The housing boom in Australia is now an escalating bust. Many Australian homeowners put every cent they had into their homes and they needed double incomes to just scrape by. Unfortunately, those jobs are disappearing in a construction and commercial real estate bust.
I warned about this event for years, but in Australia, like everywhere else "It's Different Here" until it's not.
60 Minutes Australia picked up the Secretly Broke story in "The Big Squeeze". Click on link for a 60 Minutes video. Here is a partial transcript.
ALLISON LANGDON: To the world, Tracy and David Dodd are the very model of Australia’s relaxed and comfortable middle-class. They’re living the dream – three kids, a mortgage and a suburban family home on an acre block. But Tracey and David have been keeping a secret from their family and friends – they’re drowning in debt. No-one to look at you would think that you are struggling.
TRACY: It might look like we have got everything but you don’t see the mortgage, you don’t see the loans. You don’t see everything and nobody wants to talk about it you know, because it is embarrassing.
ALLISON LANGDON: Has it taken a toll on you both?
TRACY: Mmm…sorry.
DAVID: Oh it has – it has taken its toll but you’ve just got to do it.
ALLISON LANGDON: Like most young couples, the Dodds invested their heart and soul and every spare cent they had into the ideal of home ownership – the biggest mortgage their double income would allow. But last June, Tracy lost her job in the construction industry and David was made redundant. Just