Originally Posted by Dulciusexasperis

Everyone has their own reasons for wanting to move to another place. No one can know beforehand how they will adapt to that move. Anyone telling you it's a good idea or a bad idea is simply voicing their own perspective, with no way of knowing how you will adapt.

If someone moved from London to Edinburgh, no doubt it could be as easy or as difficult a move as moving to Canada. They are in fact culturally different and that is where, how any individual will adapt becomes unknowable.

Some people adapt easily to change and others not at all. Some people miss 'home' after being away on vacation for 5 days (I've personally heard people expressing that). There is only one way to know how you will react and that is by doing it. There is no way to know beforehand.

There is no good and bad or right and wrong in how you react, what is, is. I happen to be someone for whom the saying, 'home is where I hang my hat' is pretty much the way it is. In the last 25 years I have lived in 4 countries and in several different parts of some of those 4. A total of 7 'moves' of from 1 year to 7 years in each. I felt at home every time after an initial period of adjustment.

On the other hand, I have watched many people make a move and after 1 or 2 years, pack up and go 'home'. It just wasn't their cup of tea. They tried it, they didn't like it. It had NOTHING to do with where they moved to (unless it was some war torn country or something). It had everything to do with their individual ability to adapt and accept what is different.

So my advice is do what you want to do. Stories about this is better or that is worse are meaningless. Here is a personal observation re crime for example. On a visit to the UK, my brother was walking down a street right next to St. Andrews University in Scotland. He remarked to me that every car parked along the street had a locking bar on the steering wheel. He grew up and lived in Toronto and was amazed to see that. He had never seen anything like that in Toronto. His conclusion, 'there must be a lot of car thefts here'. The total opposite of what Dashie might say based on having had a car broken into in Canada. You cannot take one incident and draw a conclusion based on that alone.

There are countless numbers of people who would love to have the opportunity to do it and especially under the circumstances you describe re a willing employer etc.

Originally Posted by redharry08

Good afternoon,

My wife has been offered a transfer within her company to work in their Toronto office. She worked there for a month last September and loved it and now they are pushing to get her there permanent. I went to visit her and also loved the place so the offer is very tempting. But as you will have all experienced there are major pros and cons to consider. We are both doing well financially in steady jobs, have a mortgage, both have car finances (both fairly recent too), 2 cats to consider and we live a good life.
But the lure of Canada and what it has to offer, and with chances like this very rare we can't stop thinking about moving and worried we will live to regret it.

So please could I have some advice on the following please:

What do we do regarding our cars, we are both with Audi finance so is there anything that could be done with this?
If your wife's employer really want her to move, try raising this with them. It's not unheard of for an employer to cover the cost of breaking a lease; it may be more difficult if it's purchase finance rather than leasing. But you lose nothing by asking the question...

Is the cost of living as high as it seems? Our mortgage is only 3750 a month but rent looks like it's more than this?
Comparing rents to mortgages is a bit lopsided in the Toronto housing market right now. The dynamics are a little skewed, there are thousands of new condo units being built downtown, thousands of identikit houses being whacked up in the suburbs, and a bit of a bubble going on that may or may not "self-correct." Rather than comparing one country to the other, more sensible would be to look at proportion of income spent on housing. Rentals (depending on what you rent and where) may include some or all of the variable costs such as utilities, property taxes, cable, etc.

I will obviously be out of work, if my wife gets a job this gives me a pass into the country ( I think). what's the demand for Quantity Surveyors in Toronto?

There have been previous threads on this. I'm not sure a QS exists here in the same way it does in the UK; the "project estimator" role is taken on by different flavours of professionals, and the management accounting functions tend to reside within the finance group for large projects. I'm no expert, though: try searching the forum (assuming the search function's working again) for Quantity Surveyor Canada to pull up some of those discussions.

If your OH is here initially as an intra-company transferee on a Temporary Work Permit (TWP), you will presumably have a Spousal Open Work Permit (SOWP) which allows you to work for almost anyone. I like Bats' suggestion that you look for qualification-equivalency stuff, too.

Is moving there worth the upheaval and giving up our lives in the UK for? Please give me some good points that makes Toronto and Canada better than the UK.

As others have said, it's not that Toronto is especially better than the UK. It's not, frankly, all that different. But if you have the opportunity, and you'll not be any worse off for taking it, then you may as well not give yourselves an excuse to look back later in life and regret not having tried...

I really will appreciate any advice I receive, we really can't make a decision so it'll be nice to hear from those that have made the plunge.

Kind Regards

Harry.

Originally Posted by redharry08

I will obviously be out of work, if my wife gets a job this gives me a pass into the country ( I think). what's the demand for Quantity Surveyors in Toronto?

Originally Posted by Oakvillian

As others have said, it's not that Toronto is especially better than the UK. It's not, frankly, all that different.

Originally Posted by MarylandNed

Similarly, Toronto is very different from various parts of Canada.

Originally Posted by MarylandNed

That's a very subjective issue that can have some people agreeing and others disagreeing with you to varying degrees. It really depends on a lot of factors e.g. where you moved from, what your lifestyle was like, your personality, your interests and hobbies, political beliefs, religious beliefs, etc. If things like climate, geography, multiculturalism, etc are important to you, you can have debates about how similar Toronto (or Canada in general) really is to the UK.

Also, can you really compare a foreign city with the UK which is an entire country? There are parts of the UK that are very different from each other. Similarly, Toronto is very different from various parts of Canada.

Originally Posted by Dulciusexasperis

It's a good point to bring up property tax. It can indeed vary a great deal and without providing any signifigant difference in the services you get for your money.

Property tax is assessed based on your home value and the number of people and businesses who are paying in to the 'pot' of money that buys you the services you want. ie. garbage pickup, snow removal, street lighting, etc. etc. The more there are paying in, the lower the cost per $100k of property you own. Pretty simple really.

It's not about complaining about paying, it's about being able to get the same for less cost elsewhere. The cost is justifiable but that doesn't make it less of a cost.

Buy in one area and your property tax might be $3k per year while in another area it is $6k per year for the same services. Unlike your house cost which is an investment (reasonable to expect that the value will increase over the long term), property taxes are purely a cost. That money is gone.

So it is always wise to look at what the property taxes are when comparing two otherwise comparable houses in different areas.

Originally Posted by Oakvillian

The OH is mid-30s, professional, living in Manchester. I was answering his specific question, and I even kept my response inline with the quote you have pulled it from. He has acknowledged in a previous post that there's no really strong pull to Canada in general or Toronto in particular. As an urban environment for a youngish DINK professional couple with an acknowledged liking for "America", I don't think Toronto would be a huge cultural upheaval. In that specific regard, Toronto is not, frankly, all that different to the UK.

Why pull the one sentence out of context and take issue with it?

Originally Posted by MarylandNed

My wife and I also moved from Manchester to Toronto. We were also a young DINK couple. I thought there was a pretty big difference between our life in Canada and the one we had in the UK. Like I said, it's a subjective thing.

Originally Posted by redharry08

I just wish I could take my beloved Man United over with me!

Originally Posted by SchnookoLoly

If it helps, my husband is also a football fan - die-hard Arsenal since he was a kid. He finds it way easier to watch games here! The 3pm kickoff games are actually aired, and then he can watch them at 10am which is a bit less anti-social in terms of doing things on a weekend! So he's finding he's watching more football now that he's moved! :P