"I'm sick of millionaires telling me why I'll never buy a house."

Property tycoon, 35-year-old Tim Gurner, has solved the national housing affordability crisis in one concise segment on Channel 9’s 60 Minutes, and we all owe him a very sincere thank you.  

With no less than half a billion dollars to his name, Gurner summarises his philosophy in one sentence: “When I was trying to buy my first home, I wasn’t buying smashed avocado for $19 and four coffees at $4 each.”

“They want to eat out every day, they want to travel to Europe every year,” he told 60 Minutes, referring to Generation Y. “This generation is watching the Kardashians and thinking that’s normal. Thinking that owning a Bentley is normal, that owning a BMW is normal.”

Listen: The Mamamia Out Loud team take a moment to discuss the predicament of poor millennials who may never own a house in Australia. Post continues after audio. 

Pause.

If my interpretation is correct, it would appear that what Gurner is saying, is that if you spend less money on small things, you will save more money for big things, later. 

Holy shit. Economists, take the rest of the day off. Politicians, have a nap. Financial planners, you’ve all been made redundant.

Gurner’s got this.

The only thing missing from Gurner’s musings is, of course, anything that mildly resembles a fact. Here are some of them:

• The average rate of savings in Australia is currently higher than it has been at any point since the 80s, and those aged between 25 and 34 are above average savers.
• While the cost of a home continues to increase astronomically, the average wage has stagnated.
• CoreLogic’s director of research, Tim Lawless, says, “The 20 per cent deposits have never been so difficult and on that measure we have never seen affordability as challenging as what it is at the moment.”
• By every official international analysis, Australian housing is close to, if not the most, overvalued on the planet.

Does anyone want to discuss flatlining Australian wages that aren’t inline with the growth of cost of living and house prices? #60Mins

— Floss The Fangirl (@FlossAus) May 14, 2017

But… why would Gurner, who is just trying to be helpful, overlook these statistics?

Perhaps it’s because Gurner’s job is literally to sell us overpriced property. Just a hunch.

But young people, put DOWN your $4 coffee. Because in just 147 years, you’ll have enough to put a deposit down on an average home in Sydney. Quit your complaining, please. It’s just that easy.

Very humbled to be surrounded by such an incredible calibre of finalists at the national EY Entrepreneur Awards last night where Tim Gurner won the National Final of ‘EY Entrepreneur of the Year’ in the emerging category. What a way to cap off what has been an incredibly challenging yet rewarding year – thank you to everyone who has and is sharing the journey with us.

A post shared by GURNER_TM (@gurner_tm) on Oct 20, 2016 at 8:38pm PDT

And spit out your avocado, you greedy youth. Because if you forgo buying avocado on toast for $19 once a week for breakfast (where the f*ck is charging that much?), you’ll have enough to put a deposit down on an average home in Sydney in just 212 years.

Yep, Gurner became a multi, multi, multi millionaire, by choosing work over the morning cafe run.

Oh… and also he was gifted $34, 000 by his grandfather to give him a bit of a kick start. In coffeenomics, that’s 23 years worth of $4 coffees.

@60Mins I’d tell people to start saving too if I had a loan of 34K to help me get my half a billion. But I don’t, so I can’t.

— Josh Fox (@JoshTFox) May 14, 2017

What Gurner did last night, by using the platform of 60 Minutes to blame our morning lattes, and possibly a seeded tasty, not to mention nutritious fruit, was the ultimate act of gaslighting.

Gaslighting is a social phenomenon which is a way of manipulating someone by psychological means into doubting their own sanity.

The property market isn’t mad, Gurner insists. We are.

Of course you can’t afford a home when, in his words, “…you’re spending $40 a day on smashed avocado and coffees and not working,” but that doesn’t at all represent the average life of a millennial in Australia.

Listen to the latest episode of Mamamia Out Loud, below. Post continues after audio. 

Nor do Bentleys or BMWs.

Sure, we might travel more than our predecessors. But that has less to do with our luxurious lifestyles, and more to do with the fact that travel is more affordable than ever before.

Gen Ys don't think anyone before us was gifted a home as a rite of passage. We know our parents and grandparents worked bloody hard for it. We know there were sacrifices, because we know, fundamentally, how money works.

But what we don't need is a property mogul, who had a head start most of us can't even imagine, telling us to stop drinking coffee.

Some industries, property being one of them, will place you on the Business Review Weekly’s 2016 Rich List.

Other industries - teaching, nursing, child care, waitressing, aged care, administration, the list goes on - will not. No matter how many coffees you go without.

Gurner sounded about as out of touch as the Marie Antoinette mythically declaring, "Let them eat cake!"

Except Gurner won't even give us that.

We shall not only go without a home, but according to him, we must also go without coffee.