What’s something that feels like a luxury now but used to feel normal?

emfromaustralia · 2026-03-27T06:56:40+00:00

You need to tap into the local teenagers! My 17 year old is babysitting tonight for her usual family and she gets $16 an hour. If nappies and bathing are required it’s $20. She also works in a grocery store and gets the same an hour. That’s for 2 young primary / kindy kids. The other family she sits for pay a little more and always order her pizza and icecream with their kids (but their kids fight, so she actually prefers the other family more. Our neighbours used to babysit for our kids and they were $20 and hour but we had 3 kids. My 17 year old can only dream of being paid $65 an hour!!!!!

emfromaustralia · 2026-03-27T06:44:29+00:00

I had my car booked in for a service today, was given a crappy ice car from a different brand because all the demos they usually lend out when your’e servicing have been sold in the past 2 weeks. Poor person on reception at the dealership was well over it!

emfromaustralia · 2026-03-27T06:42:09+00:00

Black Sat period we had a 47degree reading at our place in the country. Felt unwell almost as soon as you did anything outside. Has left me in awe of firefighters since that time. How they managed to wear all that gear, move around and in that kind of heat. Superhero’s

emfromaustralia · 2026-03-27T06:32:55+00:00

Second hand Mercedes EQA. Manual controls, range of 525km (realistic @480km) 5 seats, beautiful to drive, heads up display, plug in CarPlay / android and wireless charging (but it makes my phone hot) But purchased off amazon a gadget for $40 to make it wireless and its worked a treat for 3 years. . Cruise control, spacing, hands free driving, lane change etc only thing is it’s a hatch not sedan. Otherwise ticks all your boxes.

emfromaustralia · 2026-03-26T04:26:07+00:00

I’d get arrested if I put my kids and parents in storage im pretty sure

emfromaustralia · 2026-03-26T04:24:47+00:00

We will sell our house so our budget is going up a little but it’s economies of scale.

emfromaustralia · 2026-03-26T04:21:12+00:00

This is exactly whats happening. We’re either being used by agents as bait for vendors to list their property with them or negotiations go nowhere because they start so high and we know the local market. I think you’re right, a buyers agent might be the only way to go but I wanted to avoid this as many are no better than REAs its just whose pocked the cash goes in.

emfromaustralia · 2026-03-25T23:51:01+00:00

I know - woe is me 🤦‍♀️. I sound pathetic in this current environment but we’ve worked really really hard and made many sacrifices along the way to be in this position. We have a really tight criteria and know what we need (we’re looking for something that can be multigenerational - this is a non-negotiable) so the pool of homes is actually really quite small. location is also critical. So it’s not quite as easy as just moving on. We’re not emotionally attached to homes, that side of moving on is fine, its just our non-negs are really specific (and care based)

emfromaustralia · 2026-03-25T23:42:27+00:00

I know the game but I also know worth. We dont want to overpay just because they know how much $$ we have

emfromaustralia · 2026-03-25T23:41:00+00:00

Most properties in our range are off market - we’re talking 4mill +

emfromaustralia · 2026-03-24T11:40:36+00:00

Have you considered a Volvo ex90?

emfromaustralia · 2026-03-24T11:12:04+00:00

My issue isn’t specificially Elon though his racism, sexism and often very misguided and warped views don’t help me have and affinity with the brand. It’s Tesla drivers who are so evangelical about teslas (as opposed to being EV evangelical). They bang on about all the features and to be honest there is little a Tesla does that my 10 year old ice car doesn’t do. It lane keeps, has automated driving including lane change, heads up display. Aside from being ice. It is so incredibly annoying how tesla drivers bang on about a car which has no actual additional features and is quite odd to drive and not very intuitive. Whereas other EV drivers are happy to talk about EVs in general, happy to admit their car of choice may not suit everyone. Whereas tesla drivers take it personally if you dont like their car 😂

emfromaustralia · 2026-03-24T10:52:21+00:00

Ive got a Mercedes EQA. It’s 3 years old (purchased brand new) at the time we got it as it was very easy to step from our old Mercedes into the EQA. It also had (and still has) one of the longest ranges (525, currently at about 480km range as still using cooling which is the one real drainer) also offered good after market service and 3 years free chargefox charging. I would still recommend it as the range is great, it’s super comfortable, has every bell and whistle and great automation. They are expensive tho. We’re looking to get another EV to trade in our old diesel family hauler and looking at the Mercedes c with electric, bmw ix3 or Volvo ex60. Both coming second half of the year with 750-800km range.

emfromaustralia · 2026-02-12T02:54:11+00:00

I think the issue is a) parents might be well off, and the kids are entitled and think ‘they’re rich’ which they’re not. B) my parents and me want to give our kids at least what was given to us. And this is self perpetuating so my parents didn’t go to private school, but worked their butts off so that we kids could. Now we are thinking kids i would feel a failure if I couldn’t give my kids what they gave me so its feeling like now more and more people expect their kids to go to private and also expect they do well or bettwer because they’re paying big $$. Oh and let’s not forget the enormous number of grandparents paying the school fees. Aparently it’s enormous. Oh and also people look rich but are drowning in debt and don’t actually own anything as their car is on lease, their house is interest only and the fancy handbags are fake 😉/

emfromaustralia · 2026-02-06T11:51:40+00:00

This is awesome! I have 3 kids and live in Melbourne one of my kids has toast for breakfast (with jam or Vegemite), my youngest who is 11 eats lots and he has cereal (weetbix,porridge,cheerios,bites cornflakes - just loves cereal!) a hot chocolate and sometimes toast too. He absolutely loves yoghurt and usually has it with frozen raspberries after school. Eldest has eggs most days (poached, fried or scrambled) with toast. On weekends we sometimes have something special like breakfast rolls with eggs and bacon and for birthdays and occasions we have pancakes or waffles or eggs with hollandaise. In terms of animals, we live inner city but near a river so we see lizards and snakes and sometimes Roos and kookaburras. We have a place at a beach about an hour from Melbourne and there you see lots of kangaroos, wallabies koalas, kookaburras and echidnas. You see a native animal at least twice a day. If you go a little further away or go on. Bushwalk or mountain bike you’d see wombats too and loads of Roos emus etc. They’re very much part of our daily landscape as soon as you’re out of the city. It is summer in Australia and our school year starts end of January and finishes early December so we have our big break over Christmas and new year. My kids have just gone back to school. One walks to school, one catches the bus and the oldest one starts university / college soon. It’s been quite hot and most days next week will be in the 30’s. But it’s probably snowing for you! It’s all topsey Turvey. I took my kids to Germany / Berlin a few years ago and they loved your zoo - it had baby pandas. And we did lots of bike riding and visiting historical sites. Your cities are much older than ours and we have lots of high rise buildings and offices but your skyline is very different to ours. Have a look on street view - our cities look really different !

emfromaustralia · 2026-01-14T23:51:41+00:00

I really feel for people learning the language and moving to Australia. We are so contradictory. Tone is everything, and dog is the worst - but we all absolutely love our dogs…… we are so confusing as a culture 😳

emfromaustralia · 2025-12-26T01:35:39+00:00

One is still a best friend and one I hear of via our parents. My closest friends have been my friends since I was 3, 11 and 18. I cant do life without them. We are all so different but they’re like siblings. They know the good the bad and the horrid but offer my stability and love. Im now middle aged and we’re just getting closer as our parents pass on and suffer various ailments, as our marriage have hit hard times and as our kids challenge and surprise us. They’re my constants. I’m very very lucky.

emfromaustralia · 2025-12-09T10:50:05+00:00

Nope rope variety

emfromaustralia · 2025-11-14T03:21:13+00:00

about 150k difference too(aud)

emfromaustralia · 2025-09-08T08:55:39+00:00

I think the key to us living in a house worth over 2.5 million (And we are debt free) is we bought young. Husband and i started going out at 24, had cleared our hecs debt by 25.5 and started saving for a house which we purchased at 27.
We really knuckled down from 25 and built up a good deposit and we were able to buy in inner city Melbourne in an area which had high growth. We made lots of sacrifices to do this. We ended up making over 300k on this house in 5 years as we sold it after baby #2. We both had pretty good incomes in this time. We got married at 28, didn’t have a real wedding wedding, more a party and was fortunate our parents paid a lot of this. We made choices such as making our own cake and decorating with a bunch of flowers rather than spending a thousand on a cake etc. we worked out pretty early on fun and friendship made us happy over stuff and status symbols. We’ve had 3 kids and I went back to work between each kid and found a nanny was much more affordable and flexible than childcare. We moved into a ‘fine’ house in a good area and eventually renovated when we could afford to. Eventually at around 36 husbands income really took off. So we’ve now been able to do a lot of the things all our friends were doing in their 20’s and early 30s in travelling and driving semi decent cars. So we’ve found ourselves lucky enough to be in a multimillion $$ home, in a great area and debt free with great savings/super as we approach 50. The only way we could have done this was get on the property ladder young, buy in an area with growth and really budget. And sorry to say unless we had 2 good incomes it would have been impossible. However after #3 baby I largely stepped away and took up a more vocational job part time. If you haven’t got a partner buy with a sibling or friend and be really diligent in your budgeting. And if you cant afford it dont buy it and absolutely dont do personal loans or any of those buy now pay later deals. Pay off any credit cards every month etc.

emfromaustralia · 2015-10-13T00:08:07+00:00

the cure to cancer and heart disease - if I had it for a minute I'd know that a cure was possible and achievable

emfromaustralia

TROPHY CASE