My message to young Australian men
Is the juice worth the squeeze?
Australia is no longer the place to generate any meaningful sums of wealth for young men. You are taxed egregiously, your money is eroded away through money printing, and I'm no longer certain the juice is worth the squeeze. You're not going to like the advice I'm about to offer, but I believe you're leaving substantial sums off the table if you continue life here in Australia.
The advice is, after you have successfully become qualified in your chosen field, leave. Don't find a job and pay income tax, don't find a home and pay stamp duty, don't pay GST on goods and services, don't start a business, and most certainly don't pay back your HECS debt.
Pack your bags, and leave.
Move to Dubai (or a similar low tax jurisdiction - Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Indonesia (Bali), Thailand come to mind), work your ass off for 10-15 years with only one goal in mind. Collect as many tax-free US dollar tokens as humanly possible. Live frugally in your chosen jurisdiction, keeping expenses to a minimum. Maximise income as much as possible. With the vast sums of money you have saved (in both taxes and living frugally), buy bitcoin with it. Do this every time you get paid. It goes without saying, but be sure to self custody your bitcoin.
Over a 10-15 year time horizon, you may, may, become quite wealthy (there are no guarantees in life). At that point, you can take a look at Australia and see if it's worth coming back. If you do decide to come back, you should hopefully have enough for a comfortable house, car, living expenses for a family and retirement paid for the rest of your days. If you're feeling generous, you can pay your HECS debt back.
What are the downsides? You lose 10-15 years of your life outside of Australia. It may mean having to put off relationships, seeing your mates, spending time with your parents, enjoying Australia's beautiful natural environment and starting a family. It sucks, but for men, leaving home at age 21-22 and coming back home at 31-35 to have your life set up to do whatever you want with is a better deal than slogging it out in Australia for peanuts, constantly on the hamster wheel until you drop dead. You've saved yourself a lot of heartache, and best of all, you'll have saved yourself decades of your most precious asset - time. You've traded 10-15 of the best years of life, to be comfortable until your death.
What if this strategy doesn't work out? Well, you'd be fucked anyway if you had stayed in Australia. You have very little hope of making something of yourself here. Working for someone keeps you just above the poverty line. Loyalty doesn't pay. Starting a business has so much red tape and bureaucracy attached. Hiring staff is a nightmare. Taxes are some of the highest in the world (they take half). The odds are completely stacked against you every way you turn - no matter what field you're in, no matter how much you earn. It's going to be difficult to beat tax-free USD wages piled into BTC compounding growth over 10-15 years.
Plug some numbers in here and see for yourself.
To throw a bit of a spanner in the works, soon enough the government will keep you as an Australian tax resident for 2-3 years after you have left, where they will tax you on worldwide income during that time. Tax residency rules keep changing. Draft legislation looks to be in place suggesting this. If it gets bad enough, they will strongly discourage or disincentivise you from leaving Australia all together.
I leave you now with an image that always hits hard.
