Re: Minimum wage-can you survive on it?
 

I think in order to determine if this is do-able or not we have to determine what some of us deem a "reasonably comfortable lifestyle" to be.

$90,000 a year two kids, two adults, two cars, two pets, no mortgage, very do-able in my books.

Re: Minimum wage-can you survive on it?
 

90k with no mortgage should be well comfortable regardless, unless you are in a gated community with astronomic taxes and property maintainance costs.

Two kids = two college funds, so that could be 5-10k a year from your net income off the top right there if you are being responsible and planing for the future. Another 5-10k in retirement funds would be a good idea too.

45k gross with two kids would be hard going, even mortgage free, no doubt in my mind.

Child care costs are a consideration here too if both parents are working, unless you can get lucky and work opposite shifts (lucky financially, probably not good for a relationship though long term). Remember, there are no grandparents or family to take care of the kids when you move thousands of miles away. Even when they are school age, someone has to be there to meet them from the bus until they are ten or twelve or whatever it is. If you are both working, then thats basically a daycare type deal to pay for every day.

Re: Minimum wage-can you survive on it?
 

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh mortgage free. <punches self in face>

OK- 90k is a nice lifestyle.

45 is most certainly not.

Re: Minimum wage-can you survive on it?
 

put simply, wahtever it cost you in the UK, double it, place dollar sign before figure and subtract 20%

Re: Minimum wage-can you survive on it?
 

why would you subtract 20%?

Re: Minimum wage-can you survive on it?
 

I am intending to buy 1 old ford explorer 1 old pick up the cheaper the better. have a chicken or two for eggs and grow as much fruit and veg as possible. Over here i survive with a mortgage on between 19 & 20k just. so going by your guide I would say I can survive on between 30 and 40K dollars.

Re: Minimum wage-can you survive on it?
 

Ive just sold a Ford Explorer. 13 miles to the gallon is not the way to go!

I find life much cheaper here. When I hear what people in the UK are paying for utilities and public transport just as an example I am very grateful to be where I am.

Re: Minimum wage-can you survive on it?
 

E.G. my average electricity bill over the year is about $60 a month and that is for everything, cooking, heating water, clothes drying, some heating etc. No gas bill. Unbelievable value and just one of the ways in which life is easier here.

Re: Minimum wage-can you survive on it?
 

In contrast, In Ontario I pay on average $120 for hydro and $150 for oil to do the same thing in our 12-1500sq ft family palace. Bloody kids...diaper laundry is killing me for hot water and drying I think, that and the fact that MrsK is at home all day heating/ cooling the house.

I think my experience more typical than yours.

Re: Minimum wage-can you survive on it?
 

Thats not my experience. For most things I would say multiply by 2. In UK I paid about GBP150 per month in Council Tax, Property tax here equates to about $300 per month; used to pay GBP100 per week for groceries, here pay aout $200; used to pay about GBP80 per month for car insurance, here pay about $150 etc. etc.

Some thinks (like property, at least in NS, are much cheaper) but then other things like air travel, electrical goods etc seem to cost the same the world over. In the vast majority of categories I would say multiply by 2 to get the cost in dollars.

Re: Minimum wage-can you survive on it?
 

There seems to be a dramatic difference between province. BC and Ab i would expect to have cheaper oil and gas, however moving back to the person in Quinte region which i think is the area closer to were we would like to settle (belleville,prince edward county) it seems to double.And it does look as expensive as Britain, however we would £600 ($1200) better off being mortgage free.

Re: Minimum wage-can you survive on it?
 

I think its more to do with lifestyle and the efficiency of your home than entirely regional. Most of AB is brand new it seems...no one wanted to live there until it got rich:) Having said that ontario hydro (hydro one) are well known rip off merchants...of that $120 for electricity, only about half of that is paying for electricity used, the rest is bogus bullshit charges that you cant avoid, and my oil costs are perhpas a little higher than average as I have an oil fired water heater, and use a lot of hot water for the daiper wash.

Re: Minimum wage-can you survive on it?
 

i am in the middle of building a wind turbine. So hopefully i wont have to use them. Thats if i can get it to work.

Re: Minimum wage-can you survive on it?
 

I was talking to a guy at the weekend who lives entirely off the grid....he was moaning about the crap US wind generators and saying how much better the chinese ones were.

The Chinese made generators would supply 1kW at 9m/s air speed and had magnetic bearings. That contrasted with what the current north american generators needed, about 20m/s!. His biggest issue though was storage capacity, but it was just him living there and he only needed 1kW capacity.

He had about $15-20k of equipment in all for his 1kw peak demand, It would take a hefty investment to make a home for a growing family entirely self sufficient, you are not going to run central air off that sort of system.

Re: Minimum wage-can you survive on it?
 

That's closer to my experience. Some examples....

Property tax = $620 p/mth
Groceries = $150 p/wk
Car insurance = $120 p/mth
Furnace Gas = $100 p/mth
Hydro = $75 p/mth
Home telephone = $100 p/mth