Older People Are Losing Their Life Savings to Family Members

* the article is about financial pressures of younger Australians, this is a real problem.

* An example of that is this story of an older person handing over life savings to a younger family member to build a granny flat, the implication, to my eye at least, isn't that the budget was insufficient rather the family member didn't carry through on the promise due to issues they had, likely their own financial pressures leading to money being bled off and a lack of time to carry through.

* and commonly most elderly people and their families don't have metalworking and foundation and plumbing and electrical experience.

What do you consider elderly? I'm at retirement age ion Australia and I was born in a time when the demographics skewed non-urban .. most Australians of that time had rural experience which means most Australians of that era had exposure to hands on dirty work .. they might go to Uni to study Law but they still have hands on experience digging a trench and helping out building a brick wall, paving, etc.

Again, it's not a case of skill shortage in the elderly ... it was a presumably younger Australian that likely lacked the skills to carry through and additional pressures that likely caused them to skim the budget despite best intentions.

Again, an insulated prefab kit shed variation modified to be habitable should cost less than AU $70K assembled .. the last shed I had built had the right footprint but was bare bones (no plumbing, no electrics, no insulation, no fridges, etc) and was AU $10K mostly built by others (my father, born 1935, did the ground work and form work for me as I was out of the country at the time) - I just funded materials and additional labour.

Currently I live in a rural West Australian town with a median age of 64 (half the town 64 or under, the half 64 or older) most people stay active into their 80s and many have hobbies such as raising sheep, miniature donkeys, maintaining vintage cars, building rat-trucks, fire and rescue services, etc.

In the past five years I've helped build (no charge, it's a friend of a friend thing) four habitable "granny flats" - single occupant outhouses on existing land with other houses - these have been revamped tool barns, fresh builds, "lean-to" extensions, etc. - all have come in under $50K total.

I have a background in pure applied math, traveled for work (geophysical exploration and mapping) to two thirds of the worlds countries (although some them only count as multiple entries in a survey aircraft flipping about while doing survey lines in a primary country), have some million SLOC of mapping and geophysical code behind me in addition to some funky abstract symbolic algebra coding on the CAYLEY|MAGMA system and other stuff, and paid my way through university working in mining companies (labouring, Haul Pak driving, etc) and cattle stations (mustering, etc).

I know a great many Australians my age with similar capabilities.

You may have read a little Greg Egan, for example.