Hi all.

This may seem like a very blunt and crude question, but.......

Here in blighty we have a nice 3 bed detached, 2 kids and two reasonably new cars. We usually manage to get away on holiday twice a year. Folk on here always discuss the standard of living and the comparision between house prices, food bills, fuel bills etc. My simple question is this....?

Can anyone throw a rough ball park figure at what we need to be earning, as a couple, to have a comparable lifestyle in Canada? Money isn't everything I know, but we sure don't want to be moving over to find we are living from hand to mouth.

Thanks. Chris H

As a very rough guide, you need to be earning a direct conversion between £ and $ i.e. if you're on £30K, then you need $60k etc....

So many other factors at play though, impossible to answer easily - location, equity you'd take over, etc etc....

Hi

Got this by email this morning seems to answer you question reasonably well. I cannot vouch for the accuracy but it seemed ok


What you would earn after taxes

Assuming you have a job paying you a salary of $60,000 per year and you were paid twice monthly (the normal method) then the table below will show your dedutions and the amount that you would receive twice per month, usually on the 1st and 15th of each month.


Employee's name Fred Smith
Employer's name Joe Bloggs Inc.
Pay period Semi-monthly (24 pay periods a year)
Pay period ending date 2008-07-31
Province of employment Alberta
Federal amount from TD1 Claim Code 1 (Minimum - 9,600.00) - This is the personal allowance for federal taxes
Provincial amount from TD1 Claim Code 1 (Minimum - 16,161.00) - This is the personal allowance for provincial taxes

Salary or wages for the pay period 2,500.00
Federal tax deductions 355.88
Provincial tax deductions 171.16
Total tax on income 527.04
CPP deductions 116.53
EI deductions 43.25

Total deductions on income 686.82
Net amount $1,813.18

This would be twice a month so MONTHLY INCOME $3,626.36

Here are some acronym solutions for you:

CPP is the Canada Pension Plan - this is the contribution for your statutory old age pension which is based on the amount of contributions you put into it.

EI is Employment Insurance - this is basically contributions so that once you have been working full-time for about 6 months in the event of redundancy, disability/maternity etc. you will receive benefits.

You can check out more tax stuff at the Canada Revenue Agency website below.


What would the household bills be for a typical home?

Depending on your circumstances you may have a mortgage. We will discuss mortgages in another newsletter but, for now, we will concentrate on the monthly bills for a typical 2 storey, double attached garage .


To start with you have the usual bills, gas (for heating and hot water), electricity, water and sewerage, TV and Internet, house insurance and property taxes.

Most of these can be paid on a budget system which means that the total yearly bill is estimated and then you pay a set amount each month. This avoids the typical huge bills in the winter months and miniscule bills in the summertime and makes it much easier to work out a budget.

Below are examples of the amounts that would probably be paid for this house on the budget plan where applicable (based on the amounts paid by our assistant who lives in Okotoks with two children):

Gas $108 (budget amt)
Electricity $105 (budget amt)
Water $70 (budget amt)
TV (full HD package), Internet
and phone $150
House Insurance $60
Property taxes $200

The gas price is based on the available price of gas. You can also sign up for fixed price contracts which will stop the price fluctuations that typify the Alberta market. Examples of the different plans can be found at the Direct Energy website below.

Water comes from the Town of Okotoks and is on a meter for incoming water and outgoing sewerage.
TV, Internet and digital phone can be installed by Shaw Cable. They have different plans at different prices. The above price is based on the full HD Cable service with movie channels. Plans can be more reasonable if you don't want / need 125 channels!!!!

Digital phone is a new introduction and plans can be had for around $59.95 a month (including 1000 minutes of long distance to the UK!!!!)


What other costs for a family

Obviously the other major cost is food and transportation. We will deal with transportation in a subsequent newsletter dealing with costs of running a car and public transportation. For now we will concentrate on food. The figures below are for a family of 4, two adults and two children (who eat as much as the adults!!!!)

Most grocery chains have a discount day (usually the first Tuesday in the month) where you can get a 10 or 15 percent discount. I find that if you plan to do your monthly shopping (i.e. laundry detergent, garbage bags, dishwasher liquid, etc.) on this day and stock up on non-perishable items then the other weeks you can just shop for fresh fruit and veg.

The first Tuesday of the month I would usually spend around $400. This include the monthly supply of detergent, meat which goes in the freezer, frozen items, etc. The only thing I shop for on a weekly basis is milk, fruit and veg.

The other weeks it would usually be below $100 for milk, bread, fruit and veg and stuff that we run out of and need before the next big shop.

Other miscellaneous costs would include cell phones, as little or as much as you would like, Alberta Health payments (but only until December 2008 and then the Province is scrapping the payments) and fees for recreation activities for the kids, i.e. soccer, dance, baseball, swimming.
EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY


Hope this gives you an Idea

Regards

Winston

did you sign up for something to get info like this emailed to you. would be interested. would it be possible for details.

thanks xx

This will sure give one an idea of what cost of living is like out there.

Be a bit careful then. Make sure of you're reasons for contemplating such a move considering your apparent comfortable circumstances right now. We're not too bad here because we don't need a mortgage otherwise we'd be struggling because of our low income and similar living costs to the UK.

The account from Okotoks looks reasonable enough assuming a semi or townhouse but there's nothing there about cars. Unless living in the centre of a big city one needs cars.

There are many existing threads on this topic. The most recent was last week sometime. There are many variables of course. At least one thread even has grocery receipts posted....

Hi
I have been geting a monthly emailed newsletter from Canilink Relocation for a few years now as we went through the immigration process. They cover a different topic every month and some are quite interesting. [email protected] is the address and you just register. I also get the Canada newspaper from outbound publishing it also containg useful stories and insights

Regards

Winston

thanks alot will take a look.

The article mentioned above is fine, but currently very limited in it's information because although it refers to mortgages and cars, those "will be discussed at another time" - and are substantial outgoings if you neither either or both !

I would agree with stepnek's post - do your homework (which I appreciate you are doing by posting a thread like this ).

And I'm not sure how the person in the article is feeding a family of four on about $700 a month. We certainly can't !

Children's activities in Calgary are not cheap. According to a woman with whom I caught the bus last year, her 12-year-old son's soccer registration cost $400+ per semester.

Edited to add, before anyone jumps on me, that I do realize children's soccier is much cheaper in most other places in Canada.
x

I spend around $1000pcm on food for a family of four and that includes getting meats directly from a farm (cheaper than supermarkets and with no additives). Also my annual heating oil statement has just come in at approx $3k.

That's about our monthly bill, but, the combined age of 2 of our family of 4 is still only 7, and we mostly shop at the local "No Frills", which as you can imagine is not exactly the most expensive place in town.

That doesnt count the cat population of our household either...I'm deemed dispensable enough to be fed cheap food, but they aren't, so that's another hundred a month

With heating oil already up at $1.37 a liter, our monthly budget plan is set at $300 a month (over ten months) to cover next winters demand. Bloody Scarey.

Yeah, our plan was based on $0.85 a litre last year and we paid $3k, the price here when I checked yesterday was $1.21. Quick calculation says the same oil will cost me $4,200 this year...

I'm installed a wood stove in September to try to ease the oil bills.