I’ve lived in Sydney all my life, and often meet people who are here on a working holiday and are very disappointed. For instance, this weekend I met a guy from Jordan working in a convenience store. He was making $800-1000/week working nightshift[1], and enjoying the novel, liberal culture, but found it difficult to save much.[2]
Now I know what to tell people, which makes me feel a lot better. I’d be curious to know whether you could get a similar deal in other parts of the country, though. Alice Springs is not a greatly pleasant place, from what I understand. Many parts of the country are much nicer, such as the sub-tropical coastal part near the NSW/Queensland border around Byron Bay, the Murray riverina, far North Queensland, etc. Alice Springs is a small town in the desert.
[1] Night and weekend work generally increases the minimum wage. The penalty rates are 1.5 to 2 times, so a night shift sometimes works out to $30 an hour.
[2] If you strategise properly it’s possible to live quite well in Sydney for $450-500 a week. I got into the habit of this during my PhD, when I was on a low stipend. However, you need to divide housing costs between lots of people (I live with my girlfriend and another couple in a 2br unit), and you need to only go out in cheap areas. It’s common for young professionals to fail to save anything substantial on $80-100k a year here.
Sydney can be okay financially, but it’s definitely not optimal. But it’s a nice enough city and I have my friends and family here, plus a good research group for my interests, located in a nice suburb.
Post-docs make okay money here, so I’m on 51.6k after tax and my 7.5k “tithe” (75k gross salary), and the uni pays 16% superannuation.[1] My living expenses are $500 a week, so I should have roughly 25k per year savings. I’ve only done three months on this salary and I’m on schedule, but we’ll see whether I fall to the common spending traps.
I do spend a lot of time working, but I live 5 minutes walk from the office and the hours are flexible, so it’s manageable. In an average day I’ll spend 6 or 7 hours in the office, and then 2 or 3 hours at night.
I consider myself lucky to have the skills and interests to pull off the “live-to-work” strategy. If I were interested in, say, writing novels instead of researching language technologies, the equation would be quite different.
[1] The university pays more super than is mandated, and all salaries are indexed to inflation. Our union is good.
I’ve lived in Sydney all my life, and often meet people who are here on a working holiday and are very disappointed. For instance, this weekend I met a guy from Jordan working in a convenience store. He was making $800-1000/week working nightshift[1], and enjoying the novel, liberal culture, but found it difficult to save much.[2]
Now I know what to tell people, which makes me feel a lot better. I’d be curious to know whether you could get a similar deal in other parts of the country, though. Alice Springs is not a greatly pleasant place, from what I understand. Many parts of the country are much nicer, such as the sub-tropical coastal part near the NSW/Queensland border around Byron Bay, the Murray riverina, far North Queensland, etc. Alice Springs is a small town in the desert.
[1] Night and weekend work generally increases the minimum wage. The penalty rates are 1.5 to 2 times, so a night shift sometimes works out to $30 an hour.
[2] If you strategise properly it’s possible to live quite well in Sydney for $450-500 a week. I got into the habit of this during my PhD, when I was on a low stipend. However, you need to divide housing costs between lots of people (I live with my girlfriend and another couple in a 2br unit), and you need to only go out in cheap areas. It’s common for young professionals to fail to save anything substantial on $80-100k a year here.
I agree with you. Sydney is a great place to live in it’s own right, but it’s a terrible place to work and earn money.
Didn’t think about the night shift idea but that’s true. Good suggestion!
Sydney can be okay financially, but it’s definitely not optimal. But it’s a nice enough city and I have my friends and family here, plus a good research group for my interests, located in a nice suburb.
Post-docs make okay money here, so I’m on 51.6k after tax and my 7.5k “tithe” (75k gross salary), and the uni pays 16% superannuation.[1] My living expenses are $500 a week, so I should have roughly 25k per year savings. I’ve only done three months on this salary and I’m on schedule, but we’ll see whether I fall to the common spending traps.
I do spend a lot of time working, but I live 5 minutes walk from the office and the hours are flexible, so it’s manageable. In an average day I’ll spend 6 or 7 hours in the office, and then 2 or 3 hours at night.
I consider myself lucky to have the skills and interests to pull off the “live-to-work” strategy. If I were interested in, say, writing novels instead of researching language technologies, the equation would be quite different.
[1] The university pays more super than is mandated, and all salaries are indexed to inflation. Our union is good.