i've been offered a $80k salary in Toronto, but i already earn £39k in the UK.

would it be fair to say this is the same salary.
I am also looking to purchase a house at $357k, with a 20% deposit, leaving a mortgage for $285k. is this possible on my earnings.
Also, what can i expect my living costs to be with a house.

Any advise of help would be appreciated

Alison

So many intangibles its hard to say. 80k probably goes a bit further than £40k, but not much.

I'd be wary of a 285k mortgage on $80k gross salary...how many years is that amortized over...monthly payments would be what 1700 a month?!!!! Thats nuts. LOL, I guess Im used to country living (and mortgage paymens!)


Additional costs would be

Property taxes: couple of hundred maybe
Hydro and Heating costs: Couple of Hundred again
Phone TV Internet: $100ish, less if you are frugal
Insurance: hundred a month ish

Maintainence etc....who knows, but you better budget for it.


So your fixed costs would be in the region of $2500, and you net income probably around 4700 a month.

$2k for car payments, groceries everything else...that seems doable I suppose if its just you.

Immigration should really be about the adventure and the challenge...right?

That's a bit low for the house price you mention. Rule of thumb here is banks will lend 3X annual salary, so you should be looking at no more than $240k+your $70k deposit = ~$310k total.

Second rule of thumb, property taxes are about 1% of the house price, so ~$3k a year, $250 per month for what you should be looking at. It'd still be tight, but doable if you don't have kids.

talking of adventure and challenge, excuse the odd swear word
http://xkcd.com/308/

I thought the costs of living in Canada were lower then in the UK??????

Dont know why you thought that.

35°C summers and -30°C Winters, and a relatively small market for insurance, plus the logisitical cost of such a vast area all push costs up. The cost of eating out and touristy stuff is a lot lower than the UK, but "real life" is broadly comparable Im afraid, especially if you are paying the premium to live in a major city.

The only things that are really cheaper are property costs outside the big cities, and the cost to buy some white goods, appliances, new cars etc... you know, the stuff thats typically a rip off in rip off britain.

Oh thats funny. Nah, heating/cooling much more expensive because you need more of it. Property taxes probably on a par, groceries variously more or less expensive depending on what you are buying & where you are, wine more expensive, eating out cheaper, cars moreorless on par etc etc.

It's a completely different experience living in Canada and earning Canadian, paying Canadian taxes etc than visiting from UK and spending GBP.

To the OP .... would you consider a GBP142k mortgage on your GBP39k Salary? (So roughly GBP900 a month in mortgage costs). If the answers yes then the Toronto salary/property deal might work. If no, then that should be a warning sign. At the end of the day it's all about risk tolerance and what sort of quality of life you want. I wouldn't move from where I am now (making less than $80k but with a mortgage roughly half of the one you are considering) to TO for that sort of salary/mortgage, even without any of the other factors of quality of life. (area, traffic, population, amenities, availability of decent beer etc etc.)

Yes, we have all of those in Toronto.

This begs an interesting question, perhaps even a poll.

What do most of us set our thermostats at for both heating and cooling if you have it? It can make a huge difference in your heating and cooling bills especially if you like it warm 72F (22C) or above.

We keep our house quite cool in comparison to others, heat is set at 66F (19C) during the day and 62F (16.5C) at night.

Cooling only added this year (August) so we are yet to get used to it but 70F (21C) seemed comfy.

Our cooling is generally set to 25 or 26°C...that sounds warm, but its the reduction in humidity that makes the biggest difference, and that is quite pleasant when it high 30s with humidex outside, without spining the hydro meter into an early break down.

Heating we set to 20 or 21, down to 17 or 18 at night. If you are cold, wear a sweater. Most of the worst part of the winter we try to have the woodfire insert going in the evening, and that keeps the thermostat at 26or 27, with the forced air fan on to spread the heat round. Thats well high enough to stop the oil furnace kicking in until the small hours after the fire has gone out. Usually its way too hot for a sweater if Ive bothered to bring wood in. Mosty of our oil bill is for heating water for endless kids laundry and baths.

Thread drift eh Steve?

We don't have cooling (not usually a problem here in the temperate East) but for heat generally set the thermostat for around 19C during the day and 15C during the night. We have 5 zone hot water radiation & the only zone that has a digital programmable timeclock is our bedroom. The rest of the house is the manual slider type versions so less accurate. Generally we have the basement at 15-16ish when we're not down there and turn it up if we are. The rest of the mainfloor is heated constantly but we do turn it down at night & when we head out for work during the day.

Dunno at all whether this is the most efficient & we average around $200 a month on fuel oil over the year but actually only need to refill the tank regularly from Oct-May. As an aside, why are Canadian heating oil tanks so damn small at 900L? My folks have a plastic 3000L tank at their place in UK.

The availability of decent beer would not be enough to attract me to Toronto alas. I do concede that you have it. As we proved at the Granite back in June.

Our condo building has some sort of central air system so that without our intervention it's always somewhere between 19 C and 22 C. If we switch on the heating/cooling we can tweak it further. Our total energy bill comes to about $30 per month. A lot cheaper than what we were paying on a similar sized place in London, although I suspect some things are included in our rent.

Humble apologies.

Just had to ask the question.

Don't be silly. Thread drift is part on the fun.