hudd

Andyg

£650 net per week is very good money in Canada. When I worked in Ontario 2years ago, that sort of take home pay was what my VP(Director) took home.

I took home £500/wk then and had a reasonable good life, but looked after what we did and spent to balance the books. With no mortgage you should have a good standard of living as long as your not looking to live and work in down town in a city.

For us we found very little difference in costs of living in Canada than the UK. Just found my salaries were much lower than I can make back in the UK.

I enclosed a link to Purchasing Power Parity. If you look at the link you need on average 93% of you UK income to have similar buying power in Canada.

From my experience I would agree with PPP. As said in a previous post property tax can be 3.5 highier Ontario for same value home as the UK. Its bigger, so heating and electricity consumption will be higher. So costs we found evened themselves out.

I recommended and have told Brits that they should am for a net income double of that they made in the UK. I found It very differcult on half my UK salary when I first moved to Canada.

Good luck with you move

Hudd

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...%29_per_capita

bazzz

We earn about that much between us, live downtown and pay rent, and still manage a very nice life.

live to ski

It's hard to compare exactly, especially if you are using variable exchange rates. Some things cost "more", others "less" than the UK.

We live downtown Vancouver (although renting), have a very comfortable lifestyle. Years of university for me, and being a tight northern for Mr L2S mean that we are naturally careful with money, but I still feel like I buy what I want each month (within reason), have a far better standard of living than if we were in the UK, and we still manage to save a fair amount each month which is something I doubt we could do living a comparable lifestyle in the UK in say Leeds or Manchester, and defiantely not London (but don't get me into the low rates of interest here.......)

startwin

Really? Wonder how the heck I've managed all these years, then. I guess I didn't know I was poor, shouldn't have taken all those vacations - better cancel next year's cruise, LOL! (NOT!)

dingbat

When did you buy your house then? I am guessing you aren't sitting on a $350,000 mortgage on crap wages, with little or no job security. Things have changed from the days when you emigrated and bought a house for peanuts, but still earned a good-for-the-day wage. Families do struggle - and struggle badly. I cut more emergency cheques for groceries now than I ever did.

http://www.povnet.org/node/2272

kastan

I noticed someone said property tax is 3.5 times more expensive than uk.We live in B.C,and our tax is less than half we used to pay,and the house is 3 times the size of our old house in uk.

hudd

I notice reading this forum there seems to be a large difference in cost across Canada, I only lived in Alberta and Ontario and have noted that costs such as property tax, insurances, utilities are can be significantly different from one Province to another.
We found property tax was 2.5 to 3.5 higher on a $:£ ratio which I think was posted. Our Ontario farmhouse was not much bigger than the Edwardian house we had owned in Suffolk. Our farm house(no farmland) was $3600 whereas the house in Suffolk is £1200(checked current rates).

Also found property taxes and other costs higher in rural Canada, especially when you look at local wages. Houses were cheap, but expensive to own and did not gain much in value compared to houses in urban Canada.

hudd

startwin

Yes we did buy our house years ago - but my kids bought theirs in recent times and they haven't needed grocery vouchers. Not sure what your point is in asking when I bought my house. There are poor people in both countries, but to make a blanket statement that EVERYONE in Canada is struggling in comparison to the UK is just plain misleading. If you have crap wages, you are not likely to get a $350,000 mortgage, either. Just because the poster said his/her family is struggling in Canada does not mean every family is struggling in Canada, and it is ridiculous to imply such a thing.

MarkG

Yeah, when I start work we'll be earning a bit more than that between us, and right now we're wondering what we'll do with all the money. Of course we don't have a $350,000 mortgage, though we're aiming to pay off the one we do have in 5-10 years.

With kids it might be problematic, but our basic living costs for two people including the mortgage are only around $500 a week. Though that doesn't include a second car, irregular house maintenance bills (new furnace or whatever) or unexpected medical bills.

Either way, we're not exactly going to be struggling even though I'm taking a 25% pay cut compared to my old job in the UK.

Danny B

Your kidding right? I wish to God I was earning $200k pa in Kamloops.

MarkG

Presumably they mean twice as much in dollars as they were earning in pounds? Unless you were on 100k in the UK .

hudd

Yes I meant double in dollars. i.e £30k salary in UK should aim for $60k in Canada.

hudd

MarkG

I suspect a lot depends on accommodation costs; in the UK I was paying slightly more to rent a 'studio flat' (aka log cabin) than we now pay for the mortgage on a three-bed house. We've actually saved about $800 a month on our rent bills by moving in here together, minus some bills and property tax which were previously included in the rents.

hudd

MarkG

We always found our rents have been higher than our mortgage payments. The last two homes we owned we put 50%-70% deposit down, whereas renting a houses we seemed to have paid someone 2nd mortgage.

I know when we buy another house again in UK I expect to pay 50% less on mortgage payments than our current monthly rental charges. Renting at present allows us to be flexible where I can work in the UK, so we keep renting.

hudd

dingbat

Where, precisely, did I say that everyone in Canada was struggling? There are more people on the poverty line in BC, than there ever were, and that is the reason workers cut more and more grocery cheques. I can't ignore the increasing numbers of families turning up and putting their kids into care, just because they are homeless. Being poor is not a child protection issue, but not feeding your kids because you have no money can become one. Four years ago I cut one cheque maybe every month or so. Now I am doing about two a week. It is not a blanket statement, it is quantifiable fact.

I gave you one link to a site with an abundance of supporting information, there are many more. If you emigrated now, and had to struggle the way many people do these days, I wonder if you would have the same view. People who came here years ago might not see and experience what the more recent immigrants do. I doubt recent immigrants bother to post on here and lie about their struggles, just to annoy those who blindly ignore facts because they have not personally experienced the issues raised.

Years ago, as a new immigrant your qualifications weren't questioned or denigrated much. If you came from the UK, you were pretty much set in terms of transferability. Years ago salaries roughly matched the cost of living. Years ago there was not so much competition for jobs or competition and waitlists for affordable housing.

Of course there are poor people everywhere. That would be a blanket statement I would agree with.