Financial Stress in Australia
In August, Your Opinion included questions which asked Australians how they had suffered in the last financial year, what they went without and how they spoilt themselves. It then looked at what Australians thought would happen in the current financial year, both for the Australian economy and their household finances, and how they were looking to spoil themselves.
As a result of your answers, we found 53% of Australians believe 2008/09 was a tougher year than previous years, 31% said it was no different and 16% thought it was a better year for them financially.
Older Australians suffered the most – one in three seniors aged 65 plus thought 2008/09 was “much tougher” than previous years and a further 55% said it was “a little tougher” or “the same” as previous years. As a result, the elderly struggled with less money for household spending (56%), less money for going out (51%), less money for clothes (42%) and fewer holidays (44%).
Not surprisingly, households with annual incomes of less than $40,000 also did it tough, with redundancies and unemployment hitting 17% of these households and one in four suffering depression as a result of financial stress. One in three low-income households cited financial hardship as being a reality for them, resulting in a third of these households having fewer holidays and half going without new clothes or dinners out to save money. Three in five were forced to cut back on everyday household spending, seeking cheaper meal options and household items.
Depression due to financial stress hit Gen X the hardest; one in four people aged 35-54 stated that the year brought financial hardship, and one in five said they had also suffered depression. People aged 18-34 had the highest exposure to redundancies and unemployment in their homes , while almost half of all households had less money for going out and household spending.
The results of this survey were provided to the Sydney Morning Herald, which ran a story on 13 August 2009. See the story on http://business.smh.com.au/business/media-and-marketing/consumers-get-ready-to-spoil-themselves-20090812-eick.html
During this year and particularly this month of August my wife and I have found it extremely difficult to live and we have been going without our regular meals just to pay our bills and feed our pets and a lot to to be blamed on the economic crisis although Australia is in a better position than most countries of the world. We are only on a pension and I am on a disability pension where I have to buy huge amounts of medication and some are just to literally keep me alive as I have a rare,incurable and fatal disease. I believe Prime Minister Rudd is doing his best to help us pensioners although I really believer all governments, local, state and federal should all pitch in and combine their knowledge and support to all, meaning its about time their all worked together as a team to help our nation through these bad times
Robert Taylor
August 16, 2009 at 7:58 pm
Dealing with financial stress can sometimes be exceptionally difficult but I do believe that there are helpful tools to deal with financial stress. One important point is that by simply having a plan to improve ones financial problems can reduce stress level.
http://growingwithtruth.com/blog/60/tools-to-deal-with-financial-stress/
Tildet Schoenbrot
September 22, 2009 at 12:08 pm
Families with 4 children or more that are of school age struggled int the 2008/2009 year. The thing that annoys me is that qualified people from Australia are often discriminated against. I’m finding anyone with a good practical mind struggles to get recognized and viewed as a threat. The word teamship is in name only. The pieces of paper we hand out today are not worth the paper they are written on. The people interviewing often don’t have the academic qualification to assess someones knowledge. They can only assess what looks good on paper. Even the exams today are designed in such a way as to require a brief but shallow response. Things have become so fragmented and tunnel viewed that the over all picture fails to be seen, as people cannot assess what’s out side their area of speciality. Medicine is a tipple example of this both in nursing and Doctor’s, our training needs to be totally revamped.
MARY JABER
December 12, 2010 at 12:58 pm