Why Older Australians Expect a Standard Their Kids Can No Longer Afford

The Expectations That Don’t Fit the Economy Anymore

Across many Australian households, a quiet tension keeps appearing in conversations: older parents wondering why their adult children “can’t seem to get ahead,” and younger families wondering how previous generations ever managed a mortgage, kids and rising life costs on far less income.

It isn’t a matter of attitude. It’s economics. For most of the post-war period, the Australian cost structure supported early independence. The ratios made sense: affordable housing relative to income, lower education and childcare expenses, and a labour market that reliably delivered full-time work. As a result, earlier generations formed expectations that still persist — even though the economic landscape around younger Australians looks nothing like the one their parents walked into.

Housing Has Shifted Further Than Any Cultural Memory

When older Australians talk about “working hard and saving for a deposit,” they’re recalling a period when house prices sat at roughly three to four times average annual income. That ratio shaped an entire generational mindset. It meant a disciplined saver could genuinely get a foothold within a few years.

Today the maths is unrecognisable. In cities like Sydney, price-to-income ratios regularly push above eight to twelve times income for detached homes. Even established suburbs outside the CBD — places like Miranda, Gymea, Sutherland and Engadine — often sit well above the million-dollar mark.

The ABS 2024 Housing Finance data shows first-home buyers are now committing to mortgage repayments that swallow roughly a third of household income from day one. Previous generations commonly started closer to 15 per cent.

It isn’t that younger Australians are careless or impatient — they’re dealing with a structural shift in the single biggest expense of their lives.

The Cost of Raising a Family Has Quietly Redefined the Budget

Family expenses have changed just as dramatically. Older Australians often remember minimal childcare reliance, simpler school costs and fewer out-of-pocket health expenses.

Younger families face something very different. Childcare fees for two working parents can rival a second mortgage. Schooling now includes compulsory devices, rising excursion costs and higher extracurricular expectations. Insurance and healthcare stretch further each year. Even commuting has changed: as housing affordability pushes people further from employment centres, fuel and tolls become unavoidable.

ABS 2024 Family Spending data shows more than 80 per cent of Australian families now report they “struggle to break even each week”, even on dual incomes. That line alone is enough to show why cultural expectations from the 1970s–1990s don’t translate to 2025 Australia.

The basic inputs of raising a family are heavier, stickier and less flexible than ever before.

Wages Haven’t Kept Pace With the Economy People Are Living In

While expenses climbed sharply, wages did not. The Reserve Bank noted throughout the 2010s and early 2020s that real wage growth was largely stagnant, and in some periods, outright negative after inflation.

To put it in perspective:
– Household costs have risen faster than CPI in key categories like food, utilities, childcare and insurance for much of the past decade.
– Mortgage costs surged with cash rate increases, but incomes didn’t move proportionally.
– Job security has softened, with more casual and contract work replacing what used to be long-term pathways into stable middle-income careers.

Older Australians lived through a period of stronger wage growth, lower entry barriers and a labour market that rewarded long tenure. Younger Australians are in an economy that simply delivers a different set of numbers.

The Independence Model Breaks When the Ratios Change

Australia has always valued self-reliance. Older generations learned from their parents that becoming an adult meant standing on your own financially, building a home, raising kids early and gradually helping the older generation as they slowed down.

That model relied on home ownership being attainable early, childcare being affordable or unnecessary, and the cost of living being modest enough that one income could cover the essentials.

None of those conditions are guaranteed today — and many simply no longer exist.

This is why intergenerational tension appears: older Australians lived through an economy that rewarded early independence; younger Australians are budgeting inside one that penalises it.

Why the Tension Still Persists — Even With the Data in Plain Sight

Culture responds slowly to economic change. Expectations get passed down long after the conditions that created them disappear. Most older Australians aren’t being unreasonable — they’re operating from lived experience. But younger Australians aren’t failing to launch — they’re dealing with a very different structural reality.

The numbers are clear: housing, family costs and everyday living expenses have outpaced incomes for more than twenty years. No level of budgeting discipline can reverse that.

For families in Southern Sydney — especially areas like Miranda where housing pressure is intense — this isn’t a lifestyle choice. It’s the economy they’ve inherited.

Finding Stability Inside a Tougher System

You can’t plan your way back into 1985 conditions, but you can build financial strategies that match today’s realities instead of yesterday’s expectations. The households doing best today are the ones adapting to:

– longer deposit timelines
– more deliberate family-planning budgets
– active tax management
– realistic saving horizons
– contingency buffers for higher interest rates and inflation

A clear financial plan doesn’t eliminate the pressure, but it gives families a path through an environment their parents never had to navigate.

Need help planning for today’s cost pressures — not yesterday’s expectations?

Trident Accounting helps families and small business owners in Southern Sydney make sense of modern cost structures and build plans that actually fit today’s economy. If you need clarity on budgeting, tax strategy or long-range planning, we’re here to help.

Written by Aidan Walmsley