Tim traded his desk job for a physically demanding role in rural Queensland and has been blown away by how much money he’s been able to save. (Source: Supplied)
Australians are heading to regional areas in their droves to escape cost-of-living crunches that can be far worse in metropolitan cities. Tim Abbott is part of this huge shift, and he decided to move from Sydney to rural Queensland last month.
The 31-year-old is hoping to save $100,000 in the next 12 months, in what he’s calling his financial gap year. He told Yahoo Finance he will hopefully be able to buy a freestanding house with the money saved.
“I just want to fast-track to the next step, and this was my golden ticket to do so,” he said.
Abbott had been in digital marketing for close to a decade and was paying $600 per week in rent for a shared apartment in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs, which had doubled in price since 2021.
He, like many people his age, was looking at the property market and was worried whether he would ever be able to save enough money to buy a house.
The 31-year-old had already bought a one-bedroom apartment, but the strata expenses and renovations were costing him thousands of dollars he didn’t really have.
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Add on the high cost of living in Sydney, Abbott found it very difficult to save up enough money for his homeownership dream, even after reducing his spending.
“I wasn’t going out partying. I didn’t have any subscription services. I drove a very humble 2014 Mazda,” he told Yahoo Finance.
“Unless I didn’t leave the house and didn’t eat, I didn’t know what else I could do to tighten things up.”
“I was earning good money in Sydney, but the lifestyle is so expensive… money comes in, money goes out.”
Friends of his recently ditched their lives in Sydney to move to Forster, several hours up the coast, to save money, and it got the digital marketer thinking.
He knew a mate who was working in a drive-in drive-out tree lopping gig 700 kilometres north-west of Brisbane and Abbott wondered what his life would look like if he lived in a rural area.
It didn’t take much convincing for Abbott to make the leap, but took him about two months to wrap up all his affairs.
He moved up to a farm that’s about a 30-minute drive from the nearest town, which only has a population of 500 people, and is thankfully living rent-free with his friend.
The 31-year-old has only been there for a month, but has already been shocked by the difference in spending.
“It has just been a game changer for my money that’s coming in,” he said.
“Last month, I only spent $220.”
Abbott reckons he’s been able to save around 90 to 95 per cent of his pay so far, and believed he’ll definitely hit his $100,000 goal within the year.
Tim packed his bags and headed to rural Queensland, where he’s now working at a logging company. (Source: Supplied)
StandOut Resume said the average Sydney worker would normally be only able to save 26.7 per cent of their wage after paying basic living costs.
Not only that, but shifting from digital marketing to operating a skidder, which is a heavy vehicle used in logging, has seen his pay increase by 15 per cent.
It’s a completely different lifestyle compared to what he had in Sydney.
Instead of sitting at his computer for five days a week, he’s now very hands on, doing roughly 10 hour days outside in two to three-week-long bursts, with a week off.
“It’s a very humble existence, which is what’s so attractive about it,” he said.
“The money that you’ve got coming in, you’ve got nowhere to spend it. It’s forced savings, in a way, because you don’t get your pay on and then go blow it on a Saturday night.”
The 31-year-old admitted his move from Sydney to a farm in the middle of outback Queensland was “quite extreme”, but said you don’t have to go far to have a financial gap year.
You also don’t have to completely change your career either, as certain companies offer remote opportunities, meaning you could stay working at the same place, just in a different location.
“Regional and rural towns are really looking for teachers and doctors and skilled workers because they have such small populations to begin with,” he told Yahoo Finance.
“If anyone else was thinking about doing this, or working remotely for a year, I couldn’t recommend it more highly,” he said.
He knows he might not be able to move back to a place like Brisbane or Sydney and automatically buy his “dream house”.
But he added that he could take him half a decade or even longer to get remotely close to what he could save in just one year living rurally.
“To be able to really fast-track and accelerate that is really exciting,” he said.
Living in a rural area isn’t all sunshine and rainbows, with Abbott admitting that it can be fairly isolating at times.
But he knows the short sacrifice will be worth it down the line, and that’s enough motivation to keep going.
Abbott isn’t ruling out pushing his financial gap year by an extra six months to save a bit more, before hopefully pursuing a new career in psychology.
“Going somewhere, taking some time out, sacrificing for that delayed gratification, and saving up for a deposit, or whatever their dream is, I think it’s worthwhile,” he said.
The Regional Movers Index for the March quarter revealed Sydney and Melbourne were the most popular cities for residents to pack up and move regionally or rurally.
There were about 25 per cent more people moving from Australia’s cities to regional and rural areas than those coming in the other direction.
Regional Australia Institute CEO, Liz Ritchie, said people are quickly realising they could have an easier life if they left the city.
“Regional Australia is being reimagined,” she said.
“The regions’ enviable lifestyle offerings, buoyant jobs market, position as an economic leader and diverse communities are proving to be an ongoing lure, particularly for those in metropolitan areas.
“Contemporary regional Australia has what people are looking for and it’s clear clichéd images and misconceptions about regional living are well and truly a thing of the past.”
Research from Finder revealed that one in eight people surveyed had relocated away from a capital city in the last three years to get on top of their savings.
The study found this exodus is far from over as well, with a further 1.5 million people tipped to move somewhere cheaper by 2028.
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