‘Can’t do this anymore’: Man explains heartbreaking decision to leave Australia with his family
An Aussie father says his family made the decision to sell their belongings and travel overseas full-time due to the country’s “ridiculous” cost of living.
An Aussie father says his family made the decision to sell their belongings and travel overseas full-time due to the country’s “ridiculous” cost of living.
Travel blogger Jimmy Mitchell, who documents his experiences on the road with his wife Pauline and sons Liam and Riley on social media, explained in a viral video on Thursday why the family four “decided to give up on Australia”.
“About a year ago my wife and I made the decision to sell everything we own and travel full-time as a family around the world with our two boys who are seven and eight years old,” he said.
“I really want to preface this by saying I love Australia. I think Australia is the best country on the planet to the point that I served almost 10 years in the Australian Navy, that’s how much I love Australia.”
But Mitchell said they “just couldn’t afford to live in Australia as a family anymore”.
“That’s the long and short of it,” he said.
“We earned good money, this is the thing I couldn’t get my head around. We had good jobs but we always felt like we weren’t getting ahead. Between the cost of living, the cost of groceries, the cost of fuel, the cost of housing, all these costs, I felt like we were making this extraordinary income and just not getting ahead.”
Mitchell, who now runs an online marketing agency, explained that “the more I worked and the harder I worked to earn the money so we could have the stuff, the less time I got to spend with my family and my kids and my wife”.
“It felt like we were just working and working and working and not getting ahead and not spending time as a family, and it became this feedback loop, this vicious cycle of, why are we doing this?” he said.
“Why are we living this nine-to-five nightmare of trying to earn as much money as we can just to afford to live? One day I came home in tears to my wife from working and said, ‘I can’t do this anymore. I can’t keep trying to earn this money to have this life just to keep working to afford it.’”
Mitchell argued the cost of living in Australia was “getting so ridiculous that it makes it impossible for families to be families”.
“When the price of fuel is $2.50 a litre, when a fricking loaf of bread is $7, how can any family make any time to spend together?” he said.
“We were just sick of it. We were at the point where we can’t continue like this, so we just made the decision to check out of it. We were like, we are just moving away from Australia because clearly we can’t afford to be here anymore. If we want to be together as a family, we can’t afford to stay in this country anymore, because Australia is slowly tearing us apart with how much it costs to live here, and how much you have to earn to be able to spend time as a family.”
He noted that they probably needed to earn a similar amount as they did previously to be able to afford their current travelling lifestyle.
“But are we spending way more time together as a family, do we have a way better quality of life than we did in Australia? Absolutely,” he said. “In the countries that we’re travelling to in South East Asia especially, the quality of life you get for the money that you earn is way better.”
The video, which has been viewed more than 100,000 times on TikTok, struck a nerve with viewers.
“When earning $100,000+ was a good wage … nowadays it’s nearly a minimum to live comfortably. Sad days ahead that’s for sure,” one person wrote.
Another agreed, “I remember saying, I can’t wait to earn $100,000 income, I’ll have financial freedom. I think I’m worse off now than when I was earning $45,000.”
A third wrote, “It’s the new $50,000 because everything doubled in price.”
Others chimed in that they were “struggling” on even $120,000 or $130,000.
One Aussie expat said the “lucky country days are long gone”.
“I came to Australia in 1975, it was heaven on earth here, but in the last 10-15 years the government is taking the p**s, massively overtaxed has made it hell,” one user commented.
Another said, “You just explained our lives. It’s become so bad like you say, our kids are being raised in childcare.”
Australia’s unprecedented cost-of-living crisis means that for many, a six-figure salary is now barely enough to get by living in a major city with an average mortgage.
Online forums have been dominated recently by Aussies asking each other how they are managing the rapid cost-of-living increases, with many sharing how they are cutting back on luxuries like dining out or cancelling streaming services.
Australia’s annual inflation rate was 5.4 per cent in the September quarter, driven by significant price rises for fuel, rents and electricity.
Since May last year, the Reserve Bank has raised interest rates 13 times from its record low of 0.1 per cent to 4.35 per cent, smashing Australian borrowers.
RBA governor Michele Bullock told a conference in Hong Kong earlier this week that borrowers were “very unhappy” with the central bank, but were coping with higher interest rates.
Ms Bullock said the RBA’s punishing rate hikes had generated considerable “noise” from politicians and the community at large.
“People are very unhappy,” she said.
“But what I’d like to highlight is despite that noise, households and businesses in Australia are actually in a pretty good position. Their balance sheets are pretty good. Through the pandemic, they built up large savings buffers, and they’re largely still intact. Housing prices are rising again, much to everyone’s surprise, so that’s sort of helping people feel a little bit more wealthy.”
Ms Bullock said as higher interest rates had begun to curb inflation, the RBA needed to be “a little bit careful” to not unnecessarily restrict economic activity.
“We want to make sure that we keep inflation under control and we bring it back down to our band,” she said.
The RBA board will convene for its final meeting of the year on December 5, where the central bank is widely expected to hold rates steady.
However, markets are pricing a 68 per cent chance of another rate increase to 4.6 per cent by June 2024.
— with NCA NewsWire
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