I just live on Peter's income atm.

Yeah, hubs pay for everything at the moment. He makes a few dollars above minimum wage.
It's a good thing that we live really cheaply.

According to the AU government he earns too much so can support me.


But they calculated this on his pay that is before tax was taken out of it.

And he has a nice chunk of tax taken out each pay..

Yeah, the same for us. I hattte that. I don't understand that at all. We don't get all the money so why count it all?

Also, don't get me started on american taxes. They're so stupid. I hate them. So idk how it works in other countries, I heard only the usa does it like this. We pay taxes with every check, and there's so options so you can have the most taken out for taxes or you can have like 1 dependent less per person. So people who are single will usually do 0 or they'll end up having to pay more taxes in april, and then married people will sometimes bump it up to 1 or 2 so they can have less taken out of their checks and possibly pay more in april. Well me and husband always have done 0 for dependents because we don't want to have to pay extra one month because we can't afford that. Even though we do that, for the past 4-5 years hubs has ended up having to pay even more taxes. It's usually around 300 bucks. Idk, but it's infuriating. He already gets like 500 bucks taken out of his checks per pay period and then we gotta pay an extra 300 or more later. It's insane. And infuriating.

The withholding stuff is they take more and come tax season, you get it back, unless you owe a lot. Then you pay more
Normally I only get 87% of my paycheck, previous years would see about $600 back in April
Without holdings it's 96%
The last 4% is Medicare and social security, so obviously I won't be seeing that bit back
So unless that got changed in the last couple years, you've got it backwards

But I'm also a minimum wage peon, and glow isn't anywhere near 40 hours/week so I'm not getting very large paychecks this year

I know, but I don't know why it says we always owe a bunch cuz we give the max amount in the first place. Idk what we're doing to get this extra have to pay later bullshit.

What did I get backwards? I'm confused.

At my old job I would get approximately 80%? Somewhere around there. But I was putting a lot into my 401k and I had the highest rate insurance. So I feel like it wasn't that bad at all. And 80 was like 950 every 2 weeks so not bad at all. Way more than I had ever made before.


Hubs gets the 35-40 hours a week thing so he's not 'technically' fulltime so they don't have to do the really good benefits. I keep trying to keep convincing him to work at my old job because it was freaking amazing but he says no. Starting pay is over 14 bucks an hour. That's more than he's making being a shift supervisor and working at the same place for 6 years. Ugh. Not that Starbucks is a bad place to work overall, but the place I was working was pretty freaking good.

Sometimes I feel bad that Australia's wages are stagnating and we desperately need wage rises that can cope with the cost of living, etc.

Because average pay can be anywhere from $20 per hour or more. Sometimes a lot more.


Now $20 per hour is...low for us. And I think when I do talk to others online like about the cost of games here or books, etc especially to American's, some just don't get that there are other countries that run differently. But thankfully that's a tiny minority.

I'm also incredibly glad we don't really tip at all. We're not a tipping country. Some food cafes, etc might take tips but overall we just don't do tips. I don't math very well

If I had a restaurant or cafe or whatever I wouldn't even look at waitressing minimum wage, which is significantly lower than the standard minimum wage
They'd start at actual minimum wage, tipping allowed but not mandatory

I have heard that Australia's stuff is a lot more expensive. How much is a video game there? Around here it's like 60. Is it around 90-100?

Minimum wage in my state is 7.50ish an hour. which is not even kind of enough to support someone. The minimum wage for for waitresses is horrifically low. Around 2.50 an hour. In the USA you GOTTA tip or your waitress is basically working for free. It is completely awful.


I agree, KH. If I ever opened a restaurant I would have everyone at least at minimum wage as well. I'd like to pay more. You pay your employees better they more loyal.

Generally, yeah
Some, no matter the pay, are more willing to steal and blame it on others