My thoughts…(even though the excitement factor of this budget is just above zero, please hold your yawn)

With tax cuts the centrepiece of the federal budget, they seem to be more for show than function. Low and middle-income earners will receive a tax cut up to $530 per year – less than the current inflation rate – but it’s a cut, so we’re grateful for that (for the whole 10 bucks a week…enough to buy ourselves a Happy Meal!)

The ‘simplified and flattened’ tax code removes the 37% bracket and projects that by 2024-25 around 94% of Aussie taxpayers will face a marginal tax rate of no more than 32.5% – so we’re grateful for that too.

Tax cuts are always welcome and will naturally have a flow-on effect for investment opportunity and personal finances. This will provide some relief to household budget pressure that many families face. It also creates opportunity to achieve financial goals sooner, paying down debt and even kick-start the investing process.

The key is to make it work for you. If you get an extra $10 in your pay, skip the Happy Meal and save it! You’ll never notice it missing if you never had it.

The piece that I’d so dearly hoped would make an inaugural appearance in the budget was nowhere to be seen and that is the economic disadvantage that Aussie women face.

Here’s a couple of things they missed:

  • The gender pay gap currently sits at 15.3%. It’s been between 15 and 19% for the past two decades! Why??? Two decades! Come on!
  • The average Australian woman will retire with $145,000 less in her super than her male counterpart (male median: $413,000 vs. female median: $268,000). When will the government realise that allowances need to be made for time that women spend out of the workforce as well as the fact that we’re paid lower than our male counterparts? So we’re expected to live on 65% of what men get to live off. I wonder if we’ll get a 35% discount on our bills and groceries? I’d be fine with that!
  • The average 60-year-old Australian woman will have to work an extra 15 years to end up with the same amount of super as her male counterpart. I love my work, but enough already! I’m not fine with that!!
    84% of Australian women aged 40–65 do not feel adequately prepared for retirement and 23% feel they are not prepared at all. Eighty four percent… more than eight in every 10 women. That’s just ridiculous! What are we doing?
  • And the real kicker – by the age of 60, 34% of single women in Australia live in poverty. The free steak knives we get with that is we’ve got about an extra 5% of living time than men!

Why aren’t these numbers raising massive red flags to our government? Oh that’s right… they’re men.

I wonder when (not “if” – but “when” because I am the eternal optimist) women’s issues will be addressed…