commonwealth

chris955

I would imagine the average person in Australia would love to earn $70,000 but that isnt the reality though. The average UK male wage is around £30,000 so nowhere near 50pct less than Australia, it would be closer to 10% difference and for us at least food especially is way cheaper than 10% less. I have ALWAYS used 2:1 as an accurate exchange when moving between countries as I have generally earned $2 when I earned £1 and vice versa.
Of course there will be people saying they earn twice as much as they did or even 4 times what they did but you will also see others that earn less in Australia.
If the grocery price war has caused price deflation we werent seeing it in Brisbane, like most other we just saw food bills going up.

commonwealth

someone uses different exchange rates for different itmas, instead of using expense/income ratio.

chris955

commonwealth

i'm afraid your 2:1 dream rate is a bygone rate. it's more like 1.5:1 in the foreseable future. the UK will continue its austerity till 2020 as admitted by cameron and i doubt the bank of england will stop its quantitative easing anytime soon. and the euro is fooked up, i doubt the UK can easily recover without the eurozone buying stuff from the UK. if china goes bust it will get worse for everyone, not just oz.

chris955

commonwealth

of course you brought your AUD to the UK. you have to thank the miners for the higher exchange rate

lapin_windstar

But that ignores the massive tax breaks and non means-tested benefits that even the middle class gets in Australia...

chris955

Massive tax breaks?

commonwealth

if you walk along the aisles of coles/woolies you will notice quite a number of items are cheaper than in 2009! and if you look at the 'specials' you can save further.

ozzieeagle

Only UK average I can find is around GBP 26,000 which is the figure I'm running with. It always seems to work that more people earn less than the average wage... which is where Median comes in. According to this I understated the average Aus wage which is now 48,000 pounds at current exchange rates. Getting very close to that 50pct figure... more like 42 pct to be exact.

http://www.bigpondmoney.com.au/austr...s-1989-to-2009

The average Australian is now better off than anytime in living history.

If you want to compare Medians and include Parttime workers then the UK figure is circa 21,000 pounds (31,000 AUD) according to the official UK stats here...

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/ashe/a...etin-2011.html

The Aus median including part time works is 54,000 Aud.... Circa 31,000 pounds.... As per the above Aus link.

Tried channeling ABCD but he must be asleep.

chris955

The average UK male wage is £30,000 and it is totally irrelevant to use todays exchange rate as it doesnt affect the wage in either country. The median wage in Australia is apparently $44,000, half of all employees earn less than that amount.
Really it makes no difference to me, whatever helps you sleep at night and makes you feel better.
All I can say is that since being back lots of things seem cheaper and many significantly so, of course other things are more expensive.

ozzieeagle

Not according to Government figures... where you pulling that 30k figure from ?

I dare say if I were to travel to the UK with the spending power Australians have at present... we would feel like the Arabs used to when they first became cashed up.

Of course it will change... but right now at this point in time, Australians as a whole have never been better of relative to the rest of the world.

chris955

It was an official figure I saw this morning, the average of women and men is £26,000 but its possibly as relevant as the near $70,000 for the average Aussie though
The thing is we dont have the spending power of an Aussie, we are living here and finding it cheap. A visitor with the spending power of an Aussie would find it just as cheap I suspect.

Loch Lomond

I've been back in the UK over a year now and have tracked my living costs, which includes purchase of some one off items similar to that I bought in Oz. My living costs now run at 63%, using the exchange rate of the day, from my last year in Oz. Both places I am mortgage free, so that doesn't distort the annual expenses.