Latest news with #TimAbbott
News.com.au
a day ago
- Business
- News.com.au
Young Aussie ditches Sydney, moves to outback Queensland for ‘financial gap year'
A young Australian has revealed the moment he decided to embark on a 'financial gap year', leaving behind his corporate job in Sydney and moving to outback Queensland. A month ago, Tim Abbott was living a life many young professionals could relate to. He had built a career in the digital marketing space, having worked his way up in the industry over the past 10 years, and was earning what many would consider 'good money'. He was renting a room in a share house and even managed to break into the property market, buying an apartment that he leased out. The 31-year-old had no credit card debt, no car loan and no student debt. On paper, Mr Abbott should have been well on his way to financial freedom. But the reality was quite different. While he was earning a six-figure salary, his wage was not growing fast enough to keep up with the rising cost of living. He got to the point where he realised his money 'used to go so much further', but things had started to stall. 'I just feel like everyone is feeling a pinch, and everyone's tightening up in order to either save for their future or just to get by,' he told 'It's a conversation that's being had by everyone. I don't know anyone who's not talking about this at the moment.' Over a three-year period, his rent had doubled, seeing him fork out $600 a week, not including energy, water or internet bills. Mr Abbott calculated that he was spending close to $40,000 a year on rent. Even his investment property, which he thought would be his 'golden ticket' to growing his finances, wasn't turning out the way he envisioned. He was being stung with brutal strata fees and the money he was receiving in rent wasn't enough to cover his mortgage repayments. Eventually, Mr Abbott asked himself, 'why am I putting all this time and energy into a life I ultimately don't want?' So, he decided to make a change. His friend lives and works on a property in rural Queensland and mentioned there was a position available helping out on the farm. The 31-year-old quit his job, packed up his life and moved almost 13 hours away, going from the hustle and bustle of city life to living and working on a farm about 570km west of Brisbane, where the closest town has 500 residents. Mr Abbott is just over a month in to his new life and he is already shocked by how much money he has saved. He is working more and, as a result, his salary is slightly higher than what he was earning in Sydney, but he says the real game changer has been his cost of living expenses, which he estimates have decreased by 75 to 80 per cent. 'It's a very different lifestyle. It's not so much the money you make, but also the money you save, because there's nowhere to spend it,' he said. 'You're not getting two coffees a day, you're not going out for lunch, you're not ordering Uber Eats, so the money that comes into my account stays there. 'It just feels like a bit of a parallel universe. It feels like a cheat code, almost.' His accommodation costs are all baked into his work contract, so last month he spent a total of $220, which was the cost of his groceries. 'It costs that much to breathe (in Sydney). It's crazy,' Mr Abbott said. For anyone considering a sea change, the young Aussie can't recommend rural living enough, noting 'there's a lot of work out here'. 'If you don't mind peace and quiet, or that sort of living, I highly endorse it,' he said. Mr Abbott's goal for his financial gap year is to save $100,000, which he feels confident he will be able to achieve. Eventually, he hopes to be able to buy his own home with a hobby farm 'somewhere warm', but, at the moment, he isn't in a huge rush. 'I could have never imagined in my wildest dreams that I'd be driving a tractor or living where I'm living. So, who knows what the future holds?' he said. 'But I do know that I wasn't going to be able to achieve this if the money that was coming in was going immediately out.'
Daily Mail
2 days ago
- Business
- Daily Mail
Young Aussie makes the ultimate sacrifice after coming to a profound realisation about city life: 'Not what I wanted'
A young Aussie has revealed how he gave up his white-collar job and moved to the country to save more money and get ahead of the cost-of-living crisis. Tim Abbott, 31, ditched Sydney last month to move to regional Queensland to work in a drive-in drive-out tree lopping role 700km north-west of Brisbane. Mr Abbott used to work in digital marketing, but gave up on the idea after realising how expensive life had become for him while living in the city. 'The biggest reason was I couldn't stomach paying nearly $40,000 a year for a room in a share house anymore,' he wrote on Instagram. 'I could afford Sydney, just not the life I want for myself.' The Regional Movers Index recently found that Sydney and Melbourne are the most popular cities for Aussies to leave behind in favour of a regional lifestyle. According to the index, around 25 per cent more people are moving out of Australia's cities to regional and rural areas than are making the move in the other direction. Mr Abbott plans to save $100,000 over the next 12 months simply by avoiding the big city costs. Straight away, he saved $600 a week in rent by moving in with a friend after leaving Sydney's Eastern Suburbs. Mr Abbott made the move after realising the sky-high cost of living in Sydney meant he'd never break into the property market. Even after buying his own one-bedroom apartment, he couldn't afford the strata fees or the cost of renovations. 'I was earning good money in Sydney, but the lifestyle is so comes in, money goes out,' he told Yahoo Finance. Now, Mr Abbott lives on a farm about 30 minutes from the nearest town, which has a population of just 500 people, and he's enjoying life rent-free with his mate. He couldn't believe how much money he was saving living in the middle of nowhere. 'It has just been a game-changer for my money that's coming in,' he said. 'Last month, I only spent $220.' Mr Abbott reckons he'll be able to save $100,000 in a year, thanks to a dramatic drop in living costs and a 15 per cent pay rise at his new job driving a skidder, a heavy vehicle used in logging. He said the remoteness of his new home was a major advantage, acting as a money-saving tool. 'The money that you've got coming in, you've got nowhere to spend it. It's forced savings, really, because you don't get your pay and then go blow it on a Saturday night,' he said. Although Mr Abbott admits his move has been 'quite extreme,' he says it doesn't have to be for people to save money. 'Regional and rural towns are really looking for teachers, doctors, and skilled workers because their populations are so small,' he told Yahoo Finance. 'If anyone else is thinking about doing this, or working remotely for a year, I couldn't recommend it more highly.' He believes it would take between five to ten years of city living to save what he will in just 12 months in the bush. 'To be able to really fast-track and accelerate that is really exciting,' he said. A recent Finder study found that one in eight people surveyed had moved away from a capital city in the past three years to save money, and a further 1.5million are expected to relocate somewhere cheaper by 2028.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Young Aussie trades city for rural financial gap year to reach $100,000 property dream: 'Golden ticket'
Australians are heading to regional areas in their droves to escape cost-of-living crunches that can be far worse in metropolitan cities. Tim Abbott is part of this huge shift, and he decided to move from Sydney to rural Queensland last month. The 31-year-old is hoping to save $100,000 in the next 12 months, in what he's calling his financial gap year. He told Yahoo Finance he will hopefully be able to buy a freestanding house with the money saved. "I just want to fast-track to the next step, and this was my golden ticket to do so," he said. RELATED Money crisis sparks capital city exodus as Australians embrace 'new frontier' $65,000 property warning as Aussies set to flood market ATO warning over common tax deductions that could trigger an audit: Struggling to save in a place like Sydney Abbott had been in digital marketing for close to a decade and was paying $600 per week in rent for a shared apartment in Sydney's Eastern Suburbs, which had doubled in price since 2021. He, like many people his age, was looking at the property market and was worried whether he would ever be able to save enough money to buy a house. The 31-year-old had already bought a one-bedroom apartment, but the strata expenses and renovations were costing him thousands of dollars he didn't really on the high cost of living in Sydney, Abbott found it very difficult to save up enough money for his homeownership dream, even after reducing his spending. "I wasn't going out partying. I didn't have any subscription services. I drove a very humble 2014 Mazda," he told Yahoo Finance. "Unless I didn't leave the house and didn't eat, I didn't know what else I could do to tighten things up." "I was earning good money in Sydney, but the lifestyle is so expensive... money comes in, money goes out." Friends of his recently ditched their lives in Sydney to move to Forster, several hours up the coast, to save money, and it got the digital marketer thinking. He knew a mate who was working in a drive-in drive-out tree lopping gig 700 kilometres north-west of Brisbane and Abbott wondered what his life would look like if he lived in a rural area. Moving from the big smoke in Sydney to the middle of nowhere It didn't take much convincing for Abbott to make the leap, but took him about two months to wrap up all his affairs. He moved up to a farm that's about a 30-minute drive from the nearest town, which only has a population of 500 people, and is thankfully living rent-free with his friend. The 31-year-old has only been there for a month, but has already been shocked by the difference in spending. "It has just been a game changer for my money that's coming in," he said. "Last month, I only spent $220." Abbott reckons he's been able to save around 90 to 95 per cent of his pay so far, and believed he'll definitely hit his $100,000 goal within the year. StandOut Resume said the average Sydney worker would normally be only able to save 26.7 per cent of their wage after paying basic living costs. Not only that, but shifting from digital marketing to operating a skidder, which is a heavy vehicle used in logging, has seen his pay increase by 15 per cent. It's a completely different lifestyle compared to what he had in Sydney. Instead of sitting at his computer for five days a week, he's now very hands on, doing roughly 10 hour days outside in two to three-week-long bursts, with a week off. "It's a very humble existence, which is what's so attractive about it," he said. "The money that you've got coming in, you've got nowhere to spend it. It's forced savings, in a way, because you don't get your pay on and then go blow it on a Saturday night." Aussies urged to consider moving out of the city The 31-year-old admitted his move from Sydney to a farm in the middle of outback Queensland was "quite extreme", but said you don't have to go far to have a financial gap year. You also don't have to completely change your career either, as certain companies offer remote opportunities, meaning you could stay working at the same place, just in a different location. "Regional and rural towns are really looking for teachers and doctors and skilled workers because they have such small populations to begin with," he told Yahoo Finance. "If anyone else was thinking about doing this, or working remotely for a year, I couldn't recommend it more highly," he said. He knows he might not be able to move back to a place like Brisbane or Sydney and automatically buy his "dream house". But he added that he could take him half a decade or even longer to get remotely close to what he could save in just one year living rurally. "To be able to really fast-track and accelerate that is really exciting," he said. Living in a rural area isn't all sunshine and rainbows, with Abbott admitting that it can be fairly isolating at times. But he knows the short sacrifice will be worth it down the line, and that's enough motivation to keep going. Abbott isn't ruling out pushing his financial gap year by an extra six months to save a bit more, before hopefully pursuing a new career in psychology. "Going somewhere, taking some time out, sacrificing for that delayed gratification, and saving up for a deposit, or whatever their dream is, I think it's worthwhile," he said. Huge exodus out of the cities as cost of living bites city dwellers The Regional Movers Index for the March quarter revealed Sydney and Melbourne were the most popular cities for residents to pack up and move regionally or rurally. There were about 25 per cent more people moving from Australia's cities to regional and rural areas than those coming in the other direction. Regional Australia Institute CEO, Liz Ritchie, said people are quickly realising they could have an easier life if they left the city. 'Regional Australia is being reimagined," she said. "The regions' enviable lifestyle offerings, buoyant jobs market, position as an economic leader and diverse communities are proving to be an ongoing lure, particularly for those in metropolitan areas. "Contemporary regional Australia has what people are looking for and it's clear clichéd images and misconceptions about regional living are well and truly a thing of the past.' Research from Finder revealed that one in eight people surveyed had relocated away from a capital city in the last three years to get on top of their savings. The study found this exodus is far from over as well, with a further 1.5 million people tipped to move somewhere cheaper by while retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error while retrieving data
TimesLIVE
07-07-2025
- Automotive
- TimesLIVE
Ineos introduces cargo-focused Grenadier Commercial in SA
'Customers have been asking for this addition to our model line-up since we launched in 2022, so we're pleased to make this available so quickly. 'The versatility of the Grenadier platform allows this level of modification without any compromise to the driving dynamics or off-road capabilities,' said George Ratcliffe, commercial director of Ineos Automotive. 'Adding the commercial variant to our line-up reinforces our commitment to South Africa. We're broadening the vehicle's appeal to a wider variety of situations and ensuring its fitness for purpose on-road, off-road and the balance sheet,' said Tim Abbott, regional director Africa & Middle East.
