How much money do you earn? And how do you spend it?

[hj007]

Yeah but it also brings very low increases. I worked my butt off at the place I'm at now and got a $5000k raise only (many people don't get raises in Aus unless they kick up a fuss so to get a raise without intervention is usually a big thing). Now I know what you are thinking wow extra R50k a year except that only adds an extra $250 to my salary each month and the fact that a steak dinner for 2 with one soft drink (no wine, spirits, beer, cocktails) each comes to about $100 then you're not getting much for your hard work. On the flip side of this is by playing the jumping game I managed to increase my salary by $35k in 6 months, unfortunately I'm getting too old for that now so I'm stuck where I am.



Getting in on the wrong side of this but yeah they currently building me a house... $600k for a cardboard house. Could by a mansion in SA for that with a garden. This is still 1 - 1.5 hour drive from work and office isn't even in the city. Houses around where I work are about $3 million. 500 m^2 of land alone will cost in the region of $2 million.

Be interested in your perspective on a comparison since you've moved. If you were to look at it purely from living in SA versus living in Aus in terms of the things you need, house, car, food etc but doing similar work. What in your opinion has been for you the financial wins/losses of each country? Are there serious trade-offs or is it a case of Aus is better in all aspects but houses just cost a bit (lot) more and therefore the commute?

 

[Ancalagon]

What gets me is the companies that won't pay R3m/y for a single "specialist" or "ace" or "lead" developer type to solve their hard problems, and bleed 10's or 100's of millions by producing a sub-par product, or product that ships months or years late (or never).

South African companies will happily spend that much money on management or on sales but not on actual development.

I never see any evidence that South African companies have given any thought to a recruitment strategy. Or whatever the term is.

Most of them keep the bare minimum staff and work them to the bone, and consequently when a key person resigns, **** hits the fan for a few months until they find a replacement.

I was once not allowed to tell clients that I had resigned until the day I left because the company had no replacement. People had been leaving and they still had not sourced anyone.

 

[hj007]

Same exact thing for lawyers.

A lot of small to medium size companies won’t hire somebody for their legal stuff and then come crying wanting to pay you peanuts to solve the mess that wouldn’t have never happened if they had even the most junior crappiest lawyer in-house.

Usually they end up blaming it on the system being against entrepreneurs.

Even in my past and present companies, it happened several times that amendments or POs deemed as harmless (and actually with terrible consequences) were signed without me seeing it. Had to lobby the CEO to put in the rules that every single commitment must go through me and now it works much better.

This is an issue in businesses which started using their own cash flow/grew organically and hence want to depress monthly expenses as much as possible. If they had been started with outside funding it would be less of an issue. It points to inexperienced management in general.

As you say, once they have experienced terrible consequences then they'll realise its a necessary cost to implement. The market is not efficient enough yet that you get punished for cutting corners, hence they will justify that it is an unnecessary expense [until...]

 

[GoB]

Difference is you don't have our ridiculously high inflation rate in Oz so even a small salary increase improves your standard of living.

I chatted to vampire, he's been helping me a lot.

My situation is different to most I believe because I am fine in SA financially, but going ahead with possible emigration for now.

I have below CPI inflation on my living expenses with above CPI growth on salary.
If I move to Oz, it is with the risk of only earning the same salary in ZAR! Same for my wife.

Except when it comes to property there.. but if he waits a bit their housing market should crash soon.

I don't agree that the Oz housing market will 'crash', unless taxation or immigration policy changes drastically. I reckon a short term adjustment will only be in the form of low growth for a few years.

 

[Peon]

A peon maybe?

You making me blush now.

 

[Pavan]

How so? I'd earn the same or less in other companies/industries.

I've just reached a ceiling extremely fast and young thanks to being one of the first employees. I'll hardly be able to break it before 5 to 10 years as this would be replacing the CEO or COO.

Makes sense then. If your primary goal is to run the current business you're working for, hence the self imposed ceiling. The reason i that, it's quite unusual to be in the position you find yourself in at such a young age for both good and bad reasons.

 

[f2wohf]

Makes sense then. If your primary goal is to run the current business you're working for, hence the self imposed ceiling. The reason i that, it's quite unusual to be in the position you find yourself in at such a young age for both good and bad reasons.

It's a lot of luck TBH.

The chairman of my ex company resigned and became chairman and local shareholder of a large company who wanted to start doing business in SA.

He poached 5/6 people he liked from the company he resigned from, after some rough times (salaries weren't paid for a while for example) half resigned and we were 3 to stick aroun and believe in it and are all 3 C level now that it's succesful. I happen to be the youngest.

 

[Corelli]

I stay in Germany aged 42. I earn 12000 euros per month. Tax is about 40%. I can travel for free on on public transport. Car is provided (bmw electric), cellphone and laptop all covered. I work 35 hours a week and get 3x bonus. Also a holiday allowance 1 month pay). And my mortage rate is 1.8%.

I spend about 600 euros on food per month and then about 400 on healthcare and 1000 on pension.

Also studyinf further. University in Germany offers free bachelor education. Well just pay 100 euro admin fees.

 

[f2wohf]

I stay in Germany aged 42. I earn 12000 euros per month. Tax is about 40%. I can travel for free on on public transport. Car is provided (bmw electric), cellphone and laptop all covered. I work 35 hours a week and get 3x bonus. Also a holiday allowance 1 month pay). And my mortage rate is 1.8%.

I spend about 600 euros on food per month and then about 400 on healthcare and 1000 on pension.

Also studyinf further. University in Germany offers free bachelor education. Well just pay 100 euro admin fees.

Well done! What industry (finance?)? It's quite high for Germany no?

 

[Corelli]

Personally Europe is better than Aus. Soery been there. Lonely place. Your road trips are really long. New Zealand is cold and miserable. But very far away. It seems closer but its not. Unless you buy a new house you will afford a house falling apart with no insulation (and yes it can get icey cold)

 

[Corelli]

Software engineering.

Currently since the 2008 job crisis, Europe has about 7 vacancies for each hired person. Good place if you dont have commitments. Starting salary about 3-4k in euros

 

[Corelli]

One thing that sucks about the Aus side. Very high fees for Visas. And Canada really just want Master Degrees students. UK is shakey with brexit but Europe is booming.

If you want a future career. Look at machine learning (coursera) and some things from Edx. Data Science and Data Analytics I see is in high demand. There is hope outside SA.

 

[cguy]

I stay in Germany aged 42. I earn 12000 euros per month. Tax is about 40%. I can travel for free on on public transport. Car is provided (bmw electric), cellphone and laptop all covered. I work 35 hours a week and get 3x bonus. Also a holiday allowance 1 month pay). And my mortage rate is 1.8%.

I spend about 600 euros on food per month and then about 400 on healthcare and 1000 on pension.

Also studyinf further. University in Germany offers free bachelor education. Well just pay 100 euro admin fees.

Interesting! Most of the data suggests that you are earning roughly 4x the mean for the country. To my earlier point, my feeling is that this is really healthy - i.e., that your company is willing to pay for the people they need, rather than remain uncompetitive on compensation (on “principle”) and complain about the lack of talent willing to work at their pay scale.

 

[f2wohf]

Software engineering.

Currently since the 2008 job crisis, Europe has about 7 vacancies for each hired person. Good place if you dont have commitments. Starting salary about 3-4k in euros

Had no idea at all, I always thought (without any proof just a gut feeling) that Germany was paying rather less than France due to the rather cheap cost of living (real estate being the main factor) but it seems that it’s not the case at all.

I never really looked for jobs in Germany as I would have close to zero chance not speaking German and being clueless regarding German law (in addition of a sufficient pool of qualified German speakers).

 

[SaadiqC]

Age: 24
Gross: 24k
Net: Roughly 17 800

Expenses:

Car insurance - 550
Data contract - 180
Petrol - 900
Mom - 2 500
Entertainment - Roughly 1500

Was previously on a CTC of 18k, but recently negotiated an increase.

Other than the above, no other expenses as I stay at home. So i save the rest

 

[^^vampire^^]

Be interested in your perspective on a comparison since you've moved. If you were to look at it purely from living in SA versus living in Aus in terms of the things you need, house, car, food etc but doing similar work. What in your opinion has been for you the financial wins/losses of each country? Are there serious trade-offs or is it a case of Aus is better in all aspects but houses just cost a bit (lot) more and therefore the commute?

Trade offs would be:
* Houses/rent are expensive: renting a 3 bed house for about R25k equivalent, although the cost in SA is probably getting close to this anyway because of higher inflation. The increases in rent each year has been about $5-$10 a week. Im getting a place built which is about 1-1.5 hours from work. 4 bed 2 bath with a smallish garden which costs about $600k. Imagine what you could buy in SA for that.
* Gardens sizes: gone are the days of big gardens. Back in the day the average Aus dream was a big house with a massive garden. The Chinese have all but destroyed that now and a tiny shoebox will cost you $300-$500k, no garden included.
* Services costs: because of a high overall standard of living, anything that involves a human costs a lot. What cost me about R8000 at the dentist in SA I was quoted about R40k for. A minor car service with the odd few replacements will run you many thousands or rands equivalent. The list goes on.
* No medical aid: they only have medical insurance which is ****. You pay each month for your medical insurance which only pays a small portion towards anything medical related. I've yet to find any benefit to it as they generally only pay about 10-20% of the costs. Even on the higher packages you would most likely have to spend all day everyday in different medical facilities just to break even on your monthly premium - and then over and above that you would have to pay your other out of pocket expenses.
* Tax benefits: all my tax is paid to syrian refuges that have 1000 kids each.
* Retirement: before tax contributions to retirement are taxed at 15% instead of your marginal rate and has a very low threshold. Bit of a shocker coming from SA and saving a small fortune towards retirement. It really doesn't encourage saving for retirement here.

Benefits:
* Cars: cars are decently cheap compared to average income. Most people can afford a decent car for just a few hundred dollars a month.
* crime: no one has tried to murder me yet or mug me.
* Expenses: Spend a bit over half my income on all expenses. This means that the rest of my salary and GF salary can be used for saving which comes in a bit over $5000 a month. Electricity fluctuates between $200-$350 for different seasons a month, water costs about $50 a month and I spend about $150 a week on groceries. Petrol is inline with SA prices. Inflation is pretty low and nothing in the shop has gone up in price over the last 2.5 years. If anything the prices are getting cheaper. I must say I was initially shocked at the prices when I first arrived but now that I've gotten used to it it's fine. Also, when looking at how prices so sharply increase in SA all the time It amazes me how we managed for all those years in SA.
* Maintenance: things generally get fixed pretty quickly. Anything that I see broken such as the glass panels of bus stops etc are generally fixed same day or next day. We had a burst water pipe under the road near our house, the water company sent someone to shut the water supplies to that pipe about 1 hour later (this was about 1am) and about 7am that morning they were busy digging up the road to repair the pipes. That afternoon when I got home the road was fully tarred and lines repainted.
* Service providers: most things are super efficient. The people here complain that the councils etc never respond and are useless (like we complained in SA) etc but when I have had a problem they even phoned me back when they had further info. I had problems where my builder paid a certain levy for many different houses as a bulk payment and the council never distributed the payment. They made sure to get hold of a person that could help me and the lady even phoned me after hours as she didn't want me to worry and sorted the whole problem out for me. She also managed to pick up that the payments weren't distributed to any of the other properties on the block so she did that and phoned them all individually to apologize for the error and let them know it was fixed.

The long and the short of it is in Aus we are far better off. I am on a higher than average salary being a software developer but the fact of the matter is that when I moved here I literally almost set myself back to 0. In the span of 2.5 years I've managed to get a house built (being built with a homeloan obviously), bought 2 cars (although cheapies) and have well over half a million rand equivalent in the bank. We live a pretty conservative lifestyle and don't spend excessively by any means but that habit is exactly the same as it was in SA. I can comfortably say there is no way I would be able to get myself to the same point of 0 in the bank to doing decently in 2.5 years in South Africa.

 

[Agyapong Peter Mensah]

I think this question is clear because how much I earn and how I spend it is no difficult.
I am 19yrs of age and I am a bus conductor And I earn 400-500 cedis per month and I give almost all of it to my parents to be taking care of my younger siblings because I am the first child of my mother and my mother is a single parent thank you.

 

[maumau]

I think this question is clear because how much I earn and how I spend it is no difficult.
I am 19yrs of age and I am a bus conductor And I earn 400-500 cedis per month and I give almost all of it to my parents to be taking care of my younger siblings because I am the first child of my mother and my mother is a single parent thank you.

Well done on helping your family Agyapong. I hope things go well for you.

 

[feo]

Trade offs would be:
* Houses/rent are expensive: renting a 3 bed house for about R25k equivalent, although the cost in SA is probably getting close to this anyway because of higher inflation. The increases in rent each year has been about $5-$10 a week. Im getting a place built which is about 1-1.5 hours from work. 4 bed 2 bath with a smallish garden which costs about $600k. Imagine what you could buy in SA for that.
* Gardens sizes: gone are the days of big gardens. Back in the day the average Aus dream was a big house with a massive garden. The Chinese have all but destroyed that now and a tiny shoebox will cost you $300-$500k, no garden included.
* Services costs: because of a high overall standard of living, anything that involves a human costs a lot. What cost me about R8000 at the dentist in SA I was quoted about R40k for. A minor car service with the odd few replacements will run you many thousands or rands equivalent. The list goes on.
* No medical aid: they only have medical insurance which is ****. You pay each month for your medical insurance which only pays a small portion towards anything medical related. I've yet to find any benefit to it as they generally only pay about 10-20% of the costs. Even on the higher packages you would most likely have to spend all day everyday in different medical facilities just to break even on your monthly premium - and then over and above that you would have to pay your other out of pocket expenses.
* Tax benefits: all my tax is paid to syrian refuges that have 1000 kids each.
* Retirement: before tax contributions to retirement are taxed at 15% instead of your marginal rate and has a very low threshold. Bit of a shocker coming from SA and saving a small fortune towards retirement. It really doesn't encourage saving for retirement here.

Benefits:
* Cars: cars are decently cheap compared to average income. Most people can afford a decent car for just a few hundred dollars a month.
* crime: no one has tried to murder me yet or mug me.
* Expenses: Spend a bit over half my income on all expenses. This means that the rest of my salary and GF salary can be used for saving which comes in a bit over $5000 a month. Electricity fluctuates between $200-$350 for different seasons a month, water costs about $50 a month and I spend about $150 a week on groceries. Petrol is inline with SA prices. Inflation is pretty low and nothing in the shop has gone up in price over the last 2.5 years. If anything the prices are getting cheaper. I must say I was initially shocked at the prices when I first arrived but now that I've gotten used to it it's fine. Also, when looking at how prices so sharply increase in SA all the time It amazes me how we managed for all those years in SA.
* Maintenance: things generally get fixed pretty quickly. Anything that I see broken such as the glass panels of bus stops etc are generally fixed same day or next day. We had a burst water pipe under the road near our house, the water company sent someone to shut the water supplies to that pipe about 1 hour later (this was about 1am) and about 7am that morning they were busy digging up the road to repair the pipes. That afternoon when I got home the road was fully tarred and lines repainted.
* Service providers: most things are super efficient. The people here complain that the councils etc never respond and are useless (like we complained in SA) etc but when I have had a problem they even phoned me back when they had further info. I had problems where my builder paid a certain levy for many different houses as a bulk payment and the council never distributed the payment. They made sure to get hold of a person that could help me and the lady even phoned me after hours as she didn't want me to worry and sorted the whole problem out for me. She also managed to pick up that the payments weren't distributed to any of the other properties on the block so she did that and phoned them all individually to apologize for the error and let them know it was fixed.

The long and the short of it is in Aus we are far better off. I am on a higher than average salary being a software developer but the fact of the matter is that when I moved here I literally almost set myself back to 0. In the span of 2.5 years I've managed to get a house built (being built with a homeloan obviously), bought 2 cars (although cheapies) and have well over half a million rand equivalent in the bank. We live a pretty conservative lifestyle and don't spend excessively by any means but that habit is exactly the same as it was in SA. I can comfortably say there is no way I would be able to get myself to the same point of 0 in the bank to doing decently in 2.5 years in South Africa.

Very well worded, with lots of good info.

The medical thing is surprising to me, I thought that aside from the US, most other first world countries have a good system going for medical aid or Medicare.

 

[^^vampire^^]

Very well worded, with lots of good info.

The medical thing is surprising to me, I thought that aside from the US, most other first world countries have a good system going for medical aid or Medicare.

Aus has medicare but you need to think of these things as a safety net. For instance if you get into a car accident you will be admitted and receive surgery or whatever most likely straight away. However, to give an example of where it fails, a guy at my work has a GF who needs surgery because she injured her thigh. She has had to quit her job as a restaurant manager as she can't stand for too long anymore and she is on the waiting list for surgery; she doesn't even have a date yet. This means she could effectively be out of work that she is qualified to do for years. It's for this reason that I have private hospital cover in case of something like this so I can a) pick my surgeon and b) pick my date instead of being on a waiting list. There are other caveats though. If I need emergency medical attention it is easier to tell them I have no private cover if they will treat me immediately as then most/all of it will be covered by medicare, while if I go in for the same thing and tell them I have private cover, the private cover will pay their rates and I will be billed the rest as a private client. What they refer to as "extras" here (day-to-day doctor, specialists, optometry, dentistry etc) is an absolute waste of cash and you get nothing for it. Went to the dentist last year August, got a teeth clean and a filling. Of the $500 bill, medical paid $30. My extras cover cost more than that each month.