The dream of owning property is stripped away by everyday price hikes, writes Taylor Troeth.
OPINION
The next time someone asks me why I can’t afford to buy a property? My answer: Tim Tams.
Like many other Australians, Tim Tams are one of my favourite guilty pleasures. There’s nothing that can quite compare to the delectable taste of biting into a crunchy chocolate covered rectangular prism with cream filling smacked in the middle.
It’s a riveting, moorish experience that we as Australians have the pleasure of calling ours.
We did that. Something we can be proud of. My love for Tim Tams has unforgivably been conflated over the past few years with the unbelievable price they’ve now been pitched as in the supermarkets.
Somewhere along the way I stopped buying my favourite treat, and as much as I’d love to say it’s for healthy living reasons, I’m led to believe it’s because of the price tag.
It really is an outrage that the average Australian now has to go without their favourite treat. If Australia continues on this trajectory, we’ll all be paying $14.5 for a packet of the Arnotts delectables by 2030. That’s more than double today’s shelf price if it keeps up with current pacing.
Rip to my love of Tim Tams.
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When did this happen? It felt like Tim Tams were $3 and then I blinked and woke up in a sick fever dream.
The data supports it too.
For a long time the price hardly moved. A packet was $3.65 in late 2015, when Coles lifted it from $3.50 to match Woolworths, and it was still $3.65 in 2018, 2019 and 2020, according to playcasino.com which crunched the data.
Then it started to climb. The packet went to $4 in 2021, $4.50 in 2023 and $5 in the first half of 2024. By October 2024 it was $6, and that is still the full price today.
It reminded me of when I first started renting, almost 10 years ago. For those first four to five years of renting in Sydney’s share housing market, I was paying a pretty similar price for a room, if my memory serves me correctly between $200-250. Somewhere along the way it got up to around $275, and I remember thinking that was steep.
Tim Tams at $3 feels like a time gone by. Photo: Supplied.
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Fast forward to today, I don’t even want to admit on the internet how much I pay for rent. But it’s a fair chunk more than that.
Of my nine years of renting in Sydney, I’ve lived in eight different properties of differing levels and types from large free standing inner west homes, a South Sydney Town house all the way to a western Sydney apartment. Each place I was able to afford while studying or on my casual and part-time salary.
Covid changed the renting experience, where it seemed that landlords after years of not touching rental prices got big heads and started slamming their tenants with unreasonable rent increases year after year.
Taylor dreaming of Tim Tams and whether she’ll ever be able to buy a property. Photo: Supplied.
But we aren’t talking about property here, we are talking about Tim Tams!
What did end up happening to the price gouging investigations from the ACCC?
Because when I walk down the biscuit and chocolate aisle, if a block of chocolate at $8 a pop and Tim Tams at $6 isn’t price gouging, then the sky’s not blue and water isn’t wet.
And if the prices of our beloved Tim Tams do keep on going up, to say $14.5 in four years’ time, then what will become of society? When will it end? Only the rich will be able to afford Tim Tams which used to be the common man’s dessert!
So I’m not buying Tim Tams anymore, it’s the healthier decision. Even if I wanted to at $6 a pop it’s not a wise financial investment.
And even if I were, despite my opening statement I’m not about to avocado smash myself and blame a $6 splurge on why my generation can’t afford property. But again – this isn’t about property. It’s about Tim Tams.
And Australian’s shouldn’t have to go without, they shouldn’t just be for the rich and wealthy. Everyone deserves a home … I mean, Tim Tams.