Wealth

You can’t blame Hope Rinehart for trying to get her Mum to pay for a cook, a housekeeper and a bodyguard. Optimism isn’t even her middle name - it’s right up there.

And who among us wouldn’t have a fairly ambitious birthday wish list if Mum was the richest person in Australia?

So Hope asked Mum for a cook (AND showed her willingness to negotiate by including a salary ranging from $40,000 to $225,000+ which means she’d presumably gun for Jamie Oliver but be happy with a Subway “sandwich artist”). 

Continue reading "The Rinehart whine came straight from the heart" »

Like anyone who has ever had to perform some form of work, I despise wealthy celebrities.

Their constant tears in interviews, their overuse of words like “journey” and “dreams” and their inability to empathise with anyone other than rare amphibians and cyber-bullied American Idol contestants make them difficult to like.

They are a strange and reptilian breed whose thirst for never-ending attention and gaudy bling can repulse even the gentlest of souls – which is why it pains me to take their side on rare occasions.

Continue reading "Dude, where’s my massively oversized deluxe trailer?" »

As we approach summer, its natural to do some kind of stocktake, a bit of a personal inventory of where you stand at the end of another year.  And in a socially mobile society such as ours, the question on many lips will be whether this year was the year in which they could finally say, “I have arrived.”

You will have heard of a departure checklist.  Well, in a similar vein, and with a view to helping those everywhere labouring under uncertainty, this article undertakes to provide a ready-made, simple to use arrival checklist. Simply work through the items below and record whether you have performed or demonstrated all of the relevant requirements.

1.  Acquired incompetence – This is an umbrella term used to describe the phenomenon experienced by successful people whereby, although they have got where they are through their general competence, and usually an acute self-awareness of such competence, they are now unable to do anything for themselves.

Continue reading "Punch list: how you know you’ve really arrived!" »

The Australian Bureau of Statistics has released what it calls a study of “estimates of personal income for small areas.” For ease however we will call it our shameless guide to class warfare and rich people’s suburbs.

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According to the study - conducted between 2003-04 and 2007-08 - the North Sydney waterside suburb of Mosman has the highest average income in the country at $131,606. If a suburb with an average income like that isn’t reference point enough, the national average is $44,402.

Second are the battlers of Woollahra in East Sydney on $116,376.  One begins to feel a bit dirty heading over to Hunters Hill on a mere $95,027, and then if you would actually want to be seen there you can get into North Sydney on $83,997 and Ku-ring-gai at $82,195.

Continue reading "The Punch guide to our rich suburbs and big houses" »

The worst kept secret in the gambling world is the statement “the house always wins”. No casino on Earth hides this fact. In fact, they seem to proudly embrace the mantra as an open challenge to morons. And surely in the realm of unashamedly unfair advantages, Lotto is the mother of them all.

There’s an old saying in the poker game, “If you can’t spot the sucker at the table, then the sucker is you”. In the Lotto world, the saying should be “If you’re not the extraordinarily unlikely winner of bucketloads of cash, then you’re an idiot”.

As the Oz Lotto draw that stopped the nation entered its final week and the jackpot hit Def-Con Ridiculous, reportedly half of the adult population of Australia flocked to pay their idiot tax, salivating like St Bernards over the impressive $106 million bone, in the vain hope of striking it rich in the biggest possible way, and being able to tell their bosses once and for all, to shove it.

Continue reading "Win a truckload of cash or just be an idiot" »