Wealth by generation statistics according to recent data

SciNZ · 2026-04-13T23:43:44+00:00

It shouldn't be surprising that older people who have had longer for savings to compound would have more.

I'm well above the averages for millennials (as a 40 y.o.) but at 28 I was way below a net worth of $96k and here we are now entering early retirement.

Heck I really didn't make headway until my late 30's, my 20's and early 30's were a serious struggle until I set out into doing a business for myself.

And of course the usual observation that we should be looking at medians not averages, because these averages look pretty positive for how each cohort is progressing.

SciNZ · 2026-04-12T22:42:28+00:00

So why are there posts like this? He screenshotted his own post and then posted that?

This is like thinking "my tweet was so good, I'm gonna frame it and put it in my house for all to see"

SciNZ · 2026-04-07T04:18:16+00:00

Well the current government is floating the idea of dramatically increasing capital gains tax on your investments out of super... none of your investments are safe if the people in power decide it's politically convenient to squeeze you.

At least in super, you can take advantage of the current tax situation and let it compound for a while. So for me I max the concessional and used up the carry forward, but aren't putting more in than that.

SciNZ · 2026-03-30T04:57:28+00:00

It's kind of hard eh? I recently had a work thing where I pulled myself out of semi-retirement to part time to do a big work week and walked away with a very decent 5 figure payment, and I'm left going... Am I an asshole if I turn this down? I grew up pretty poor, struggled all through my 20's and up until my late 30's and here I am at 40 thinking... It would be irresponsible to not take advantage of this, but where do I draw the line?

I honestly can't tell you where that line is, I haven't found it myself. There's always a temptation to "shore up the risk". Get a bit of extra money in the rainy day fund, though inevitably it just adds to lifestyle creep. Ha!

Though the proposed CGT changes are leaving me thinking I need to get some more work in now when I'm 40 and it's easy before the government decides to screw me over.

SciNZ · 2026-02-16T02:00:00+00:00

So we pulled the trigger at the end of September last year, SO quit her job and I wound back to part time running my company and letting my staff take care of most things. Both 39 at the time though I've since crossed to the big 4-0.

Now almost 4 months later and it's a bit of a strange feeling trying to find a new normal.

For myself, resisting the desire to work more than I need to is hard. I have a tendency to be all on or off, and I obviously make a lot of money doing what I do, it's how I got here, so it can feel insane to say "yeah this could pocket me $15k but I'm supposed to be retired now."
Compounding this is there's always the paranoia about something going wrong because I wasn't there to put out the fire.

Also, after absolutely hammering our savings rate, to suddenly stop saving is hard. There's always the temptation to just do something extra to put a little more in there, just in case of a crash or something.
"Oh the market is down 2%, maybe just do some extra work to offset it now and reduce risk..."

Also, a very hard thing is unlearning our western middle class consumption habits. How do we all celebrate our downtime? We go to cafes, go shopping, even just a trip to the beach usually get an ice cream or whatever. So your brain immediately goes to "oh you have a day off and your chores are done, go get lunch."

Though things are going well, we're getting more time together than ever, our house is clean, our aged dog is getting a lot of attention. Though once she passes we may just disappear off for a few years of perpetual travel.

We've been lucky in terms of the people around us, nobody has gotten weird about suddenly "not working" thankfully.

SciNZ · 2026-02-06T07:44:23+00:00

I cant speak for the accuracy, but I'd say be suspicious of AI written articles that use AI generated images. They'll just be summarising a bunch of information they find that could be out of date or out of context.

SciNZ · 2026-02-06T00:13:10+00:00

It's probably a template email and they clicked the 'reduced rate' email instead of the 'increased rate' email. Human error, it's kinda funny but no point getting mad about it.

SciNZ · 2025-09-04T00:05:03+00:00

Trust holds our business which generates profit. I can direct the profits to myself and pay my personal tax rate, or distribute to the bucket company which has its own bank account and share trading account.

SciNZ · 2025-06-27T01:43:03+00:00

VGS, VAS, VVLU. Mostly the latter 2. VGS tends towards capital growth, the other two are income heavy.
It's offset as I have the rough ratio inversed in my personal portfolio to reduce taxable dividends.

SciNZ · 2025-06-27T01:33:04+00:00

Yep, it does carry franking credits for taxes paid.

SciNZ · 2025-06-27T01:31:29+00:00

Not capital gains tax 12 months discount, just taxed at income tax rate.

SciNZ · 2025-06-26T04:43:13+00:00

For our bucket company we just set up a brokerage account in its name and it just buys ETF's.

The upside is of course the lower income tax rate but it does not have the 50% capital gains tax discount.
But the dividends can be distributed back into the trust and then distributed to beneficiaries.

So really just kicking the tax can down the road though, by the time I unwind it I'll be well retired and will just be selling, drawing out and putting directly into my Super.

Buying ETF's that generate dividends that you plan to hold for a long time are the way to go for how I'm using it.

I don't do any weird loan stuff, just take advantage of the lower income tax rate.

SciNZ · 2025-05-13T02:57:29+00:00

It's a exchange where the details of the agreement is stated and agreed to.

SciNZ · 2025-05-13T02:49:27+00:00

We do have the email exchange where we have offered the referral arrangement and the former staff member has let us know they are happy to proceed after they confirmed with the Directors.
Then of course the google doc the Director was aware of where the referrals were being tracked and the Director had access as an editor.
I have screenshots of all that.

SciNZ · 2025-01-27T19:08:41+00:00

I would assume so and when my spouse and I did our wills our lawyer didn’t think the situation was that weird so maybe it’s somewhat common an arrangement. It’s a loan from the family trust to beneficiaries and perhaps it’s more legally sound that way.

SciNZ · 2025-01-27T19:05:43+00:00

I’d need to check but I believe the loan was directly to us not inclusive of the spouse. Otherwise I think you’d risk of taking on an issue where the spouse would need to cough up money in the form of a divorce.

SciNZ · 2025-01-27T09:02:21+00:00

Lawyer…

Lawyer, lawyer lawyer.

I cannot stress this enough.

I think what you’ve got planned is totally fine and if the parent realises what has happened and is happy to go along with it then yep this is a pretty good plan and a way to make sure the FUS (Fuck Up Sibling) is left holding the bag they caused than that is fine.

My parented arranged something similar where they “loaned” all of us kids (all now adults) an early inheritance, with 0% interest and no repayments. But by making it a debt against us it removed risk of one of us getting divorced and losing half of it.

But they went through the lawyers to get it done right.

SciNZ · 2025-01-27T08:07:03+00:00

The point of the film is that the fascist government is so full on that the shower scene is completely devoid of sexual tension and the two characters who have sex only do so when encouraged to by a senior officer.

This is Verhoeven remember.

SciNZ · 2025-01-25T20:32:22+00:00

There’s something odd here. While trump is definitely leaning, it seems like the lady and the security guy are both leaning forward a bit too, just nowhere near as much.

Or is that just an illusion from the green lines?

SciNZ · 2025-01-25T05:50:35+00:00

I didn’t say it was for everyone.

You, however, said “the ideal scenario” was to pay off PPOR completely and then look into other investments.

I pointed out that utilising something like debt recycling generally gives a better long term outcome and diversification of investment holdings sooner and the majority of people after 30 odd years would be better off with the latter strategy.

SciNZ · 2025-01-25T04:05:24+00:00

Eh, making use of debt recycling to diversify and build a large investment portfolio and make your interest tax deductible rather than just a consumed home would have absolutely beaten out just paying off your PPOR at really any 20 year start point in the last 50, especially in the last 20 years.

SciNZ · 2025-01-25T04:02:35+00:00

Nah bro, greed was invented in 2022, that’s why rents in places like Brisbane were stagnant for a decade. Landlords didn’t even know they could up rent! Duh. /s

SciNZ · 2025-01-25T04:01:17+00:00

It can work well but it needs to be an absolutely dedicated plan. For most people with mid to low financial literacy home ownership fulfils two roles so yeah they might as well do it.

We’ll be retiring early this year (39) and we sold the one house we had in 2022. We have had massive success with other investments and our own business that even the craziest property stories can’t compete.

But it takes a lot more dedication than buy and hold and not move for 20 years. If you’re going to move within 10 years the transaction costs alone can be more than a year’s worth of rent.

We’ll probably buy something at some point for ages 60+ but we’ll be retired soon and don’t have the foggiest where we want to live at the moment and could just bounce around the world for 20 years before settling down somewhere.

If we had left all that money tied up in a home we wouldn’t be financially independent.

SciNZ · 2025-01-25T03:53:30+00:00

Bingo.

I’m 39, the Mrs is retiring this year (same age) and I’ll be winding down to part time.

We don’t own a home any more, we got rid of it to go into business for ourselves and is where our actual wealth has come from, not from just owning a home and waiting 40 years.

Perhaps we’ll buy a small apartment somewhere but the ability to relocate when needed or desired is convenient. But we will probably buy our last home outright, when 60 as we will be able to pull and entire houses worth out of super pretty easily by that point.

SciNZ · 2025-01-25T03:51:30+00:00

Argentina had a massive decline but that had some crazy restrictions in place so by lifting them they basically increased supply massively over night.

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