A six-figure income has become “the new poverty line” for some Australian families, according to a business owner who says rising housing and everyday expenses have made $100,000 a year barely enough to raise two children.
The unnamed owner of a real estate agency made the claim during a Monday interview with Brisbane-based tax and business adviser Lawrence Petruzzelli.
“In Australia today, $100,000 a year is literally the poverty line,” the businessman told Mr Petruzzelli.
He said a $100,000 salary falls to roughly $80,000 after tax. For a family renting in a reasonable suburb, he estimated housing costs alone would reach at least $800 a week.
That would amount to about $40,000 a year in rent, before factoring in groceries, fuel, vehicle registration, insurance and other household bills.
“Once you have two children, the remaining $40,000 simply doesn’t stretch far enough to support the family after rent,” he said. “You literally have to live in a car.”
The business owner argued that many households now require two incomes merely to stay afloat, leaving parents with less time to spend with their children.
“The economic environment in Australia is now extremely toxic for families,” he said. “I don’t think it’s very good anymore.”
A real estate agency owner (left) told business adviser Lawrence Petruzzelli (right) that an annual take-home income of $100,000 now represents the poverty line for Australian families
Mr Petruzzelli (pictured) agreed with the assessment, saying families with children may now need to earn at least $300,000 to enjoy a comfortable standard of living
The owner said Australia’s financial pressures were markedly different from those experienced during the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s, describing a gradual decline in living standards since about 2006.
“You can’t blame everything on the current government, but they have certainly made it much worse,” he said.
The comments triggered a fierce debate, with some Australians saying $100,000 was barely sufficient for a family, while others condemned the use of the word “poverty” to describe a six-figure income.
One commenter said they felt fortunate to already have children and a mortgage, arguing they could not afford to start again in the current economy—particularly because they earned nowhere near $100,000.
Another agreed with the businessman, pointing to housing as the central problem. “He’s not wrong,” the commenter wrote, adding that apartment and house prices had surged since 2006.
Others dismissed the claim as “ridiculous”, insisting that earning $100,000 a year did not amount to living in poverty.
“If you can’t live on that, you’re not living within your means,” one person wrote. They said they earned $83,000 before tax, covered their own expenses and found life difficult, but did not consider themselves to be in poverty.
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Another commenter, earning less than $70,000 as the sole income earner in a household with two children, questioned what the claim meant for families like theirs. “I’d love to be earning $100,000,” they wrote. “If that’s below the poverty line, where does that leave the rest of us?”
Australia has no official poverty line, although research has estimated it at about $584 a week—approximately $30,368 a year—for a single adult, and $1,226 a week, or roughly $63,752 annually, for a couple with two children
Mr Petruzzelli said he shared the business owner’s concerns, arguing that a household with children may now need an income of at least $300,000 a year to achieve a genuinely good standard of living.
He said costs had increased ‘a lot faster’ than wages and bracket creep meant Australians were paying more tax and getting less with their money.
‘If you’re on a single income, you’re paying about $22,000 of tax versus if you had dual incomes (of $50,000 each), you’re only actually paying half of that,’ he told news.com.au.
‘By the time you have kids in the picture and everything else, car, rego, insurance and all that, there’s not much money left over.’
While there is no official poverty line in Australia, ACOSS/University of New South Wales research from 2025 gave an estimate on what the metric could be.
It worked out to $584 a week (approximately $30,368 per year) for a single adult and $1,226 a week (about $63,752 per annum) for a couple with two children.
The report found more than one in seven people were living below the poverty line after taking housing costs into account.
That equated to 3.7 million people, including 757,000 children, although the figures were based on data from 2022-23.
The debate comes as a new report released on Wednesday paints a bleak picture of Australian families struggling to afford everyday essentials.
The Price of Survival report by the Consumer Action Law Centre examined data and insights from financial counsellors working on the National Debt Helpline in Victoria and Queensland.
Chief executive Stephanie Tonkin said people are being forced to use credit as a ‘survival tool’ to cover the basics.
‘Our financial counsellors are hearing from people stretched beyond their limits, with rising interest rates making mortgage payments their chief concern,’ she said.
‘Wages are not keeping pace with prices.
‘Since 2020 working households paying a mortgage have seen their income go up 20 per cent, while living costs have risen more than 33 per cent. No wonder people are feeling stressed.’