As post-COVID attitudes towards work-life balance continue to change, some of us are questioning our role in the rat race and opting out. For others, the choice is hampered by housing and cost-of-living pressures. Insight explores how Australians are balancing a desire to clock-off, with their need to pay the bills. Watch Insight episode The Rat Race, now on SBS On Demand.
'Would I still want to buy this if no one else would ever see it?'
That's the question I started asking myself after buying a luxury car for my 30th birthday.
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At the time, it felt symbolic. Like proof that I'd made it. Proof that all the hard work had finally paid off.
But instead of feeling accomplished, I mostly felt anxious.
Every tiny scratch bothered me. Every service cost annoyed me. I worried about where I parked it and how I was being perceived when I drove it.
Then eventually, a year later, I worried what people would think when I sold it.
Somewhere in the middle of all that, I realised the car hadn’t given me the feeling I was chasing.
And for the first time, I really understood the term "golden handcuffs" — the strange trap of working hard to buy things that then require you to keep working hard to sustain them.
That realisation changed the way I started thinking about money, work and success.
My husband and I earn a very comfortable household income, well above the Australian average.
But despite that, it still somehow feels like we’re running just to keep up with what modern life now considers normal.
Once upon a time, success looked like owning a home and having stable work. Now it feels like success means renovations, overseas holidays, expensive health and wellness routines, extracurricular activities for your children.
And somehow still having the energy to look calm and fulfilled while doing it all.
I started noticing how much of our money was being spent trying to compensate for how little time and energy we had left.
Before and after school care. A gardener because we were too busy. A house cleaner because we were both exhausted. Paying to have the cars we worked long hours to afford washed. Massages to recover from the stress of the lifestyle we were trying to maintain.
When we catch up with friends, conversations often revolve around spending money. Trips. House upgrades. Schools. The latest thing someone is buying to make life easier or better.
I started wondering whether all these conveniences and life upgrades were making life better, or whether they were just helping us cope with how stretched we'd become.
Over time, we quietly started saying no to more things. Expensive dinners. Weekends away. Holidays with friends. Not dramatically. Just enough that we noticed the invitations had started slowing down.
And I think that's the strange part nobody really talks about. A lot of modern social life revolves around spending money together, so when you start pulling back from that, even slightly, it can feel unexpectedly isolating.
What makes it more confusing is that staying in the rat race isn't always driven by shallow things. Sometimes it's driven by purpose. By wanting to contribute. By caring deeply about your work, your family and the people around you.
I genuinely love my work. I work in aged care for a profit-for-purpose organisation, and what I do matters to me. My workplace is supportive and flexible. I can pick my children up from school some afternoons and attend school events.
And yet, I still constantly feel like I'm dropping the ball somewhere.
If I leave early for my kids, I feel guilty about work. If I stay back for work, I feel guilty about my kids. If I'm cooking dinner while mentally replying to emails in my head, I feel guilty about both.
Sometimes I look around and think: if this is considered a relatively flexible and privileged version of life, why does it still feel so stressful and overwhelming?
Because if I feel stretched despite having support and flexibility, how are families coping who don’t have it?
I think many of us are exhausted by the pace of modern life, but when everyone around you is running at the same speed, it becomes hard to recognise how unsustainable it is.
I even find myself questioning whether the way I'm feeling is valid.
My husband and I are probably in a position where we could seriously talk about changing things. Working less. Wanting less. Slowing down and stepping back from the rat race.
The world feels uncertain. Everything feels expensive. And when you're raising children, there's a constant pressure to make sure they'll be okay in a future that feels harder and less stable than the one we inherited.
Staying in the rat race starts to feel less like wanting more, and more like trying to create safety in an uncertain world.
The irony of working so hard for the people I don’t get enough time with isn’t lost on me.
But these days, when I ask myself, 'Would I still want this if nobody else could see it?', I pay very close attention to the answer.
Now, I'm not just calculating what something will cost financially. I'm also calculating what it will cost in time, in actual hours of my life. How many extra hours of work it represents. How many rushed evenings. How many moments away from my family.
And increasingly, the things that genuinely make me feel happy and successful are the things that don't really match what Australian culture currently says is impressive at all.
Slow mornings. Eating dinner I cooked with my family. Time outside. Helping others. Enough financial security to breathe, but not a life entirely built around chasing more.
At the end of the day, our lives are just made up of ordinary days.
And lately, I've started wondering whether a good life is less about constantly upgrading it, and more about making those ordinary days feel good.
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