Struggling dad of eight kids Don Parkes who earns $125K-a-year can’t make ends meet during Australia’s cost-of-living crisis

An Aussie family of ten is struggling to make ends meet, despite the father earning a salary that puts him in the top 10 percent of earners.

Don Parkes, a Sydney father of eight, earns $125,000 a year as a factory manager, but his family has still had to cut back wherever they can.

The family’s budget to house, feed and clothe ten people has been stretched to its limits by Australia’s current cost of living crisis.

Mr Parkes and his wife, Kirsty, have repeatedly been forced to dip into their savings to make ends meet, despite earning more than most Australians.

The couple was even forced to ask their two working teenage sons to contribute to rent and food.

“It’s hard to imagine that $125,000 a year is a struggle, it doesn’t make sense,” Parkes said. A current issue.

His salary is just above the cutoff for the top 10 percent of earners, who earned at least $122,664 in 2023, according to that year’s Wealth Report.

Mrs Parkes revealed the family spends around $1,200 on groceries every two weeks, despite switching to own-brand items to cut costs.

Healthy meals had also been removed from the menu after the family realized that fresh fruit, vegetables and meat had become too expensive.

“We have now had to replace quality with quantity because we have so many mouths to feed,” Ms Parkes said.

“We can get a family pack from McDonalds… And that’s a better price than trying to buy the meat, buy the vegetables, buy everything else and cook it at home.”

The couple has had to prioritize what they can afford on their limited budget, including making the difficult decision to reduce the family’s health insurance costs.

“Health insurance is not something that is affordable, it is not something that I could even budget for in what we have,” Ms Parkes said.

“We have to eat first, we have to clothe the children, we have to pay our bills, so these are things that are left out and that I would rather consider a luxury.”

The Parkes family (pictured) are struggling to afford healthy food and have had to cut their health insurance as they are forced to cut costs wherever they can

Ms Parkes has come face-to-face with fellow Aussies struggling while at the helm of Community Cafe, a south-west Sydney charity that provides free food and clothing to those in economic hardship.

About 200 people now come through the café every day, because more people are struggling financially to get through the week.

The Parkes family will receive about $800 more from Anthony Albanese’s changes to the phase three tax cuts.

While saving a few thousand dollars a year in taxes will help them and other lower-to-middle-class families, Parkes said more needs to be done to lower the cost of living.

“They have to find a way to actually curb that, or find some kind of ceiling where they go, okay, enough is enough — how do we do that?” she said.