Dream States And Financial Reality

The Age

Saturday March 15, 2008

David Wilson

Finding a suitable work-life balance becomes a lot easier if you have a healthy-plus bank balance.

Sufficient money crunches domestic mortgages and debt and allows you to dump, change or work fewer hours in your job.

Even bigger amounts of money can whisk you away from work, domestic, financial and health stress and plunge you into the world of the carefree rich.

At some stage most of us dream of being hyper-wealthy - after all, it's a bit yesteryear just dreaming of enough wealth to never have to worry about money again.

We dream of winning lotteries and TV quiz shows, bleeding casinos dry, meeting multimillionaire/billionaire partners or benefactors, gaining unexpected inheritances and making spell-binding investments.

For the vast majority of people these mirages are very different from financial and statistical reality.

But there are just enough winners to keep hopes up and wealth fantasies alive and kicking.

You've got to be in it to win it. So what are the chances?

First of all, no self-respecting wealth fantasiser would dream of anything under $1 million, minimum.

Currently, there are about 160,000 Australians who have assets worth more than $1 million on top of the family home.

So that means about one person in every 131 is a millionaire or a millionaire-plus.

Ever won on 131-to-1 odds?

Almost certainly not, and thus the chances of getting $1 million upwards in unearned money or assets are pretty slim. In fact, they are lousy.

But those odds don't mean much when the mortgage payments have to be made, petrol has to be bought and the increasingly dizzy prices at the supermarket have to be met.

They don't mean much when the child-minding centre bill rolls in, the car's engine blows up, school fees and charges have to be paid and the plasma's judged to be too small for the football season.

It's the human way to fantasise about wealth when things are financially tough or there is something you "just have to have".

So just dream on.

© 2008 The Age

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