In much more desperate times, as a young cadet in the ’70s, I recall living from pay cheque to pay cheque.
After paying the rent in the share house, pitching in for food I rarely ate, filling the car with fuel, and investing in a carton of beer for the weekend, there wasn’t a lot left for other vices, let alone a sneaky lunch time shandy which would today be considered most impolite.
Political correctness, bless its cotton socks, has saved many a young worker and their youthful livers from the peer pressures of a bygone era.
I wed at a young age, and Wanda taught me that there were better things to do with my money – like preparing to invest in diapers for the children we were about to have, along with a deposit for the house we’d live in and call our own for the best part of 45 years.
We still had no money. But we had assets. And once we’d paid them off, we were in a position to save for retirement.
Looking back, saving for the future was a rather boring constant in our lives. But here I am, still happily married with a wonderful family. I’m fed, have a roof over my head, and a pesky dog that insists on its daily W-A-L-K.
I can bicker about politics until my heart’s content, talk sport with acquaintances at the bowls club, and continue to write weekly tripe for anyone who cares to read it.
My best mate Geoffrey did the same thing, also a creature of habit. His house is with his children who don’t often visit him in the aged care home, where he forgets people’s names and somehow survives on custard.
It got me thinking whether we’re all the same.
Then I got hold of a survey from one of those comparison sites which says 15% of Australians don’t have any money in their emergency fund.
We live off superannuation we scrambled towards the later years of our life, barely enough to cover off utilities fees managed by thieves who seem to think lining their pockets with 20% year on year rises is okay for an essential service.
Is that what they’d propose to be an “emergency” fund. Is my Vegemite on toast of a morning bought from an emergency fund, or just your everyday kind of fund?
I ask this question because I feel it’s one everyone who’s either in retirement or who’s preparing for retirement has a right to ask.
Does the government, the governor of the Reserve Bank, or whoever else is managing the disgrace that is skyrocketing inflation ever stop to consider whether retirees are immersed in an emergency?
Because, while it’s fair to say wage increases aren’t rising enough to meet rising costs attached to inflation, it’s also worthy of note to say the nest egg of retirees doesn’t change at all.
Everything costs more, but the little bucket of funds I worked my life to save into remains stagnant while the reward at the end of my lifetime investment gets me less for more.
I’m no economist, and while it’s true that high inflation leads to higher interest rates, which leads to higher returns on our little nest egg, and a whole heap of number mumbo jumbo baloney that tells me I’m better off than plenty of others – which might also be true – it doesn’t negate the fact that the older I get, the less I have.
And that dumbass survey would agree, reminding me that on average, most people will struggle with an unexpected pet bill, a burst pipe or a higher-than-expected insurance renewal.
In which case, my super fund IS actually my emergency fund, and I’m flush in the cheeks thinking about the prospects of this little quandary that the organisers of this survey have posed for me and my aged brethren.
Poor Gen Z, aged 18-25, have an average of $1019 in their emergency fund. That’s not an emergency fund. It’s a beer fund.
Everyone else has barely $20,000 tucked away for an emergency. Keep saving, they say. Find ways to cut costs, they say.
But don’t they get it. I’m old now. I’m sick of saving. I’m sick of cutting. Am I happy? Of course I am, because I have wonderful people around me. I’m lucky, unlike a lot of people who – regardless of how much money they have – are lonely.
So I’m happy, but I’m also happy being angry about how damn happy I could be if those managing this mess could get their act together.
Hey Wanda, mind if I take Wags for a puppaccino?
