Welcome to the boomtown

Property prices are so high the average person can barely afford to rent, let alone buy anything, despite our high wages here. Interest rates are at about 6% for home loans. Oh but yeah we have only 5% unemployment. Yet the employers are still coming out with "You're lucky to even have a job". Yeah, lucky us.....

I like Sydney. I like it's beaches, and the ability to live near them. To be able to earn enough money to live, and the availability of jobs. I like the labour shortage and the pressure that puts on wages for skilled workers. 

But I don't like this whole concentration on money. Many here that's all life seems to be about; getting money and having it. Getting property, getting wealth not just getting by. Spending your life making some dream of owning a home, having a late model car in the driveway, and a lovely looking lawn. Using your home as an investment instead of just a place to live.

And here's me, right in the middle of all this in Eastern Sydney. Here's me contemplating the meaning of life and death, with fuck all money and really not caring about having it. No car in the driveway, bugger all in assets. Here's me with HIV in the middle of a boomtown. 

It all seems so incredibly meaningless. Incredible BS. Incredibly fake, and nothing to do at all with what life is really about. Yet people do think that; that the acquisition of things is the ultimate goal in life. Boring people. People sucked into the system. 

Some commentators assert that Sydney's property market is about 40% over priced, particularly given the international price of property now. I keep saying to people that the property boom won't last forever, but as it's gone on since about the mid '80's people think it will. I can't believe the stupidity. But more-so that they've built their whole financial existence here around the price of their house. Borrowed money on it as equity, up to their eyeballs in debt. My pissy little $30,000 debt is nothing when you owe half a million. If property does crash here the effects will be hugely far reaching into the economy.

But hey, we're in the boomtown eh? The money is never gonna stop. But yeah whatever. Life isn't all about money.

Being poor in the boomtown is very enlightening. The contrast makes you value the things in life that really matter. And it isn't money. It's people.