in Melbourne and Sydney were built in the 19th century. Um, those were that was what people thought housing looked like. And so I look at that as sort of semi medium density, although each of them was a separate block of land, albeit smaller, because everybody had their own backyard and the backyard backed onto a laneway and so on. Now, ironically, those laneways were there for a different purpose. They were there so the the, the poo collector could walk down with his horse and cart because the, the thunderbox toilet was the outhouse was right down the backyard.

Yeah. Jesus.

But but I think that medium density housing where you don't have your own backyard.

Yeah.

You know, and maybe you're in a, you know, a smaller house, smaller footprint. Houses will be two storey, they'll be smaller footprints. And maybe you have six houses with a shared space that's got a playground or barbecue area and stuff that everybody can use.

It's funny because I think if we had that option, if that was already built, I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to that, especially if the area is larger than your backyard would have otherwise.

Yeah. And that's what it is.

You're kind of like you said, it's. It's bigger..

It's bigger.

Yeah, exactly.

And you've got a big play area. You're not going to buy a $100,000 play equipment.

No.

But if it's built in for six people to share as part of the deal.

Well, and also the social aspect, I wonder how much, because it is one of those interesting things, you know, and the topics going all over the show today. But I always think, I don't fucking know my neighbours, like I don't know the people over the fence.

I know.

Especially on the other side where they're backing onto the other street. And yet I hear children out there and I hear, you know, Noah and Joey's age, my kids age. And I'm like, if we just had a shared space, you wonder how..

Kids would all be playing out there, and you'd have 1 or 2 adults supervising a bunch of kids hanging around. Uh, but yeah, we do have this Australian dream where we're locked into the Australian dream that came from the middle of the 20th century, post-Second World War of everybody wanted to own their quarter acre block.

Yeah.

Ironically, the blocks are no longer quarter acre. They're smaller. They fit their fifth of an acre as such. But nobody understands what an acre is anymore. But, um. But it used to be that standard block. And. Sorry, cat wandering around in your backyard.

It happens. Is it a, it's a brown one. Yeah..

Brown tabby, spraying on the barbecue.

The ladies always like, oh, no, she doesn't go into anyone's yard. And you're like, I've seen it in my fucking yard! Like I've got photos of it in my fucking. What do you mean? How do you know what I know? You're at work!..

I know, I love that. Yeah, I know. People are weird.

Oh, no. Weird doesn't do that. Okay. All right.

Um, yeah. Where were we? Yeah. So there you go. You've got somebody else's cat in your backyard. The cat's. Whereas it was shared space. It's a shared cat.

Yeah, I was talking to one of the neighbours recently, and they're like. I've been trying to coax it inside so I can keep it. I remember being like, please..

We got our first cat. She adopted us.

Tell me if you do.

She was, she was probably somebody else's cat. But yeah, she was effectively a stray in the inner suburbs of Melbourne and just walked into our house one day and stayed.

Yeah. This is this place is nice. Better than where I come from.

And then she had kittens in our garage out the back. And as soon as she. And then when she brought the kittens back, she..

That was when..

She took them away after a couple of weeks, brought them back and we thought, they're ours now. Off to the vet.

This is your problem.

Get flea- deloused.

Well, yeah.

Vaccinated.

So.

Retirement.

What is? What's the plan? How long does it last? Does it do you just keep doing what you're doing? Are you bored yet? Like, tell me about it.

Keep doing it. Keep doing what you're doing until you can't do it anymore.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Have you been doing fuck all?

Yeah. Pretty much.

Sweet. Pretty much. Sweet. Fuck all. You've just been driving around, chilling out day to day, just watching TV, watching the shows and sports, and then hanging out with Ralph.

Yeah.

Going for walks, photographing birds.

Yep. Living the dream.

Doing a bit more travelling. So I'm about to go away for three weeks. So.

Yeah, I know.

Been heading off into New South Wales and Queensland.

Are there any regrets? Do you miss working?

I miss working, I missed the work that I did 40 years ago. I missed teaching.

You just, the social aspect?

Social? Yeah. Socialising. I just miss teaching. I really enjoy it. Which is why I still teach, you know, the odd, you know, class, you know, eight hour class every term at the local community centre. Because I just enjoy interacting with people.

I know. But that was one thing. Recently, like, I've started up private lessons again. Free ad to you guys. Send me an email. Um, but I didn't realise how much I just as someone who works from home, I missed, um, you know, being able to talk to other human beings during the day and just how emotionally and mentally healthy it is, I think, to do that. You know, when you're at home all the time, just creating content, but you sort of by yourself besides doing the sort of episode. So yeah, it's just you don't realise how lonely you're getting and it's almost like it's a crisis in this current society with how lonely the average person is, despite probably, you know, living in countries that have never been more populated.

Yeah.

Than than they are currently, right. Like Australia has probably never had more people in it than today. Obviously it's like that every day at the moment into the future. But we have this loneliness epidemic, right?

Being lonely in a crowd.

Yeah, it's a weird thing. And it's funny because it's one of those things where I feel like I want to make so many connections with people, but it's just so hard, especially as an adult. Like. I'm so happy, Kels. Kels been able to do it and meet lots of, um, mums and click with them. And they've created their own social group. But it's like even when you meet the dads and the other, you know, they're nice people, but there's just something you need, something extra there to click over.

Yeah. If the only thing you've got in common is your kids.

Yeah. Whereas like, a lot of the like, you know, Kel goes out and they do their nails together. They went to yoga together yesterday. They like doing stuff, going out and having food at different restaurants. I'm not really getting my nails done, doing yoga often.

You know, for a long time you haven't been into sport?

No.

And that's a lot of that is..

I like doing it, just not..

Going to sport, or doing it. So people go, oh, let's go and have a game of tennis or a game of golf, or let's go to the football or whatever. You go, I'm not going to go like..

Yeah, I'm like, I'd rather sit at home in a cold room in the dark. No, but I probably need to be more open to it. I've thought about that recently and I'm like, maybe I just need to do it for the social aspect. I don't give a shit about the sport. I can probably pretend and then just.

Look some of it.

Some of it, I think, is you don't even have to plan it. I mean, I've done it a few times but haven't done it much recently. If you just Saturday afternoon, go down to the local football club and watch the game and, you know, have a beer, hang over the fence and yell at a few idiots on the ground and somebody will come up next to you and go, yeah, he is an idiot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well we're mates. Yeah, I know, but you know, it. It's I think in retirement it's harder as well. And retirement is a bit. Well you've effectively retired into employment, retired into self-employment from having been a student where you're surrounded by people all day, every day, um, and then went straight into self-employment.

It is weird having my sort of a job where it's not really hour intensive, you know, like, I don't it's I don't have to be in a specific location for eight hours a day on a daily basis.

You will now, you've been you're taking private lessons.

Jinxed myself.

Yeah.

Um, but at the same time, it's just different. Like, I'll be up to talking to my team or whatever. It fucking 10:00 at night. And so there's a trade off. But there are definite aspects that I enjoy just being able to wake up and be like, well, I guess I don't feel like working today, or I get to drink a beer and have a chat and that's it.

Yes.

Anyway, this one's gone for quite a while, but, um, thanks for hanging out and I hope you enjoyed it.

I have no idea what we were talking about. Probably nothing in relation to the..

Grey nomads, Dad.

Grey nomads. Retirement.

That's it.

Supermarkets.

See ya!

Bye!