If you have $3m in Superannuation, with a standard 6% ROI annually, you could spend $180K of “earned interest” every year without ever touching your principal.
For a comfortable retirement in 2026, the amount required is ~$800K (this is already on the high end).
Assuming a consistent worst-case inflation rate of 4% every year (double the RBA target), it would take 25 years to hit $2m - let alone the $3m+ in question here.
There is a very small, very wealthy cohort with $3m+ in superannuation savings - and you, statistically speaking, aren’t part of it.
I mean, Sony & Microsoft consoles are basically PCs with a custom OS now already (PS4 onwards, and Xbox One both used x86-64 CPUs).
There are fewer and fewer reasons to buy a specific (and expensive) piece of hardware that is less flexible in terms of functionality than the alternatives, so this is Sony trying to protect their own fiefdom.
Not quite the same thing, but I used an LLM to cobble together a HTML file that allows me to search for products on Coles, Woolies, Aldi and Amazon at the same time in the same window (via frames and a Firefox extension to get around some security settings).
Works a treat when planning our big shops for the week, and has already saved us hundreds of dollars since Jan.
Ofcourse, not everyone can afford to buy a new car at the drop of a hat.
The K-shaped economic recovery post-COVID (hell, post Great Recession even) has been absolutely brutal on household disposable income.
The only (slight) silver lining is that organic market incentives like this fuel-shock will cause a spike in new economical car sales, which will flow through into the used market over the next 2-5 years as leases expire or cars get traded in for the next upgrade.
If all that was selling continued to be fuel-guzzling road-hog SUVs and yank-style “trucks”, then that’s all that will be available in the used market for the next few years.
But even for that small group of people who can only afford at most ~$25K for their next vehicle - they at least now have the option of a brand new (and actually not cheap shit) EV -which they can usually just slow-charge off their mains power (thanks to being in a 200-240V country).
Doesn’t necessarily help those without access to off-street parking and proximity to a power point, but people are creative - and to paraphrase Jeff Goldblum’s character in Jurassic Park: “life finds a way (to an unattended public outlet”.
We have too many damned US-style “trucks” here in Australia now.
Our fuel prices have just crossed the equivalent of $5 USD/gallon ($1.90 AUD/litre); it will be interesting watching people squirm at the petrol pumps when the price inevitably increases another 50% or so.
That is way too reductive, and ultimately incorrect.
Bombing Germany and Japan may have decimated their respective armies and leadership, but it was the decades-long boots on the ground occupation and rebuilding that ensured those countries were able to develop into democracies.
Given our (collective Western) failures to do so in both Iraq and Afghanistan, I don’t hold high hopes for the future of Iran - despite how much I wish for its people to be able to return to the freedoms they had for a brief period under Mosaddegh in the early ‘50s.
18yo me would be living in the early 2000s; any of these would set me up for life:
“Bitcoin hits $100K”
“Buy Tesla shares” - this also would work for any of the big brands Netflix/Nvidia etc.
But this one would probably change my life in a much more meaningful way:
“Don’t lose her.”
As an iPhone user from the 3G days, this is legitimately interesting to me. I love the form factor of the modern Razr flip-phones, and having access to a privacy-focused OS like Graphene might just tip me over the edge.
Anyone with first-hand experience, how’s Graphene OS with banking apps?
40-50kWh given the current incentives (which are changing in May) only costs only a few hundred dollars more than ~15kWh, and provides owners with more flexibility in terms of EV charging (especially if the car is used for daily commuting and would not be able to directly take advantage of solar), and discharging back into the network at optimal times to recoup the system cost that much faster.
But otherwise, I do agree with you - our peak usage is less than 16kWh/day (2 WFH adults, 2 grandparents and 1 child); while our solar exports usually triple that amount in summer and we usually net-0 in winter (ie. the amount we export matches what we buy in over those ~3 months).
We don’t have a battery installed yet - but we are very seriously considering it, hence I have the figures available off the top of my head.
Your pricing information is a bit out of date; with current Government incentives a 10kW array and 50KWh batteries can be gotten for less than $10K.
True, general feed-in rates have tanked due to a glut in solar panels, but certainly providers do still offer generous rates for shoulder periods (around dawn and dusk) where you could potentially discharge part of your battery into the network (I think?).
But the real savings from having the batteries will eliminate your need to use power during evening peak times, eliminating the need for buying petrol if/when switching to an EV and having the ability to buffer energy from a rare sunny day in winter into free energy for the next 2-3 overcast days.
Depending on how aggressively you monitor and take advantage of market offers, and electrify your home - the pay-down period can be as low as a few years.
At least it would stop GamersTM from complaining about how “ugly” that character is?