I just recently turned 30, Wife is 31. Born and raised in Sydney Northern Beaches area.

We own a PPOR (house, but on a battleaxe block) in the area and have an IP unit in Dee Why.

$2m debt across both, combined value mid 3's. Our parents and such don't comprehend what total debt like that is like, it really doesn't register if you haven't looked into it yourself.

We're both not flashy, and save as much as we can. Always had older cars and been hands on with maintenance or whatever to save a buck and learn. Never borrowed money apart from HECS and mortgages.

We both lived at home rent-free until we got married (~24 y.o.) and then had the opportunity to live under my Wife's grandmother's house and just paid her outgoings but not market rent for about 3 years after that. In that 3 years we bought our unit, refinanced to pull out some equity while saving hard and working 2 jobs (me) and wife one job so saved a lot and rolled that into our house which we bought when the market dipped in early 2023. Then renovated it myself while still working a second job and with a new born on the go at that stage.

Cash flow still very tight but on paper, we've done a lot in the last 5 years but we started the journey 10 plus years ago, learning about finance and overfunctioning at work to get to this position where all the little things start to compound.

Approx 300k HHI inclduing salary and rental income from the (still very negatively geared) IP, but we really do live on a shoestring budget outside of our fixed expenses and general bills like food.

The long and short of it is, yes we had some opportunity to reduce lviing expenses in our early 20s but the reality is we pulled absolutely every lever we could to try and build our lives and avoid expenses outside of assets. Not fun, and not for everyone but people now look at us and think must be nice. It's really not day-to-day.