Is smashed avocado really smashing the Australian dream?

Stephanie Brennan | March 20, 2017

Since the recent article by Bernard Salt in the Australian, millennials and the media have been quick to refute claims that smashed avocado is really smashing the Australian dream, but is this tasty fruit really to blame?

Over the past 12-18months there has been a lot of contention around the housing market with talks of property prices escaping prospective buyers with an emphasis on the first timers. But isn’t a rising market what you want from your investment? Yes when you’re sitting on the sidelines it’s not fun to see everyone else making money when you’re not but what’s really stopping millennials from buying property?

Yes smashed avocado is partly to blame or if we’re being honest it’s the lack of self-discipline but let’s not offend the entitled millennials, let’s blame the helpless fruit because it’s really the problem. If you’re a millennial reading this then yes you heard me, it’s time to start taking some responsibility! 

In our parents and grandparents era they didn’t go out every night, they didn’t have the nice car and the nice clothes or the latest phone or live off credit, they didn’t buy the best house either. They saved, they made sacrifices, they worked hard and they started small. 

Yes millennials are quick to say it was easier for previous generations which again is yet another excuse and if we look at the facts, in 1975 women weren’t even able to buy property without a husband or their father as the guarantor as banks didn’t take into account a females’ income, the cash rate was at 17.5% and yet today our cash rate is 1.5% but yes, we as millennials are just so hard done by. 

Now that’s not to say that millennials don’t have some reason to be complaining, we set our expectations high and we want it all and that’s a good thing. We want more, we demand more and what the real issue behind millennials struggling to get into the property market is the lack of advice and guidance, and in the true millennial spirit I’m going to blame someone else. 

Yes it’s not the tasty fruit that’s to blame it’s the education system and the real estate and finance industry at large. 

It’s all their fault and let me tell you why.

Over the past four weeks there were 230,650 listings nationally and yet 75% of financial planners are unable to provide advice on property to due restrictions on their licence, not to mention that no financial planner is able to accept commissions from property, not that this would make them bias towards other investments of course. There is also no financial planner that is able to recommend a specific area to purchase property and whilst you can look at engaging a buyer’s agent you’ll often be stung with having to pay 1-2% of the purchase price for the privilege. No doubt in some areas that fee they paid is worth more now than the property they purchased.

It is evident that there is a lack of advice and guidance in this space and particularly during hard times when markets or personal circumstances change, which are when, you need that advice the most.

Now let’s not forget the governments involvement with the lack of financial education in schools. Whilst I’m so glad that learning about those filmic techniques in movies during English Class has really set me up in life, where were the classes on every day life skills such as how to budget, how to buy a property, how to research an investment, how to calculate the yield or the return on your investment, how to port security through buying and selling at the same time so you can move assets around without applying for new credit or even something as simple as how supply and demand works?

On that point, the next thing millennials will be missing out on is smashed avocado, why? Similar to what we saw in the housing market, café’s are now discounting their smashed avocado just like the RBA dropped the cash rate to increase demand, but of course the more our peers want something the more we want it too so in true millennial fashion, It doesn’t matter whose to blame as long as I get my smashed avocado and my property portfolio too.