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) <\/p>\n
Australians are heading to regional areas in their droves<\/a> to escape cost-of-living crunches<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n The 31-year-old is hoping to save $100,000 in the next 12 months<\/a>, 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n “I just want to fast-track to the next step, and this was my golden ticket to do so,” he said.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Do you have story? Email stew.perrie@yahooinc.com<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n “I wasn’t going out partying. I didn’t have any subscription services. I drove a very humble 2014 Mazda,” he told Yahoo Finance.<\/p>\n “Unless I didn’t leave the house and didn’t eat, I didn’t know what else I could do to tighten things up.”<\/p>\n “I was earning good money in Sydney, but the lifestyle is so expensive… money comes in, money goes out.”<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n It didn’t take much convincing for Abbott to make the leap, but took him about two months to wrap up all his affairs.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n The 31-year-old has only been there for a month, but has already been shocked by the difference in spending.<\/p>\n “It has just been a game changer for my money that’s coming in,” he said.<\/p>\n “Last month, I only spent $220.”<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n StandOut Resume<\/a> said the average Sydney worker would normally be only able to save 26.7 per cent of their wage after paying basic living costs.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n It’s a completely different lifestyle compared to what he had in Sydney.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n “It’s a very humble existence, which is what’s so attractive about it,” he said.<\/p>\n “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.”<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n “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.<\/p>\n “If anyone else was thinking about doing this, or working remotely for a year, I couldn’t recommend it more highly,” he said.<\/p>\n He knows he might not be able to move back to a place like Brisbane or Sydney and automatically buy his “dream house”.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n “To be able to really fast-track and accelerate that is really exciting,” he said.<\/p>\n Living in a rural area isn’t all sunshine and rainbows, with Abbott admitting that it can be fairly isolating at times.<\/p>\n But he knows the short sacrifice will be worth it down the line, and that’s enough motivation to keep going.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n “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.<\/p>\n The Regional Movers Index for the March quarter<\/a> revealed Sydney and Melbourne were the most popular cities for residents to pack up and move regionally or rurally.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Regional Australia Institute CEO, Liz Ritchie, said people are quickly realising they could have an easier life if they left the city.<\/p>\n \u201cRegional Australia is being reimagined,” she said.<\/p>\n “The regions\u2019 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.<\/p>\n “Contemporary regional Australia has what people are looking for and it\u2019s clear clich\u00e9d images and misconceptions about regional living are well and truly a thing of the past.\u201d<\/p>\n Research from Finder<\/a> revealed that one in eight people surveyed had relocated away from a capital city<\/a> in the last three years to get on top of their savings<\/a>.<\/p>\n The study found this exodus is far from over as well, with a further 1.5 million people tipped to move somewhere cheaper<\/a> by 2028.<\/p>\n Get the latest Yahoo Finance news – follow us on Facebook<\/a>, LinkedIn<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n Tim packed his bags and headed to rural Queensland, where he’s now working at a logging company. (Source: Supplied) <\/p>\n