An Australian woman has delivered brutal advice to young people on how to prepare for retirement.
On Tuesday’s episode of SBS Insight, 37-year-old Julia said she has as much money in her superannuation account as the average 60-year-old.
When asked by Insight host Kumi Taguchi what advice she would offer young Australians in order for them to find more financial freedom and success in the future, she suggested two controversial life choices.
“I am here tonight to empower the next gen[eration] of women and my advice would be aimed more so towards them,” Julia said.
“It is going to sound super controversial but I would say one thing is, don’t get married and, if you do, make sure someone is benefiting from it.”
The second piece of advice she acknowledged would be “really controversial” was that people might want to think about “refraining from having children”.
“Because, by the time that kid leaves your home, it will have cost you as much as a Lamborghini. And you could be driving a Lamborghini or that sum could be sitting in your superannuation growing,” she said.
The Melbourne woman said she came from a migrant family and that money was an important conversation point at the dinner table when she was a kid.
She said she had also been putting money from her salary “aggressively” into her super since beginning her working life at 15.
Working currently as an HR professional, Julia has still been building her super, sacrificing more than a quarter of her yearly salary.
Even if she stopped adding money to her super, she would still be set to have more than $1 million in her balance for her retirement.
At 21, she bought her first home after finishing university before going on to buy more properties and picking up two more university degrees.
Young Aussies in the program’s audience appeared stunned at Julia’s advice but she believes retirees in Australia will become poorer in the future.
“I think we’re going to have a lot of poor retirees in Australia in my generation – not enough people are contributing to superannuation via salary sacrifice, in my opinion,” she told news.com.au.
“I think we should be teaching Australian tax systems and superannuation as a subject to Aussie kids in high school.”