1066

Thank you - that has made me feel a lot better about things

We do not have a house to sell, but I think that we can manage to survive providing I can find a job very quickly!!

AnyaT

I’m beginning to understand why people give up offering advice here and disappear. For the record, I am not a “big budget,high rollin,fat wallet Torontoite,” but a Nova Scotian born and raised who moved here for work. I have a good idea of how much it costs to live in NS, though I admit my knowledge and advice was based on the Halifax area and not the rural parts of the province. I still maintain that $20,000 is not enough to maintain anything but a poverty-line existence, even in rural NS, especially if one has to pay rent or a mortgage. I do not understand why one would move to a new country knowing they would have to eke out a life on the barest minimum wage without any of the supports they have in their homeland. Expecting a salary cut, yes, but why go somewhere to work in retail on $13,000/year? It just seems to me this sort of situation is most likely to end up as we often have seen on this board, the would-be immigrant returning home bitter and disillusioned.

tim hortons man

What would that be before tax? I've been gone 7 years and have lost track of tax rates etc, and realistically the only rate that matters is the take home.

One thing that would help the budget is having an apartment not a house as most have stated it includes utilities. I'm guessing that you would take home about 2000 a month.

Not true the more you earn the more you spend, a recent study (British I think) pointed out that it was higher income earners not those on low wages that had the most financial problems, the reason is simple, the more you earn the more debt you can take on. I speak from bad experience.

For those of you who live on (much) less than 40000 a year with kids how do you do it?

babyblue

I will disagree with you to a point!

I came to canada with my eyes open. I knew it would be tough financially and that i would have to wait my time until i could reach for better things. It has been extremely difficult but i do it. I do not starve nor am i homeless.
I live on the poverty line existance (as you call it).
Many people arrive in canada with nothing, not even a job to go to. Many from the maritime's working in MCdDonald's or anywhere to get a buck!
Nobody can expect to walk in and have everything handed on a plate. Many of us from the UK know what i mean. There are many immigrants that come to Canada or the Uk and do the crappiest of jobs in order to get by whilst they struggle to get recognition for skills etc..

I am a nanny working with special needs. I should be paid at least three times what i get as no Canadian would do this job for less.Because they know what it entails. But for the family it is a cheaper option to bring in the foreign worker!
I will get better work and i will look back upon my experience with my head held high. Knowing i stuck it out for the sake of bread on the table!
It is all about how you class wealth!
I am healthy, well fed, have a home and friends. maybe to others wealth means other things but everyone are different.
Sometimes, the happiest of people have 'NOTHING' in a materialistic world.
You say "why go somewhere to work in retail on $13,000/year?" but surly even this is better than no job at all.
If you can get a well paid job then great for you but not everyone has these opportunities. when coming from Nova Scotia you don't really come up against the immigration that many of us are faced with.
This is not a personal attack just a simple observation and reply to the post.
I do agree that you cannot arrive here with high expectations at first. This is unrealistic. You have to be prepared for pitfalls and many of them before all starts to take its place.Never expect too much because this when people become disillusioned.
had to have my say!

wizzard

I guess in the end you have to decide how much you want to live in Canada. Are you getting a job to facilitate living in Canada or are you living in Canada to facilitte getting a job?

When I first moved over here about 3 years ago I took a job for $9/hour just to get a job and my wife earned about the same. So together we were around $40K or just under before taxes. We lived jusr north of Toronto and I commuted to toronto for my job while my wife worked locally. We didn't have the expense of any children and we didn't, and still don't have a car. However we could afford rent in a cheap but modest place for $750/month inclusive (that's outside Toronto, in the city it's self rents are more) and I had the expense of GO Train tickets and TTC but we coudl still manage to go out for dinner and have cable TV and buy DVDs and have a couple of computers and that kind of thing. Nothing extravagent and often you are counting downt o your last dollar but in my case it eas a means to an end. My wife was Canadian and I wanted to live in Canada and reality dictates you need a job to do that.

I have a university degree and all through university before I met my wife and decided to move to Canada I had illusions of walking into high paying graduate jobs, but in the end you have to pick a place to start. My thinking was that a $9.hr job in a supermarket office was better than a $0/hr job sitting at home and I was working in the Canadian economy and getting work experience adn it was the lowest I was ever going to earn so the only way from there is up. As long as you have the skills and abilities you will be able to make things work. So yes it was tough for a while but now 3 years later I managed to work my way to a better job in the same company, nothing flashy but it' more challenging and pays twice as much as when I started and my wife changed jobs and did the same and now our household income has gone from just under $40,000 to just under $80,000.

Now what someone said earlier is true, as you earn more you spend more. We don't live in the same $750/month small out of town apartment and save $40,000 a year. Which probably would have been an interesting exercise and I'd have $100,000 in savings by now but I'd be fairly depressed, hehe. We moved to the city and rented downtown and our rent almost doubled but we went from a 2 hour expensive GO commute to a 30 minute slightly cheaper TTC commute and moved into a much nicer apartment. We saved for a while and just bought our first house which we are moving into in a month or so, still in Toronto. We still don't have a car whihc doesn't bother my wife as she doesn't drive but frustrates me because I love driving but it's just too expensive currently. We can afford now to buy new furniture instead of getting family hand downs and all that kind of stuff.

So what I am saying is that just because you take a job that oays $20,000 or $30,000 or whatever when you move here doesn't mean that you will be earning that amoutn of money forever. You have to accept you are a foreigner in a new country with no experience working in the new country and just like moving to a new city or new school or new anything it takes time to adjust and fit in. Lucky if you can walk into a high paying job straight off the bat, not sure personally I'd want that much responsibility in a new country and job before I'd gotten settled in and figured it all out but if you have to start at the bottom again so what. Just do it and get on with it and if you really have all the experience and skills and so forth then opertunities will arise and you will excel at the simple jobs and move into better jobs. It adds things to your resume so you can list all your recent work experience as being in Canada and you can network and meet people and basically get yourself right into the middle of the job market rather than waiting at home for the dream job that pays what you think you deserve spending all your savings and getting depressed. Id rather have taken the $9/hr job and worked and gained experience to end up at an $18.hr job a couple of years later than sit at home waiting for someone to offer me an $18/hr job to leave the house. I know $18/hr isn't much, especially if you earned say 50K in the UK and have mentally calculated that to mean that anything less than $100K a year ($48/hr) is below you but it pays the bills and makes it much easier to apply for and get higher paying jobs in the future.
I think everyeon needs to slow down and realise you are building a new life and not to expect one to be pre made for you with a house high paying job two cars and a cottage and all you do is fly over and step into it and get everything. Happens to some people but it's not the rule. Emigrating is difficult and expensive and hard ork and you have to be prepared to work at it and build that new life, from scratch if need be, if you really want to live and be part of a new country, rather than just upgrading the house and car etc.

Drew

nfitz

When I moved to Toronto a couple of years ago from Kitchener-Waterloo I found Toronto rents were a bit higher ... but my partner was moving from Missisauga to join me, and we found that cheaper rents in the downtown core then we could ever find in Mississauga. I could quite easily be paying more rent than I am ... and what some landlords were asking was crazy; but the market is supply and demand, and with cheap interest rates for the past few years, the supply of renters is down, vacancies are up, and rents have dropped (you should here my landlord moan about how much easier it was to rent things out a few years ago!). Yes out in the suburbs - well Mississauga at least - vacancies seemed a lot lower, making it harder to find decent rents. I'd guess that if rent has doubled, it is because one turned down, or didn't look at cheaper options, and cheaper neighbourhoods. And yes spending does increase with income ... we are in a much bigger house than we need - because we both felt that the extra space was better for the relationship; so we are two of us in a 3-bedroom house (no basement) for only $1350 ... now we could have gone a lot smaller and saved money, but on the other hand we are on a busy street, with a streetcar (tram) out front, which rattles the house about every 90 seconds.

Nick

babyblue

Well, finally!
someone who sees things as the are and not through rose tinted specs. I glad you posted this too. If you read my post you will see i am in pretty much the same sittuation as you were. I have faith and i believe that although i have been put through alot of crap since i have been here, I will reep the rewards in the end. I could not agree more with what you are saying. Some people need to pull their heads out and see the reality of it all.
If you refused the $9 an hour job, where would you be now?

I know a better job will not find me but at least it gives you time to adjust and find your feet. Sort out qualifications etc.
Good luck in all you do! It sounds as if you came with the right attitude.
The world owes nobody anything. We have to take pride and place it behind us for a while in order to build foundations or bigger better things.
take care

dbd33

I have to say that I baffled by the idea that someone could see sufficient merit in Toronto to want to be poor here. I was prepared to be poor I could be poor somewhere interesting like London or Paris or somewhere warm. Moving to a place, such as Toronto, that's a bit of a backwater and ugly to boot, only makes sense if it means being able to buy more stuff.

(Note that I define "stuff" loosely, being in Toronto allows me to support five women spread across two households and to pay tuition for three of them, rather than allowing me two Jags.)

nfitz

Fifth largest English-speaking city on the planet (well, not counting India I suppose) ... I'm not sure that makes it a backwater. Doesn't strike me as a backwater, or ugly. It's got it's quirks, sure. But unlike Paris or London we don't have rioting in the streets! Besides, it's an easier city to be poor in than many others in Ontario. You CAN find cheap housing in core urban areas. You don't need a car unlike most Ontario cities. There are beaches within walking distance. Lots of city pools and libraries. Good restaurants, and not expensive. I've spend time in major cities, with a lot worse areas than I've ever seen in Toronto (Chicago, Detroit, even Vancouver!)

Nick

nivlad

I am a post-doc in Guelph on 35K, it is hard to make ends meet and we don't have a mortgage. We too have two children one and school and one at part-time daycare. When you add up all the bills etc we over spend by about $200 each month. And we aren't in Toronto!! Canada does not pay much for post-docs, I took a 15K pay cut to come back overhere.

nfitz

Do you have car? How much does daycare cost a month?

Nick

ezvanetree

I discussed the issue of children attending school while parents are on refugee/visitor/student etc visas with my Canadian immigration officer sister a while ago. While it was true that kids need to be PR before getting free school, there was a court case about this issue recently and it was deemed a violation of the child's rights if it couldn't be educated because of its parent's immigration status. So now any child can be educated in the Canadian school system free of charge if the parents are living in Canada.

(This applies even to families who are going on around the world trips via boat--they dock their boats on the coast of Vancouver, take a breather from their travels, and send their children to local schools. So I think threadstarter's five year old will be more than welcome in the local school.)

nivlad

yep we have a very rusty 1992 oldsmobile that cost $400. Daycare, 2.5days a week come to ca $300 per month

Woodstock62

So are you saying that if a family are living in Canada on a work permit their children don't have to pay international school fees? We have 2 children who we would want to put in school and the thought of the fees worries me.

Thanks

ezvanetree

Please Please don't take my word for it 100%!! I had one conversation with my sister about this when I talked to her about an English friend who wanted to move to Canada with her two children--it was a casual phone conversation and, because my friend changed her mind, I didn't push for further details. This is, obviously, a serious issue and must be checked out thoroughly--I suggest that information, however, might be difficult to come by because this issue would deal with overlapping government departments who will probably give vastly different information. It certainly warrants a call/email to Immigration Canada as a first step. I really hope I am not leading you astray, but I will blame my sister if I am!