Re: Minimum wage-can you survive on it?
 

The 'thing',i have to call it that because i havent actually got it to turn yet on its own steam, will only generate enough power to reduce the consumption. I dont think it will ever be able to produce enough power to be self sufficient.

Re: Minimum wage-can you survive on it?
 

your property tax is huge, is it done by square footage:confused:

Re: Minimum wage-can you survive on it?
 

yikes $7200 pa property tax. You need to move.:ohmy:

Re: Minimum wage-can you survive on it?
 

So you still pay $60 a month for the privilege of having the option to draw power from the grid and pay off the Ontario Hydro debt run up building nuclear stations so they can sell the utility privately at some later point (or something).

Re: Minimum wage-can you survive on it?
 

Thats scarey...but its for a ranch/ business or something isnt it?

I pay $130 a month on my modest home.

Re: Minimum wage-can you survive on it?
 

It's for 32 acres in city limits - includes a residential dwelling and my business. Stings a bit, especially as we don't get garbage collection, or city sewerage.

Re: Minimum wage-can you survive on it?
 

Do you have farm status? We pay around $125 a month for our farm property, inside city limits. No garbage collection (we have a dumpster), no sewer, which is just as well as sewer charges are based on water consumption and we use lots for irrigation.

Re: Minimum wage-can you survive on it?
 

Oh yes, that includes our reduction for farm status :(

We have 2 irrigation licences to pay for too, plus metered water for the business, hydro for the irrigation pump etc etc.....the overheads are nasty.

Re: Minimum wage-can you survive on it?
 

Just looking through the various figures and thought i would post some myself.
We have managed to buy our house outright with no mortgage but still if you add all the expenses up we would be looking at around $1700 per month without going out and only having one car at present. If we have to get a second car then our monthly insurance and gas bill would probably double.

At present we do not have anywhere near these monthly expenses because we paid things like car insurance, house insurance and property tax outright for one year so i can take a lower paid job and get by no problem for a few months but certainly need to look for better paid work by next summer.

TV/Phone/Internet $125/month
Property tax $200/month
Gas $120/month estimate(haven't done the winter yet)
Electric $59/month
House/contents insurance $55/month
Car insurance $140/month (one car only)
Petrol/gas $300/month
Food groceries $600/month
B.C. Medical $106/month

Re: Minimum wage-can you survive on it?
 

yeah right :lol:not:lol:

Re: Minimum wage-can you survive on it?
 

Do you think $30000 ca is enough to live on comfortably say $14 p/h and jobs at that hourly rate are readily available

Re: Minimum wage-can you survive on it?
 

You can get by, but no spare cash for car breakdowns, holidays, meals out are saved up for

Actually I've already posted about $14/hour - didnt you see it?

Re: Minimum wage-can you survive on it?
 

I'd say it's possible but as has been said before by others don't expect lots of extras for that.
Actually i have been kind of offered a job at $15 an hour to start and i have said yes as we need to start getting some money coming in to help with bills. I say kind of because as nice as the guy is he forgot we were meeting and i had to phone to remind him then he said he would call tonight with the promise of going out with him tomorrow to see how things work and i haven't heard a thing yet.
Certainly there seem to be plenty of jobs with around that kind of wage depending upon what you want to do. The City council or whatever they are called often advertise on their website and they pay well, there was a job for an assistant at the local household tip and the pay scale was $19 an hour!!
Similarly Costco advertise for meat packers and say they pay up to $19.50 an hour. Wendy's on the other hand only offer $11.50 and you can tell that by the quality of the staff at my local takeout.:eek:

Re: Minimum wage-can you survive on it?
 

Firstly, hi guys; haven't been on here for a long time....busy down on the farm and all that! :) But hope everyone is doing well.


Jim,

I live fairly close to where you are looking to move to and the move I made has had me go through the whole range of emotions, financial ups and downs etc. We moved here in 2004 to start up a farming business. Came over with a tonne of money, bought the farm outright and all the vehicles, machinery, tractor, stock etc. We built barns and stables and had a lot of fencing put up. VERY expensive to do - much more than we had ever imagined. Now you may not be buying a farm therefore you may think that what I/we went through has no bearing, but life and living does. Money in Ontario just runs away with you. One minute you are very comfortable, the next it's flying out the door quicker than you are making it.

On minimum wage with no absolutely outgoings (apart from bills), would put you in the same category as us. I moved here with my daughter (husband remained in England for another year and a half running his business over there). So for a long time there was only me and my daughter to pay for.......however.......we also had 3 cats, 3 dogs and about 16 horses at the time. The first year we lived on UK money but then we decided not to bring any more money over and felt that the farm had to do its stuff on the earning front, mainly to see whether it was a viable business or not. We lived on $15,000 a year for the second year.....boy was that tough! VERY tough whatwith all those animals and vehicles to keep running. I would certainly never EVER want to go back to that.

The tail end of 2006 gave us a glimmer of hope.......none too soon either :unsure:. By Spring 2007 things were actually looking up and we were surviving not too badly. A number of good horse buys and selling easily and for fabulous profit margins, we managed to keep our heads above water. Summer 2007 - bingo! Everything slotted into place; business is doing pretty well; for a farm at any rate. By May in 2007 we had already turned over $50,000, about two thirds of that being clear profit and that includes husband moving out here and funding his wine enjoyment! Obviously I don't know what our figure will be by the year-end, but with a huge influx of new customers this month alone and with none of the existing customers having left (or with any intention of leaving), it has to look fairly decent. However for us winter is our expensive time therefore our profit margins dwindle somewhat during this period.

Our hydro is roughly $150 per month - this services the house (including the air conditioning and the swimming pool) and the whole of the farm.

Our property taxes obviously are very low as we are on farm status which works out at 75% less than residential taxes. Ours are around $1,200 per year.

Water and sewerage - we have our own therefore no cost.

Garbage collection once a week, roads plowed every day there's snow is included in our taxes.

Oil for heating costs us about $2,000 per winter nowadays, although the first winter when we had plenty of cash it was more than double this figure. Turning our thermostat down to 22 degrees made a massive difference to our heating costs.

I'm not sure where the person who is commenting on the "low income" subsidies is getting their information from, and I am in no way saying they are not correct, but I certainly didn't get them. That second year when I was really poor, I received $150 winter fuel allowance and that was it. I do now receive the child benefit (or whatever the name for it is) but that's not exactly going to keep you afloat.

Anyway, I digress, I would agree with those who have said yes you can survive on that amount of money.....but I honestly wouldn't advise even trying to. It is nothing more than a pitiful existence and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy (not that I have any enemies). One thing I will say though is this; your trade is much in demand around where I live (about 30 mins from Belleville) and no, none of the workmen that I know live on anywhere near minimum wage, therefore I think you should look at this as absolute worst case....and likely something that won't happen. There is always work here for skilled workmen and they do pay at least 3 times more than minimum wage, so I don't think that you will have any trouble picking up enough money to live on......but this is only what I think....so please do your research thoroughly.

Something you have going for you is that the Belleville area is reasonably cheap to buy property so you may find you have more available cash left over after buying your property; but don't rely too heavily on this and try to find work as soon as you can. You might be best to buy property in the Belleville area but try to seek work up in my area - property prices have more than doubled up here in just a couple of years. Our farm has just been valued and the figure we have been given (a conservative figure at that) is almost treble what we paid for it at the beginning of 2004. Of course that means absolutely nothing unless we sold, which we won't be doing in a hurry.

Finally, try not to squander money, because once it's gone it's very difficult to build your reserves back up again.

Very very best of luck to you.
Tia

Re: Minimum wage-can you survive on it?
 

Excellent advice, if it wasn't for my Wife I would be driving a $65k Toyota Tundra truck and have a 52" TV in the front room.

Keep some money stashed away 'just in case'..