Sydney can be okay financially, but it's definitely not optimal. But it's a nice enough city and I have my friends and family here, plus a good research group for my interests, located in a nice suburb.

Post-docs make okay money here, so I'm on 51.6k after tax and my 7.5k "tithe" (75k gross salary), and the uni pays 16% superannuation.[1] My living expenses are $500 a week, so I should have roughly 25k per year savings. I've only done three months on this salary and I'm on schedule, but we'll see whether I fall to the common spending traps.

I do spend a lot of time working, but I live 5 minutes walk from the office and the hours are flexible, so it's manageable. In an average day I'll spend 6 or 7 hours in the office, and then 2 or 3 hours at night.

I consider myself lucky to have the skills and interests to pull off the "live-to-work" strategy. If I were interested in, say, writing novels instead of researching language technologies, the equation would be quite different.

[1] The university pays more super than is mandated, and all salaries are indexed to inflation. Our union is good.