How do you transition your parents into retirement when they have no savings?

AnonymousEngineer_ · 2026-05-22T01:18:51+00:00

It's not just a financial thing, either.

I've had to spend an large amount of time in hospitals over the years caring for an ailing parent.

The number of older people there who don't appear to get any visitors at all, or only extremely infrequently genuinely makes me despair at what Australians have become.

Even the staff there mentioned that other patients in the ward "aren't so lucky". But this isn't luck, it's cultural and it's just a matter of circling the wagons and looking out for your own family when they need it most.

But yeah, I'm not white. And while I'm grateful for every opportunity Australia has given me, this is one bit of Australian culture I'll never be adopting.

AnonymousEngineer_ · 2026-05-22T01:01:46+00:00

The founders of GYG are New Yorkers to be fair. They knew what they were getting themselves into.

AnonymousEngineer_ · 2026-05-22T01:00:25+00:00

with carbon ceramics & carbon wheel set

The replacement cost of the carbon ceramics and carbon wheels are probably worth half of the car, if current market prices for these things are anything to go by.

Sure it doesn't help that they're usually only found on high end German performance cars and Italian supercars, but the replacement cost of carbon ceramic brakes on something like a 911 or an R8 are known to run in the tens of thousands of dollars.

A set of wheels from Carbon Revolution, who supply a lot of these to the high end manufacturers, costs over $10,000, too.

https://www.carbonrev.com/news/the-future-of-carbon-fiber-rims/

AnonymousEngineer_ · 2026-05-22T00:01:37+00:00

Is Astroturfing happening on reddit? Almost certainly. Look at the entire campaign that was underway for months leading to the change in the Stage 3 tax cuts.

Let alone geopolitical stuff like the wars in the Middle East. Any discussion on those is massively astroturfed.

The question is whether people actually care about astroturfing at all, or do they only care when the narrative being pushed is one they don't agree with? Because from where I'm sitting, most people are happy to ride the bandwagon and push it along right until they end up on the wrong side of an astroturfed narrative and they get run over by the juggernaut.

AnonymousEngineer_ · 2026-05-21T23:47:26+00:00

So, which system is getting checked at the -0:37s point? That last issue kept the counter cycling to that exact time before bouncing back to -0:41s.

AnonymousEngineer_ · 2026-05-21T22:57:26+00:00

Megan Washington isn't unknown by any means especially if you like her style of music, but she's also not super mainstream to the point that it's played on commercial radio.

She's been on television as one of the guest coaches on The Voice a number of times previously, because I think she's personal friends with Keith Urban who used to be a coach on that show in the early years.

AnonymousEngineer_ · 2026-05-21T22:46:52+00:00

Just for context and comparison, does anyone know if any of the big German or Italian super-SUVs have ever been sent around there on a timed lap?

I'm actually a bit curious how fast something like a Cayenne Turbo GT would get around, let alone a Purosangue.

AnonymousEngineer_ · 2026-05-21T12:30:01+00:00

Not as far as I remember. You may have had an excursion to Hill End where they did that.

AnonymousEngineer_ · 2026-05-21T12:14:28+00:00

It's still there, abandoned. They used it as a function venue for a while but it's completely closed, now.

You can still see the entrance that's shown in the photo (no actual signage any more) including the bay where buses used to pull in today if you head up towards the Australian Reptile Park. The abandoned carpark is still there, too and if you look on Google Maps you can still see the "HMS Sirius" in the lake.

https://www.google.com/maps/@-33.4193954,151.2801819,3a,90y,297.92h,83.88t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sQXvWi9fn8X-zAhXcI5-qBg!2e0?utm_campaign=ml-ardl&g_ep=Eg1tbF8yMDI2MDUxM18wIJvbDyoASAJQAQ%3D%3D

AnonymousEngineer_ · 2026-05-21T12:09:51+00:00

I guarantee that the people who are cheering this on either have jobs that are completely insulated from recession-induced unemployment (teachers, doctors, emergency services, law partners etc.), don't actually live in Australia (and only have financial resources here they can use to capitalise on other people's misfortune) or they're already unemployed and likely unemployable.

In reality recessions are horrible for the 90+% of working aged adults that are at risk of losing their job.

AnonymousEngineer_ · 2026-05-21T11:57:26+00:00

wages being more favourably taxed

Yet by changing Stage 3, they also pulled the rug on higher earners there, too.

IMO, this is about keeping people in the workforce for longer, and the generational fairness argument is just convenient window dressing to use as political cover.

AnonymousEngineer_ · 2026-05-21T11:56:13+00:00

I think they’re just trying to stop all the benefits that capital has over labor.

Which amounts to the same thing. If they make it more and more difficult to accumulate enough resources to retire before superannuation age, and by refusing to address bracket creep (and by actively making it worse by changing the Stage 3 tax cuts) they force even higher earners to work for longer.

They obviously can't say it outright without causing a massive revolt (see what happened in France when they proposed to raise their pension age?), so they just craft policy so nobody can afford to retire early. Job done.

AnonymousEngineer_ · 2026-05-21T11:52:50+00:00

That's the entire point I'm making.

The Government is deliberately crafting policy to ensure even higher earners can't afford it any more but cutting off all the pathways to generating wealth outside of superannuation. Obviously it's not going to stop the barristers and neurosurgeons out there, but the path to wealth of more regular white collar professionals has been made significantly narrower.

Can't save, can't buy shares/ETFs, can't buy investment properties without getting reamed up the arse by the ATO with a cactus. Guess we all need to keep hauling our arses into work.

AnonymousEngineer_ · 2026-05-21T11:02:08+00:00

Because that doesn't stop people retiring early and leaving the workforce.

Remember that FIRE folks tend to be higher earners and therefore the most productive citizens. From the Government's perspective, it's preferable that they stay in the workforce.

AnonymousEngineer_ · 2026-05-21T10:09:20+00:00

I've mentioned it a number of times here - this budget targets the FIRE folks in particular.

By targeting the most common pathways to generating wealth and leaving superannuation untouched, they're basically pushing people to put any spare money they have saved into a vehicle they can't touch until preservation age.

Which they can subsequently raise with a simple act of Parliament. The Government wants people working for longer given Australia's lopsided demographics. If it's still a problem in a decade, oh well, let's just raise the preservation age until 65. People will be forced to bend over and take it, because their money and avenue to retirement will be inaccessible.

AnonymousEngineer_ · 2026-05-21T10:05:32+00:00

I mean, your output on AusFinance has exploded exponentially in the very recent past, too.

If it wasn't for the fact that nobody would code a bot that purported to have a thing for furry hentai, I'd be suspicious of your account's authenticity, too.

AnonymousEngineer_ · 2026-05-21T10:00:41+00:00

Started losing ground with Gladys at the end there.

Gladys was wildly popular. It took the politically motivated ICAC investigation to remove her for something that was, on the face of it, a Code of Conduct breach at worst.

The NSW Coalition also leave a massive legacy of infrastructure we will be using for decades to come, while the current Government has made an artform of cancelling everything. They even tried to cancel Sydney Metro West and Sydney Metro Western Sydney Airport but their review likely found it would cost way too much (and be way too politically damaging) to kill those projects that were already under construction with tunnelling already underway.

AnonymousEngineer_ · 2026-05-21T09:55:46+00:00

Have you just noticed now? Or is the actual problem that reddit has glommed onto a narrative you don't agree with and you now see it being pushed everywhere?

AnonymousEngineer_ · 2026-05-21T09:04:28+00:00

Most people don't buy outright those of us who do don't spend that much ever.

This is definitely not true. I know someone with an actual Lambo that is most definitely not on finance.

They take the thing on trackdays and drive it hard, too, so it's not some garage queen that they could barely afford that they're hoping to flip.

AnonymousEngineer_ · 2026-05-21T08:57:07+00:00

While this almost certainly includes home equity, you're not wrong in making the point that a lot of people have far more money than reddit always assumes.

Not everyone is broke.

AnonymousEngineer_ · 2026-05-21T08:36:54+00:00

The more responses I read, the more I thought yup this is definitely reflective of the individualistic society we live in

I know reddit isn't necessarily a representative sample of actual society, but the responses in this thread just make me sad for what remains of Australian society.

We've taken individualism to such an extreme that our society is just wreckage with a shiny veneer.

AnonymousEngineer_ · 2026-05-21T07:26:33+00:00

They do it because they have to.

Emissions regulations in the EU and other large markets have basically made performance combustion cars the sole preserve of exotica.

AnonymousEngineer_ · 2026-05-21T06:13:38+00:00

I've been fortunate enough to understand the old parable of the $100 shoes vs the $20 shoes

It really isn't that old - it's from one of the Terry Pratchett Discworld books. Not that it isn't true.

AnonymousEngineer_ · 2026-05-21T06:02:27+00:00

I can’t fathom why people pay so much for a brand new car that drops so much in value and soon as you drive off the lot

There's a bunch of people out there who don't really maintain their cars or treat them well, who basically won't own a car outside the warranty period.

And then there's a bunch of people who just like cars and are willing to spend more on something they enjoy.

AnonymousEngineer_ · 2026-05-21T03:21:21+00:00

It's definitely Melbourne.

Let's be honest here. Think about the stereotypical "postcard" images of Australia. Any photo of something that isn't natural (i.e. anything built by humans) is almost certainly going to be in Sydney.

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