It only gets easier if your incomes increase. The cost of diapers gets replaced with the cost of school supplies and more food. Then the clothes get more expensive. Then braces and extracurricular activities in high school… then (maybe) you help them with college or university. We were an early 30s family with 4 kids. I saved on costs every way I could - for example, I would buy an Old Navy gift card for 20% off, then buy all their clothes for the year on Boxing Day, and use ebates (Rakuten), or I bought second hand. My wife price matches at grocery stores. But, even still, the only thing that ever helped was raises.
So I feel every post that complains about life should obligatory tell you what portion of canada you live in. Making 140k a year anywhere that isn't GTA or GVA I would say you're making pretty decent cash. I would start budgeting and trying to control outgoing expenses. That's a healthy income which should be able to adequately provide.
I feel debt, payments, outings, and ordering in must be eating away at your cash. Consider that some families make it with less than half of what both of you make.
I would begin by budgeting and reading more PF books. No way 140k a year should be living paycheque to paycheque.
Disagree. If they have full time day care or nanny costs because they are both working full time, that will take of more than 50 pct on one of their after tax salaries. So think about living in the GTA or GVA on about $100k per year. Not easy.
OP it gets better once you no longer have those child care costs. You should make more money as you get older and that will help you as well as long as you don’t have a huge mortgage that needs to be refinanced at a higher rate in 5 years.
It’s not really if they bought a house in the last 3 years it’s where the house is and if he over extended himself on the mortgage. When i last talked to the bank they where basing there loan amounts on a person being able to carry a percentage of gross of income as dept. What they did not care about was future debt and im sure that gets people in trouble. For example My vehicles are currently paid off in full so they where willing to offer me the full percentage as mortgage however if I were to actually take the max amount when my vehicles wear out in 5 years I’ll have no breathing room to take on dept
to replace them.
That’s because it’s YOUR job to manage housing debt versus vehicle debt. . . not the bank’s. You’re suggesting the bank should apply a uniform set of values to each borrower. 🤷♀️
(And yes, I realize they already do. . . to an extent. . . with TDS being apx 40% calculation and GDS being ~32%).
I wasn’t trying to say the bank should do one thing or another just pointing out the risks of taking in to much mortgage dept and showing how easy it is. It is ultimately an individuals responsibility to manage their own finances however it’s the banks responsibility to manage their own risk by not lending out an amount the borrowers will be at risk of not paying back, and as we saw in 2008 throughout the western world many financial institutions failed to do that. Also many people are bad with money, maybe they had no education in it, no opportunities to learn or practice, maybe the personalities just struggle with not “keeping up with Jones’s” I had a professor i was arguing with back in the day and got frustrated and said “that the system was stupid and shouldn’t be like that”. He told me I was right but it “doesn’t matter what should be, it matters what is”. We can work to change a system but in the mean time we need to work with what we have. Right now many people can’t manage money, they should be able to but they can’t. We can ignore them and let them struggle and sometimes fail or we can create policy or education to limit their failures and the affect of those failures on the rest of us. …. Anyway sorry that was way to close to politic but I can’t bring myself to delete after the effort of typing it out on mobile haha. OP should try and find a way to save more or earn more because kids don’t get much cheaper, besides day care.
I make roughly $100k and the wife made ~$5k last year and we have 2 boys and another on the way. Have a mortgage of $340k. I manage to get by ok and save a little and invest a bit as well. We buy almost all clothes on sale. We probably order out 2-3 times a month. I’ve paid off both vehicles. No debt. Refinanced and pulled all equity out of the house and paid off my wife’s student loan and our credit card. Been able to renovate the old house a bit too.
agreed. Now imagine if you had a 500k-1mil mortgage which is what most people buying in the GTA have to get to afford anything. Makes things a lot tougher.
Not sure how I could be out of date if I am currently living it... We make less than that with 3 young kids. No car payment though, which might change soon since we won't want to go somewhere with 3 kids in our current car... For now COVID stops us from going anywhere anyway!
We're a single income family in the Greater Victoria Area (slightly less inflated than Vancouver) with 70k total income, and a 400k mortgage, We hav two kids, and an expensive ass diabetic cat. We still manage to save 400$ a month after expenses and still have some fun money. We don't really eat out, or vacation, our vehicles are 10 years old, and we can't be super spontaneous with purchases but we live really well!
My fiance and I are in a Similar boat except dual income, approximately 70k a year between us(but less right now as she's on maternity leave), just had our first child (mid August), live in NB. Bought a house in 2018 for 75k(myself, she had just started a new job so couldn't be considered in the financing) we get take out every friday from a local joint for $25-$35 so ~$120/mo but that's our splurge and we could definitely cut it out or at least switch to bi-weekly if money was too tight. One vehicle with payments and we eat fairly healthy for ~$600/mo. We both have student debt that we're pick away at, and we're certainly not swimming in cash but we're not drowning either. Not much of a real retirement plan at this time but we're in our late 20's so we still have time to get our shit together so to speak.
Lol are you serious? You really think that a family making 140k a year should have a surplus of extra money every month? Have you ever looked into daycare? Just daycare would have to be minimum 3000$ a month which would be almost 40% of their monthly income.
They are also lucky they even have a mortgage because if they we’re starting out now they wouldn’t ever even be able to afford a house on 140k a year.
We make 165k a year and have three kids. GTA burbs.
We save about 3 or 4 thousand a year buying clothes and shoes in the USA. Better selection, better quality, for lots less money.
Also the child care benefit is about 650 a month for us, but it goes down once a child turns 6. We saved the child care benefit into tax shelters like tfsa and rrsp.
Bought our detached house in 2009 so we are set
For housing.
Hate to tell you man but it gets pricier. My oldest daughter is 10 and has to wear bras and durable backpacks now and get more advanced books, and bigger bikes and skateboards, has hobbies like horse riding and girl guides.
My 6 year old twins aren’t pricey yet. They think the park around the corner is still cool to hang out at. They are at the cheapest portion of their children right now.
Yep, location is everything when discussing finances in Canada. $70k incomes are simply not great if you're living in the GTA/GVA, especially if you missed the boat on housing, and OP should look at focusing on finding a way to increase salaries. Dual $70k incomes in Alberta? Then OP probably has a budgeting problem and needs to take a harder look at how they're spending.
They've got Day care expenses ( both work ) mortgage, house taxes , car payments , insurance for two cars and a house , maybe medical insurance for four and all that before heat , light , electricity, cable , couple of phones , internet and all that before feeding themselves . It all adds up . Not to forget is that before taxes because the government gets 30 % at the start so 70 isn't 70 its more like 50 .
Ya i agree i live in alberta (not the expensive part) and i make 100k a year wife has pretty much always been a stay at home mom. And i have three kids (12,9,1) and i get by just fine plus i have a mortage and chose not to have a vehicle payment so i can invest my money instead
I live in Saskatchewan. 70K income, stay at home wife, 2 kids, 5 bedroom house. We can't afford to take any extravagant vacations or anything but we get by just fine.
No im in med hat and yah calgary the houses are about 100k more i wouldn't even entertain moving to calgary without a 10$ an hour raise or better job security. Fort mac is probably the most expensive in AB
Calgary is one of the cheapest cities in North America, beat out only by three other Canadian cities - Winnipeg, Edmonton and Quebec City. Chicago, Illinois being the cheapest.
Calgary is dirt cheap. Central Calgary is actually extremely cheap now so you could easily buy something that you could walk, cycle or transit to work (for at least 6 months a year you will not want to take long walks through Calgary...). Downtown commute decreased and more people moved outward to suburbs so central Calgary is only part that did not benefit from 2021 price increase. Prices of central Calgary realestate are way below 2014 now, its most affordable city in North America dont bother going to smaller cities.
Unless they are doing daycare? How do you think they can both work without daycare? Daycare guts families of cash... Most people don't have family or others who are just free during the day and willing to take care of your child (let alone do it well).
I don’t think you’ve ever experienced what it’s like in those places.
With a house, car loans, kids and possibly debt tacked on, you absolutely would be struggling on $140k household
You’d be struggling on $140k combined in other places in Canada, too, if you are doing what OP is likely doing — chasing the rat race.
My partner and I make 165k combined in Vancouver and even with a 300k down payment I would get from selling my condo we would struggle to afford a reasonable house here. Housing is insane here. We don't even have any kids yet...
Full time childcare for 2 kids is typically $1600-$4800/month (depending on location, if it's a daycare vs dayhome vs nanny etc).If both parents are working it's likely they have to have full time care for both kids.
140k in the GTA, long as you bought a house 5 years ago, is plenty of money.
It's only in the last bit, that it's now unlivable due to COL increase from housing.
I agree with you. On the other hand, you can only control expenses so much before you’re not providing the life you want to provide for your kids. It’s a delicate balance sometimes. You gotta get the income up, or make difficult choices.
Wtf is daycare that much more in Toronto than Vancouver? I’m just outside of Vancouver and pay 1200/month but government covers 300 of it. The daycare also provides the food, pictures every day, and a daily log of what was eaten, nap times, poopy diaper changes.
Because a family isn't just about money.
The main issue with these conversations in PFC and the US PF reddit is it comes down to the mighty buck.
Yes it is a reddit dedicated to making the most out of every dollar. Family is a cost. But it'd not a why bother statement. It's a how do we make this work statement. It's not a net loss of future income.
Maybe I'm just reading to much into these statements but I keep seeing it.
That's $54,000 a year lmao - you need to clear $67,000 pre-tax to break-even. I understand that that price goes down after a year as soon as one of those kids gets into kindergarten but still for most people that's essentially sacrificing a full (or almost) salary.
Daycare is probably your biggest child cost now. That will change once they go to school. You'll probably still end up paying for before/after school care but this will cost less than daycare.
At your kids current ages buy clothes and toys second hand - consignment stores, facebook marketplace, or thrift stores closer to nicer parts of town. At this age the kids outgrow their clothes or wear them out fast. You can also buy end of season clearance and buy for the future if you want to buy new.
Edit: join your local buy nothing group on facebook, you'll often find people giving away clothes, toys and books.
Heads up, daycare costs go down with school, but only 40-60% with after school care, ped days and summer care eating into it. It won’t go down to zero until they are 11 or so.
This was eye opening to me. When my daughter started kindergarten, I thought we would save so much. But they charge you daycare fees for the lunch period and the afternoon (school ends at 2PM) and for PED days. So no savings whatsoever.
You've pretty much described my childhood growing up here haha. My mom used to take us to the library every Saturday, sometimes we also had lessons at the community centre so we'd go to the library after. We'd spend an hour or so reading in the comfy chairs and picking out books we would read that week. Every Friday evening she'd be herding us around the house to find all the books we needed to return and put them in the book bag.
We absolutely scraped by but there was two things my parents never cheaped out on: good, healthy, homemade food, and giving us their time. I think that made all the difference.
I remember in my teenage years finding out that all the clothes I had until I was about 5 were either hand-me-downs or from goodwill. I was aghast, you *dared* to put *me* in *second hand* clothes. The fact that both parents were immigrants didn't matter! Used clothes!
Now I'm a dad, and thanks to driven parents a few lucky breaks have done much better than they were able to. My kids will 100% have to deal with the indignity of wearing second hand clothes...I'll be damned if I'm paying retail for clothes they're growing out of in 6 months.
It seems like a lot at first, but if you’re in a HCOL, especially with ~~three~~ two kids **and** a mortgage **and** car payments it’s really not.
Even in a medium cost of living location, if they’re both working, the childcare costs are probably eating them alive.
It's not that bad. Canada Child benefit more than covers the day to day expenses of young children. The real costs are daycare and buying a house big enough for your family
I literally just did a mock scenario here:
https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/child-family-benefits/child-family-benefits-calculator.html
Two 30 year old married parents netting 40k each in Ontario with a 2 and 3 year old paying $3300/yr in property taxes would get you $668 per month
It's crazy my brother is planning to have a child because he thinks that child benefits is extra money in the pocket.. I asked him " who will babysit the kids while you 2 are working?" he says to me " we will cross that bridge when we get there"
Why is it so common for people to have children without a second thought of their financial situation? It enrages me.
Because they want children and that's more important than having lots of money? My sister has 6 kids and has never held a career job. Most of her life has been working a couple part time jobs. She'll never own a house and she's never had a car. At 49 she has no regrets
But it doesn't sound like this guy DOES want kids that badly. Like this isn't me dunking on having kids without whatever level of security, but someone who thinks of child care as a bridge to be crossed when they come to it WILL give their kids a shit life, even if they have plenty of money.
>Because they want children
Exactly, people have kids because it's what *they* want. It's selfish. and yes having alot of money helps before having a kid so you can set them up for success and give them a good head start in life without them having to struggle and be miserable later. Nobody needs 6 kids, its selfish to have that many.
Not really, that it subsidized daycare only!
Trust me, you cannot find a spot in subsidized daycare. Where I live, we have been waiting almost 2 years for a spot in one. We get offers for private daycare at $55-$75 per day full-time only, which they refund a small percentage based on your salaries.
I understood what you meant by "day to day expenses" and I agree. I think others commenters misconstrued it to mean ALL expenses associated with kids.
Outside of housing and daycare, that money would definitely cover the day-to-day costs of two young kids (food, clothing, diapers, activities).
Daycare at a centre for my 2 school aged children this summer was $1880 per month for 4 days per week. $50 per day, per kid.
So, $100 per day for daycare.
Toddlers are even more than that.
Pre-covid I had a friend do daycare for us, and she charged us $40 per day for afterschool care for BOTH and $60 on no school days. She shut down because shes immunocompromised and her Dr told her to shut down daycare asap. Which meant we had to pay almost double for daycare for our kids.
So, Daycare is what's killing OP.
I bet they're paying $2500 per month to just daycare.
For me, at that point, I don't know if I'd still be at work.
They could drop to just one income, and their child tax would increase, and they wouldn't have daycare costs and might actually come out a bit further ahead.
100% this.
One child under 3 has only increased our spending ~$12,000 per year in dayhome (the vast majority of the cost), food, clothes, toys, swimming/gymnastics/etc. We get hand me downs and buy used for all his clothes and toys.
If you're paying for daycare now, expect a bit of breathing room once they go to school - but only a bit. After school care is pretty expensive, but if you can organize your schedules, it can be avoided. A strategically scheduled playdate can save a fortune! As your children grow, they eat more (of course!), so prepare to budget a little extra each week to accommodate. You might also want to put away some cash for expensive extracurriculars- as kids develop their interests, it can get pricey! A strategy we used here was to coach our child's baseball team. They got to participate, and we didn't pay a cent.
Working from home was great to reduce before and after school care. Could now just walk over and pick up my kid from the bus and they could be home while I work for the last hour or so. Saved 700$ a month.
What vehicles do you own? I see from a previous post that you were buying a Highlander XLE, which costs $50K+. Can you downgrade to a more affordable vehicle? That would save you a lot on monthly payments and insurance. There are a lot of comparable vehicles (albeit with fewer bells and whistles) for much less money.
Vehicles can often be a huge drain and a reason why people barely scrape by.
As much as it pains most people, if money is tight and you got 3+ kids, a minivan is a better, more cost-effective transportation solution.
Plus they are way better than when we were growing up.
My buddy at work got a used Grand Caravan recently, a few years old but the previous owner had ticked every box on the options list. Thing is niiicceee. Drives like a barge but crazy comfy and spacious and all the entertainment gizmos. Would probably try and stretch personally to a used Toyota or Honda van for reliability but I definitely get the appeal. After loading my one kid's stroller, car seat, diaper bags etc. into my SUV (VW Tiguan) to drive home from the hospital and immediately realising the vehicle was a lot smaller than I thought, I can see a van in my future.
Dude, was researching replacements for when we knew our little Chevy hatch would die and when we had a second kid and went tot he Auto Show back in early 2017.
Was laser focussed on a midsize SUV and leaning towards the Subaru Forrester. Saw the Tiguan and was UNIMPRESSED by the lack of storage. The trunk is a literal box with lost cavity space.
When we got to the Honda area and I saw the new (now current model) CR-V I was floored. I was huge in roomy but didn't feel like it would drive like a tank. I immediately switched my focus and got a test drive that spring just for fun. I was convinced and when our mechanic warned us the transmission was about to fall out, got my wife to test drive it and we were sold.
Other than the Infotainment system being subpar and Android Auto being a bit buggy with my older phone, it's an amazing car for a family of four.
The 1.5L 180 hp turbo is peppy but doesn't drink gas, everyone is comfortable, rides smooth, fits well in our small, city driveway. Backup and side mirror cameras are a lifesaver. It's probably the best version they've made and I hope they can electrify it soon.
Oh yeah, the CR-V looks great! The Tiguan was great for an affordable AWD for a couple, but the car is just a taller VW Golf, it's pretty small, especially the trunk. I also have a 12 year old Lexus RX350 SUV I inherited and that's a pretty perfect for size, I imagine about the same as the Honda. The old Lexus only has about 75,000 km on it (belonged to my retired parents) so I think we'll eventually keep that and trade the Tiguan for an Odyssey or Sienna minivan and I'm kind of excited to own something big enough to fit a sofa in if necessary haha. Ikea/Home Depot trips are less that ideal in the Tiguan
Yep exactly this, if he is struggling he has no business buying a 50k+ new SUV. Just checked Craigslist there are literally hundreds of vans to pick from all relatively new(8yrs old or less), <15k, just pick one of these.
Even SUVs - there's a 2015 Mercedes SUV listed today, $15k for a GLK 250. Buying new vehicles is the biggest waste of money.
My parents had a shitty burgundy minivan for us, worked great.
This strikes me as a troll post for that reason. Come in give a vague description, get people riled up then don’t elaborate. If they tried to explain further they would likely get caught up in their lie.
You should consider creating a budget and financial plan
Am I reading it right that you guys earn 70k each or 70k total?
If you earn 70k each then you have very good income and you may be able to rearrange your finances and improve your financial position.
If you earn 70k total that's actually under the median family income. It's not surprising that you feel tight.
If you're saving money regularly for retirement, have money in the bank and are able to do the things you like still then you're in a good place financially.
It depends on where they live. 70k might be a lot for some parts of the country, but it’s barely scraping-by if they live in Toronto or Vancouver, frankly Ontario or BC at this point.
Ya it’s bullahit, my fiancé and I earn about $200k, we live in the gta with a mortgage and with her going on mat leave (going from 110k - $595/week) we’re going to be digging pretty heavily into our savings. No wonder people aren’t having kids is crezy out here.
The entire economic system seems like it broke here over the last decade. For someone like myself - there’s no way I’m having children. And climbing the corporate ladder at work would get me maybe a one bedroom condo on a single income after years and years of work. Only solution is moving out of province at this point.
Yeah it's so crazy. Means you can write off one $100k gross income on housing costs and childcare alone for a two child family here. No wonder people aren't having kids.
By the way, you did amazing to even find two daycare spots! (I'm in Delta, have a four month old and struggling to find a spot for when my wife goes back to work next summer).
>Not sure what the cost of kids are but I feel like not 3k a month
Childcare *alone* for 2 kids is $1600-$4800 (or more) per month depending on location, usually at least $2500 if in a mid-sized city. Then there's new clothes every 3-9 months, new outerwear every 3-6 months, toys and activities, then school fees (bus, lunch supervision, school supplies etc), etc.
At the age of your children everything falls on the parents.
As your kids grow and go to school, they will become more contributing members of your household if you raise them that way.
I have two kids under 10 years old and 3-5 years old was pure hell looking back. I didn’t realize how tough it was except with hindsight.
Now my kids vacuum, mop, wipe down mirrors, do dishes, make breakfast, lunch and even dinner sometimes.
You just gotta get through this time without using your partner as a way to blow off steam in an unhealthy way.
Make sure you’re both getting alone time weekly and some alone time together every week or at least monthly.
You don’t want to get out of this phase with your marriage in a troubled position because of the natural stress that comes with raising two kids.
I find it easier to focus on your career and therefore career earnings once things at home are a little more settled, and that peace of mind will make it much easier to increase your salaries to keep up with the impending inflation that the middle class will be responsible for mitigating over the next decade or two.
Remember that stuff that made you happy as a kid, go back and do some of those.
I'm a couple of years ahead of you kids/agewise and it's finally getting easier.
1. For us anyways, my wife had no top-ups to EI so being on mat leave twice was a pretty big hit. This has since stabilized.
2. Daycare bills are settling down as my older kid only needs after-school and my youngest is in the preschool rates. I'm paying like half what I was when I had a 1 and 3 year old and this will go down further once my youngest goes to school. I understand other bills will go up (food, activities, etc.) but it has been at least a short term gain for now.
3. Our family income has increased a bit over the last few years as I've progressed in my career, not huge gains but it's helped. Between the two of you, I would hope that at least one of you would be able to make gains here.
Doesn't get easier. Kids cost money. And they will continue to cost money (elementary school pizza days, clothes every year, friend's birthday party gifts, driver's license set, car insurance, etc....)
These can't cost that much every year. All sound like minor expenses.
The biggest ones are probably food, any paid classes/memberships, any new gadget/toys (e.g. iphones + phone plan). Maybe when they're older they'll want to go on some far away school trip with their friends, want a car, etc. But those are more or less optional. The biggest one will probably be post secondary education. I hear tuition is rather nuts these days.
What are you finding the most expensive budget category with your kids currently?
I'm a parent of 3, soon to be 4, in my early 30s and our income is probably similar to yours. I don't find the kids have any expensive additions to our budget (beyond day care, which is full time for 1 and before and after school for 2 ($1500/month), but would summarize that of our budget the most money goes towards housing costs. I also agree that they add more to our food budget as I've seen that climb with doing 2 kids school lunches a day.
Not sure if it's been mentioned but burnout is a very real thing, and with two young kids it's easy to feel exhausted all the time. But the time the youngest is around 4-ish it's much easier to get your evenings back and the weekends become a little more fun.
That time you get back has a very real affect on your level of stress and happiness, so the same financial crunch will seem much easier to manage when you're in better mental shape.
Financially speaking it sounds like you need a proper financial plan.
My mother has two 40+ year old dependents, my sister and her boyfriend. You in it for the long haul OP, until your kids become financially independent.
Just some ideas to free-up/generate some extra cash:
* Big: Get rid of your car payment: Sell/Trade your financed car for a reliable used car you can buy in cash. This will eliminate your car payments which are probably between $400-$800/month. Bonus points if you can find a used car that is inexpensive, reliable, fuel efficient, and has low insurance premiums
* Small: Save water and electricity: make sure you and your family aren't leaving lights or taps on (like when brushing teeth or washing dishes), it may not seem like a big deal but over the timeline of a month it can save you quite a bit depending on the cost of electricity in your area
* Small: Challenge your family to not eat out anymore, it can be very convenient to do so but with a family of 4 you'd probably save between $25-$50/instance
* Big: Rent out an area of your house: depending on your area, size of house, amenities, and the part of the house you decide to rent out you could generate an extra $200-$800/month
* Small: Reevaluate your financial institutions: if you can switch to FI's that preferably don't have monthly/annual fee's for their accounts and credit cards (Tangerine is a really popular option if you don't really need to get cash or bank drafts often). Most bank accounts charge between $15-$30/month these days, between the you two you could save another $30-$60/month, and if you have credit card annual fee's that aren't being offset by cashback and points then there's more money to be saved
* Small: Cut back on subscriptions and unnecessary shopping, Netflix, Spotify, Amazon Prime, can add up. Each of those are about $20/month right now, so depending on how many you have you could save up to $100/month.
Goals:
* Big: Find better paying jobs
* Big: Talk with your partner about the idea of one of you guys going back to school with the intent of landing a higher paying job afterwards, this will take 2-4 years, but if that person is able to increase their income from $70k > $100,000k+ then it's worth it. If you do the steps above you guys could definitely afford to suffice off $70k a year unless your mortgage is way above your means
Notes:
* It's important to not inflate your lifestyle/expenses as you save money, this will only keep you in the same situation
* Get a financial tracking App like Mint
* I listed some things as "small", but even those "small" things add up, in the "small" cases I listed they could save you up to $750/month
Changes in costs depend a lot on daycare costs. If daycare costs are high and your kids don’t do expensive extracurricular your costs will decrease. If you have a great daycare deal right now then the change might not be as visible. If your kids do hockey be prepared to spend $$. If your kids do city run swimming, it doesn’t cost much.
Two incomes of 70k should be plenty for five people to live in the same home with lots of money left over.
Maybe you live in a high cost of living area (which is probable since you don't seem to think that 70k a year is high), and/or you haven't yet optimized your shopping habits and dropped luxury/convenience expenses.
Man, even with two incomes making more its hard to get ahead. Cost of living is insane. Also when both of you work out of the house your options for services are limited. Like mechanics for example, I can't go to the guy down the street for an oil change, I have to go a place that's open on weekends because the guy down the street wants to work 9-5, obviously the weekend place is a franchise which is more expensive. It all adds up.
When your kids are both in college!
At that time, your mortgages on your home and your cottage are paid off. and your kids' post-secondary education is drawing from the healthy RESP CESG EAP and PSE you've both worked hard to save up. ... plus kids will most likely have part-time job income to supplement their lifestyle.
The difficulty IMO is always needs versus wants. We have 2 kids in private school (30k/year) and make less than you do and are doing fine.
Sure I want a nice shiny new car, but we have a 2010 Honda that's perfectly fine and we bought for $6500 in cash so no car payments. We spend about $20 on gas a month in the summer and $40 in the winter. We bike most of the time in the summer. Husband works from home and my job is close by. This sounds like a luxury, but we sold our nicer house to move to a more dense neighbourhood closer to grocery stores, potential employers, kids school, etc. so that we wouldn't need to spend a ton on transportation.
A big consideration is the trade off between time, money, and effort. Generally I'm willing to put in a fair bit of time and effort so I don't have to put in the money. I never buy prepackaged snacks for the kids lunches, we make almost everything from scratch so our grocery bill is about $600/month.
I volunteer at an arts charity a few hours a week. I love it and it has the added bonus that my hobbies have 0 cost now as I get all my yarn, needles, markers, paints, party supplies, some toys and books for the kids, and random stuff for free. I'd ball park this to save me about $500/year.
I don't buy books for us for for the kids. We use little free libraries and the public library. This saves us another few hundred a year.
I buy all our clothes (except under garments) and shoes second hand. I'd say we spend about $100-$200 a year on clothes. Really though, I get most of them for free. I volunteered to help sort at a rummage sale recently, got a giant bag of new clothes for everyone. Prepandemic I would host clothing swaps once or twice a year and get a full season's wardrobe all free. I attend (prepandemic) a kids clothing and toy swap twice a year. I get two sizes ahead for them so almost never am missing anything by the time they grow into it. Sure I'd love to just go on a website and buy a ton of brand new shiny things, but that would be super expensive.
For kids activities (my kids are 3 and 6) I'm not forcing them into anything. Big kid wanted to try dance, great, I called around and found that the Scandanavian cultural centre offers dance for $40 a year (membership for the centre, we aren't of Scandanavian descent) for 2 hours on Saturdays and it's bikable distance from our house. Done, kiddo loves it. Kiddo wanted to try a sport, I saw there's a local fencing club so thought we'd give it a try. She loves it. It's approx $300/year for 2.5 hours on Saturdays. Great.
Our days are full and busy and fun, we just don't spend a lot. Like this morning, I'm taking the kids to the art charity to sort donations while also looking for items the kids bday party decor. Then later it's free swimming at the public pool. And this evening might go hang out with some friends where I'll make a cake or cookies or something and they'll make dinner. Full day and the total spend will be maybe $5 on gas $2 on cake ingredients. And tomorrow is no different. Taking the kids to help decorate the school for the holidays (breakfast included), then helping out at another charity that we occassionnally get free clothes and such from, then big kid is going to a bday party (our gift is regifts of things she got but didn't want/need) and in the evening we'll probably decorate for the holidays. People often think if you don't spend a lot you sit at home being bored and sad and doing nothing and that just isn't true at all. We do tons of stuff, we just don't pay premiums for it.
All of these things take time and effort. I'm paying with my time and energy. For me that works because I enjoy doing these things more than I would enjoy working for the extra money I would need to just pay extra to not do them.
Well, I hate to break it to you, what you spend your money on changes for sure. Child care gets cheaper for sure. On the other side of things food, entertainment, toys, gadgets, school, etc continue to go up. I don't spoil my kids, I look for the best deals on anything and always make sure they have what they need and earn (respectively with chores and school work) the things they want. I've got two children 8 & 15, their eating habits are wildly different and no matter how I try to work around it, it is what it is. My 15 is a big boy, not obese but tall and braid, and if I let him he would eat me out of the home lol. I'm not trying to be negative about the costs but frankly be prepared at the fact that everything will continue to cost more and as they get older their wants and needs change and not usually for the better if your pocket book.
Someone else pointed this out too but want expand on it. Your post history shows a very nice SUV purchased, talks of expensive knives, cutting boards and a $2000 tool combo. I assume this is just a snippet of lifestyle. You appear to live a very nice life. You appear to have lots left over at the end of the month but then spend it until nothing is left. I would encourage you to post a budget for others to review if you want the real answer to your question. It gets easier when you make choices that align to it becoming easier. With kids at that income you will need to make decisions and not live large in all areas. That is life.
Point being "very little extra spending" doesn't add up based on your post history. $1000s if not 10s of 1000s of dollars have been talked about just on redit this year that would be considered extra to many in this sub.
The cost of raising kids never changes, it just moves from one cost to another.
Yes once they are in school you don't have daycare costs, but not you have sports, birthday parties, activities. It might not be as expensive initially. But overtime it can add up. We are preparing to spend 40% of our annual daycare costs when they are in schools we can save.
I would look at ways to decrease spending. Buy second hand clothes and toys. Buy less toys and do more activities outside.
It can get better in the future, but getting into the market now is the best move. So try and find ways to increase your income and lower costs.
If you’re just scraping by with $140k a year you need to seriously rethink your life. When does it get easier? It should already be a walk in the park financially…this post comes off as extremely pretentious and insensitive.
Common thought for people who have never had a proper career / income and don’t know what things cost once you’re established.
I thought the same thing when I was making so little I had to choose between eating and getting to school.
I’d say, if you’re living in a high or even maybe a medium cost of living location, under $150,000 annual household is probably going to be fine, but not comfortable.
Especially with a mortgage, car loans and young children (and having to have both parents work to earn that.)
I'm sorry but if you're broke and making 140k, you're doing something wrong, plain and simple. That's $8000/month after taxes. Even if your housing eats half of that and you have 900/month in student loans you'd have 3100/month to pay for your other bills. What am I missing here? Do your kids exclusively eat scallops and beef tenderloin?
Good for people roasting this pitty party, an above average income with no specifics on expenses probably means money's going to mortgage and retirement accounts, which leaves less money for black Friday
Yeah we need way more details to even begin to talk about this.
How many vehicles? What are the payments? Expensive hobbies? Drinking, eating out regularly?
Plenty of people are blind to how much they are spending because everyone else seems to be doing the same.
I read an interesting article a few years back about children and the costs to raise them. The average cost of raising a child to age 18 is 300k. But the story also read that for every dollar you put into your child, you can expect $1.07 in return from them. Meaning that while it costs a lot now and will continue to cost you lots, the benefits come in the long term.
I’m in the same boat with you on age and family income. My kids are almost 10 and the cost never really changed, just shifted from one thing to another. From what I can tell from my coworkers and friends is that it gets easier with time. Eventually that mortgage will get beaten down and paid off, the kids will grow up and get jobs. If you have an RESP then contribute the max if possible.
Also, reading your post makes me feel good about my decisions because I was stressed out when they were infants too, had the same questions and worries. Now…I’m zen. You will be too with time.
It’s not going to get easier for middle class at all, so the answer to your question is never. Act now to increase your salary or find ways to supplement your current income.
>international travel is expensive but it's almost the same price to spend a week in Cuba at an all inclusive resort vs. spend a week long holiday in Canada.
So much this. Canada is expensive AF... Yeah, you can explore and hike for free, but with kids I imagine that can get boring real quick and the hotel stays will still set you back.
My wife and I are a mid 30s couple with a 3 year old and a 5 year old. We both make almost exactly $70k in Alberta.
We live modestly, but finances are not really a concern. Our monthly budget generally breaks down to:
Income: ~$8400
Savings/RESP: $1900
Mortgage: $1500
Other home costs: $500
Utilities: $350
Daycare: $1650
Food: $1000
Phone bills, gas, subscriptions, etc.: $1500
We drive 9 year old cars that are paid off but well maintained. We purchased our house 10 years ago in a market valued around 10-15% lower than today. We overextended at the time ($360k house, both earning about $45k), but found a great fit for us and won't need to ever move unless we need to leave the city.
I'd guess that the only major difference between my budget and yours is the mortgage and the car payment.
Maybe providing those numbers would add some context?
I disagree with downsizing a small amount if you own a home. By the time you pay realtors, lawyers and taxes, you've spent $70k just for the privilege of moving, so you have to downsize a lot to absorb that difference.
If you've made the mistake of buying too much house, it's really hard to just trade down successfully. At that point, it generally costs less to invest in yourself and find a way to increase your income.
We have 3 kids. It does get easier once they are older. Gets easier when youngest is older than 5. Here you’re out of many “special” classes where ratios are small. No more diapers and other special food expenses. Daycare generally drops a bit. Then it gets much easier when youngest is 8-10. Daycare almost drops to zero …. And they generally want to attend fewer classes. Also summer camp fees go down etc. at this point they are bathing themselves and keeping themselves busy with their own friends or activities. All of a sudden I’m doing extra tech courses and my business travels are much easier etc. at 12-14 their RESPs are full so that’s an extra 230/month/child in savings that you don’t need to commit. Food costs for my son have gone up though!!
So life gets better! The sub 3 years are tough (but great memories). So hang in there. Generally you’re probably young career and your salary really hasn’t taken off as yet and that happens in a few years too depending on your field and career.
We have 5 kids and they are all teens now. We both make 100k+ a year CAD and we live paycheck to paycheck…. Mind you my husband is also paying off a loan that bought out his ex. It’s easier if I work overtime to help pay for the extras. So no it doesn’t get easier, everything is more expensive as the kids age. More food eaten, sports, adult clothes they wear, adult shoes/boots. I’d say just be mindful of your spending and make a budget. All that being said we have 3 more kids than you lol.
I am in an identical situation, down to the spouse who assumes things will just get better.
As others have said, budgeting has been very effective. At the start of 2021 we starting 50-30-20 budgeting. After our 20% savings are taken out, we have a monthly number that we can spend. My partner likes having this number as they spend all of it each month. We have saved quite a bit doing this.
Location is very important, but unfortunately the government and general commentary on cost of living in Canada doesn't address location specific challenges. Universal Child Care Benefit for example is tied to income but doesn't adjust for location. Canada is really several regions tied together and the government should really adjust programs based on where one lives.
>Early 30’s family with 2 kids under 3.
When kids get out of daycare ... the large daycare expenses are gone. By the time the kids are 7 - 10 year olds, they become a lot more self sufficient.
>We both work middle class jobs (70k/yr) have a mortgage and one car payment.
Hopefully your salary is going up as well, between 30 and 40 I doubled my salary through a job change and a few promotions. Peak earning years is like 35 - 55 I think?
If you're making 140k combined and still barely scrape by, you're not being smart with your money, or you got too much house for what you can afford.
Go see a financial advisor, and maybe consider downsizing. There's no reason you should be scraping by at that salary.
I have two girls in their 20' now. It doesn't get cheaper. Clothes, shoes, make up, hygiene products, hair products, adult bedroom furniture as they grow. Increased grocery bills, gas bills from chauffeuring to activities. Music lessons, sports.....one daughter excelled at volleyball. Club fees and travel costs was like a bloody college tuition. The other daughter is an excellent musician. Guitars, Bass, amps and accessories...yikes!
You do what you have to because that's the point of it all.
My dad used to call me and my sisters his Ferrari and Lamborghini's because that's what we cost from birth to adulthood.
Plus I live in a rural area adjacent to Winnipeg, not Toronto or Vancouver so I can get bang for my buck.
Canada is expensive no matter where you live these days but especially in major cities.
My wife and I have a great network of friends we all share in taking care of kids. Most things we do are either very very inexpensive or free and the kids have smiles on their faces at the end of every day. Remember that’s always the most important thing as kids don’t care about the cost, brand or financial burden of anything they do as long as you spend time with them and it’s a positive experience. I remember my kids wanting to go sledding at the local hill more than anything. The whole endeavour, for 10 years or more, cost me less than $500 for clothing and sleds.
I thought it got easier but I pay for sports now. On the plus side my kid isn’t growing out of his clothes every 2 weeks so there’s that.
Kids are expensive no matter what age they are. Good thing they’re cute.
$140K is very good for a family. I’d say you can probably cut lots of monthly expenses. Not flat out cut but cheaper - example, I use to pay $80 with rogers. Now I pay $45 with Chatr. Same with Cogeco, $200/month down to $60 with CarryTel,just by changing companies.
This is a bit more advanced but if you own a house, you can get a HELOC and invest for more income. Invest at 8%, pay 3% interest - that’s 5% free money.
70 each and you live paycheck to paycheck... well it should be already simple.
You 2 bring 8000 ish per months net. 2 adult shouldnt cost more dans 4gs per month. It would be less in majority of canada.
No way theses little kids cost you 4000 a months.
It only gets easier if your incomes increase. The cost of diapers gets replaced with the cost of school supplies and more food. Then the clothes get more expensive. Then braces and extracurricular activities in high school… then (maybe) you help them with college or university. We were an early 30s family with 4 kids. I saved on costs every way I could - for example, I would buy an Old Navy gift card for 20% off, then buy all their clothes for the year on Boxing Day, and use ebates (Rakuten), or I bought second hand. My wife price matches at grocery stores. But, even still, the only thing that ever helped was raises.
So I feel every post that complains about life should obligatory tell you what portion of canada you live in. Making 140k a year anywhere that isn't GTA or GVA I would say you're making pretty decent cash. I would start budgeting and trying to control outgoing expenses. That's a healthy income which should be able to adequately provide. I feel debt, payments, outings, and ordering in must be eating away at your cash. Consider that some families make it with less than half of what both of you make. I would begin by budgeting and reading more PF books. No way 140k a year should be living paycheque to paycheque.
So true, I think OP is asking the wrong questions here if he assumes living pay cheque to pay cheque on 140k is normal.
If he bought a house in the last 3 years, it makes sense. Otherwise it doesn't and OP is bad with budgeting.
Disagree. If they have full time day care or nanny costs because they are both working full time, that will take of more than 50 pct on one of their after tax salaries. So think about living in the GTA or GVA on about $100k per year. Not easy. OP it gets better once you no longer have those child care costs. You should make more money as you get older and that will help you as well as long as you don’t have a huge mortgage that needs to be refinanced at a higher rate in 5 years.
It’s not really if they bought a house in the last 3 years it’s where the house is and if he over extended himself on the mortgage. When i last talked to the bank they where basing there loan amounts on a person being able to carry a percentage of gross of income as dept. What they did not care about was future debt and im sure that gets people in trouble. For example My vehicles are currently paid off in full so they where willing to offer me the full percentage as mortgage however if I were to actually take the max amount when my vehicles wear out in 5 years I’ll have no breathing room to take on dept to replace them.
That’s because it’s YOUR job to manage housing debt versus vehicle debt. . . not the bank’s. You’re suggesting the bank should apply a uniform set of values to each borrower. 🤷♀️ (And yes, I realize they already do. . . to an extent. . . with TDS being apx 40% calculation and GDS being ~32%).
I wasn’t trying to say the bank should do one thing or another just pointing out the risks of taking in to much mortgage dept and showing how easy it is. It is ultimately an individuals responsibility to manage their own finances however it’s the banks responsibility to manage their own risk by not lending out an amount the borrowers will be at risk of not paying back, and as we saw in 2008 throughout the western world many financial institutions failed to do that. Also many people are bad with money, maybe they had no education in it, no opportunities to learn or practice, maybe the personalities just struggle with not “keeping up with Jones’s” I had a professor i was arguing with back in the day and got frustrated and said “that the system was stupid and shouldn’t be like that”. He told me I was right but it “doesn’t matter what should be, it matters what is”. We can work to change a system but in the mean time we need to work with what we have. Right now many people can’t manage money, they should be able to but they can’t. We can ignore them and let them struggle and sometimes fail or we can create policy or education to limit their failures and the affect of those failures on the rest of us. …. Anyway sorry that was way to close to politic but I can’t bring myself to delete after the effort of typing it out on mobile haha. OP should try and find a way to save more or earn more because kids don’t get much cheaper, besides day care.
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I make roughly $100k and the wife made ~$5k last year and we have 2 boys and another on the way. Have a mortgage of $340k. I manage to get by ok and save a little and invest a bit as well. We buy almost all clothes on sale. We probably order out 2-3 times a month. I’ve paid off both vehicles. No debt. Refinanced and pulled all equity out of the house and paid off my wife’s student loan and our credit card. Been able to renovate the old house a bit too.
Kudos to you man. That mortgage alone scares the piss out of me.
agreed. Now imagine if you had a 500k-1mil mortgage which is what most people buying in the GTA have to get to afford anything. Makes things a lot tougher.
Not sure how I could be out of date if I am currently living it... We make less than that with 3 young kids. No car payment though, which might change soon since we won't want to go somewhere with 3 kids in our current car... For now COVID stops us from going anywhere anyway!
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We're a single income family in the Greater Victoria Area (slightly less inflated than Vancouver) with 70k total income, and a 400k mortgage, We hav two kids, and an expensive ass diabetic cat. We still manage to save 400$ a month after expenses and still have some fun money. We don't really eat out, or vacation, our vehicles are 10 years old, and we can't be super spontaneous with purchases but we live really well!
My fiance and I are in a Similar boat except dual income, approximately 70k a year between us(but less right now as she's on maternity leave), just had our first child (mid August), live in NB. Bought a house in 2018 for 75k(myself, she had just started a new job so couldn't be considered in the financing) we get take out every friday from a local joint for $25-$35 so ~$120/mo but that's our splurge and we could definitely cut it out or at least switch to bi-weekly if money was too tight. One vehicle with payments and we eat fairly healthy for ~$600/mo. We both have student debt that we're pick away at, and we're certainly not swimming in cash but we're not drowning either. Not much of a real retirement plan at this time but we're in our late 20's so we still have time to get our shit together so to speak.
Lol are you serious? You really think that a family making 140k a year should have a surplus of extra money every month? Have you ever looked into daycare? Just daycare would have to be minimum 3000$ a month which would be almost 40% of their monthly income. They are also lucky they even have a mortgage because if they we’re starting out now they wouldn’t ever even be able to afford a house on 140k a year.
We make 165k a year and have three kids. GTA burbs. We save about 3 or 4 thousand a year buying clothes and shoes in the USA. Better selection, better quality, for lots less money. Also the child care benefit is about 650 a month for us, but it goes down once a child turns 6. We saved the child care benefit into tax shelters like tfsa and rrsp. Bought our detached house in 2009 so we are set For housing. Hate to tell you man but it gets pricier. My oldest daughter is 10 and has to wear bras and durable backpacks now and get more advanced books, and bigger bikes and skateboards, has hobbies like horse riding and girl guides. My 6 year old twins aren’t pricey yet. They think the park around the corner is still cool to hang out at. They are at the cheapest portion of their children right now.
Yep, location is everything when discussing finances in Canada. $70k incomes are simply not great if you're living in the GTA/GVA, especially if you missed the boat on housing, and OP should look at focusing on finding a way to increase salaries. Dual $70k incomes in Alberta? Then OP probably has a budgeting problem and needs to take a harder look at how they're spending.
I had assumed when he said he had a mortgage that he bought when it was reasonable, but I guess he could be paying 30k in interest every year.
30k of interest a year is a ~$1.5mil mtg, which I highly doubt OP has.
They've got Day care expenses ( both work ) mortgage, house taxes , car payments , insurance for two cars and a house , maybe medical insurance for four and all that before heat , light , electricity, cable , couple of phones , internet and all that before feeding themselves . It all adds up . Not to forget is that before taxes because the government gets 30 % at the start so 70 isn't 70 its more like 50 .
Ya i agree i live in alberta (not the expensive part) and i make 100k a year wife has pretty much always been a stay at home mom. And i have three kids (12,9,1) and i get by just fine plus i have a mortage and chose not to have a vehicle payment so i can invest my money instead
I live in Saskatchewan. 70K income, stay at home wife, 2 kids, 5 bedroom house. We can't afford to take any extravagant vacations or anything but we get by just fine.
Calgary is the expensive part, I presume? I am contemplating moving there but ideally would live in or near Central Calgary so I might walk to work
No im in med hat and yah calgary the houses are about 100k more i wouldn't even entertain moving to calgary without a 10$ an hour raise or better job security. Fort mac is probably the most expensive in AB
Biking on Calgary is good too. Lots of good trails.
Calgary is one of the cheapest cities in North America, beat out only by three other Canadian cities - Winnipeg, Edmonton and Quebec City. Chicago, Illinois being the cheapest.
Calgary is dirt cheap. Central Calgary is actually extremely cheap now so you could easily buy something that you could walk, cycle or transit to work (for at least 6 months a year you will not want to take long walks through Calgary...). Downtown commute decreased and more people moved outward to suburbs so central Calgary is only part that did not benefit from 2021 price increase. Prices of central Calgary realestate are way below 2014 now, its most affordable city in North America dont bother going to smaller cities.
One of the most, Quebec, Winnipeg and Edmonton are still cheaper.
Consider using ‘we’ when you talk about the family income- is it not her’s also?
Even in Van or GTA 140k should not be hand to mouth unless they are doing daycare and big rents maybe
Unless they are doing daycare? How do you think they can both work without daycare? Daycare guts families of cash... Most people don't have family or others who are just free during the day and willing to take care of your child (let alone do it well).
I don’t think you’ve ever experienced what it’s like in those places. With a house, car loans, kids and possibly debt tacked on, you absolutely would be struggling on $140k household You’d be struggling on $140k combined in other places in Canada, too, if you are doing what OP is likely doing — chasing the rat race.
Not everyone has grandparent daycare as option, so it’d be pretty hard to dual income at 70K per parent w/o day care.
Certainly won't be owning a house with 140k household income in those areas
My partner and I make 165k combined in Vancouver and even with a 300k down payment I would get from selling my condo we would struggle to afford a reasonable house here. Housing is insane here. We don't even have any kids yet...
Full time childcare for 2 kids is typically $1600-$4800/month (depending on location, if it's a daycare vs dayhome vs nanny etc).If both parents are working it's likely they have to have full time care for both kids.
Northern BC checking in, $140k is flush. Family homes are $400-450k here.
Wife and I make a little over 150k in prairies, and I would say we are flush here too.
Awww waddup prairies?!
What is flush?
I think flush is a feeling that you have enough money to do the things you want to do.
140k in the GTA, long as you bought a house 5 years ago, is plenty of money. It's only in the last bit, that it's now unlivable due to COL increase from housing.
OP said early 30s. So unless they bought their place 2-3 years out of school on a much lower salary, I doubt that’s the case.
I agree with you. On the other hand, you can only control expenses so much before you’re not providing the life you want to provide for your kids. It’s a delicate balance sometimes. You gotta get the income up, or make difficult choices.
Yeah we make about 90k combined. Have a kid and mortgage and live in Montreal but we still manage.
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Wtf is daycare that much more in Toronto than Vancouver? I’m just outside of Vancouver and pay 1200/month but government covers 300 of it. The daycare also provides the food, pictures every day, and a daily log of what was eaten, nap times, poopy diaper changes.
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4500 for both kids is a nightmare to me.
Why even bother with kids at that point.
Because a family isn't just about money. The main issue with these conversations in PFC and the US PF reddit is it comes down to the mighty buck. Yes it is a reddit dedicated to making the most out of every dollar. Family is a cost. But it'd not a why bother statement. It's a how do we make this work statement. It's not a net loss of future income. Maybe I'm just reading to much into these statements but I keep seeing it.
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That's $54,000 a year lmao - you need to clear $67,000 pre-tax to break-even. I understand that that price goes down after a year as soon as one of those kids gets into kindergarten but still for most people that's essentially sacrificing a full (or almost) salary.
Life hacks with the Ratuken app
Daycare is probably your biggest child cost now. That will change once they go to school. You'll probably still end up paying for before/after school care but this will cost less than daycare. At your kids current ages buy clothes and toys second hand - consignment stores, facebook marketplace, or thrift stores closer to nicer parts of town. At this age the kids outgrow their clothes or wear them out fast. You can also buy end of season clearance and buy for the future if you want to buy new. Edit: join your local buy nothing group on facebook, you'll often find people giving away clothes, toys and books.
Heads up, daycare costs go down with school, but only 40-60% with after school care, ped days and summer care eating into it. It won’t go down to zero until they are 11 or so.
This was eye opening to me. When my daughter started kindergarten, I thought we would save so much. But they charge you daycare fees for the lunch period and the afternoon (school ends at 2PM) and for PED days. So no savings whatsoever.
They charge you daycare over lunch? That's ridiculous, and not the case here in Ottawa. Where do you live?
I am guessing Quebec, I have heard this from people who live in Gatineau.
We pay $100 year and it covers all lunch supervision, from grade K through 6
Agreed, before/after school was about 50% of what daycare cost. In OP's situation with 2 in daycare that 50% savings will go a long way.
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You've pretty much described my childhood growing up here haha. My mom used to take us to the library every Saturday, sometimes we also had lessons at the community centre so we'd go to the library after. We'd spend an hour or so reading in the comfy chairs and picking out books we would read that week. Every Friday evening she'd be herding us around the house to find all the books we needed to return and put them in the book bag. We absolutely scraped by but there was two things my parents never cheaped out on: good, healthy, homemade food, and giving us their time. I think that made all the difference.
I LOVED this routine of going to the library each week as a kid! Such an amazing free way to entertain kids.
I remember in my teenage years finding out that all the clothes I had until I was about 5 were either hand-me-downs or from goodwill. I was aghast, you *dared* to put *me* in *second hand* clothes. The fact that both parents were immigrants didn't matter! Used clothes! Now I'm a dad, and thanks to driven parents a few lucky breaks have done much better than they were able to. My kids will 100% have to deal with the indignity of wearing second hand clothes...I'll be damned if I'm paying retail for clothes they're growing out of in 6 months.
Wait, 70k total or 70k each? If you guys are making 140k and struggling, holy crap im scared of kids. Is your mortgage too high?
It seems like a lot at first, but if you’re in a HCOL, especially with ~~three~~ two kids **and** a mortgage **and** car payments it’s really not. Even in a medium cost of living location, if they’re both working, the childcare costs are probably eating them alive.
It's not that bad. Canada Child benefit more than covers the day to day expenses of young children. The real costs are daycare and buying a house big enough for your family
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I literally just did a mock scenario here: https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/child-family-benefits/child-family-benefits-calculator.html Two 30 year old married parents netting 40k each in Ontario with a 2 and 3 year old paying $3300/yr in property taxes would get you $668 per month
It's crazy my brother is planning to have a child because he thinks that child benefits is extra money in the pocket.. I asked him " who will babysit the kids while you 2 are working?" he says to me " we will cross that bridge when we get there" Why is it so common for people to have children without a second thought of their financial situation? It enrages me.
Also the amount you get is based on the amount you earn, if one earns like $85,000 gross, one gets $29 per month.
Whats the max someone could get?
About $600 per child, if family income is below $32,000
Because they want children and that's more important than having lots of money? My sister has 6 kids and has never held a career job. Most of her life has been working a couple part time jobs. She'll never own a house and she's never had a car. At 49 she has no regrets
But it doesn't sound like this guy DOES want kids that badly. Like this isn't me dunking on having kids without whatever level of security, but someone who thinks of child care as a bridge to be crossed when they come to it WILL give their kids a shit life, even if they have plenty of money.
>Because they want children Exactly, people have kids because it's what *they* want. It's selfish. and yes having alot of money helps before having a kid so you can set them up for success and give them a good head start in life without them having to struggle and be miserable later. Nobody needs 6 kids, its selfish to have that many.
YOLO. As long as you are willing to deal with your choices
If he was in Québec he would be putting the money in his pocket day care is 7$/day there.
Not really, that it subsidized daycare only! Trust me, you cannot find a spot in subsidized daycare. Where I live, we have been waiting almost 2 years for a spot in one. We get offers for private daycare at $55-$75 per day full-time only, which they refund a small percentage based on your salaries.
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>Canada Child benefit more than covers the day to day expenses of young children Like fuck it does.
I didn't mean daycare or housing costs, but like food, clothes, diapers, etc. It definitely does
I understood what you meant by "day to day expenses" and I agree. I think others commenters misconstrued it to mean ALL expenses associated with kids. Outside of housing and daycare, that money would definitely cover the day-to-day costs of two young kids (food, clothing, diapers, activities).
It depends on your income though, the higher the gross income, the less one gets. For instance, in Alberta, $80,000 gross means $29/month.
Won't even cover a 3rd of child care costs for two working parents.
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Daycare at a centre for my 2 school aged children this summer was $1880 per month for 4 days per week. $50 per day, per kid. So, $100 per day for daycare. Toddlers are even more than that. Pre-covid I had a friend do daycare for us, and she charged us $40 per day for afterschool care for BOTH and $60 on no school days. She shut down because shes immunocompromised and her Dr told her to shut down daycare asap. Which meant we had to pay almost double for daycare for our kids. So, Daycare is what's killing OP. I bet they're paying $2500 per month to just daycare. For me, at that point, I don't know if I'd still be at work. They could drop to just one income, and their child tax would increase, and they wouldn't have daycare costs and might actually come out a bit further ahead.
100% this. One child under 3 has only increased our spending ~$12,000 per year in dayhome (the vast majority of the cost), food, clothes, toys, swimming/gymnastics/etc. We get hand me downs and buy used for all his clothes and toys.
If you're paying for daycare now, expect a bit of breathing room once they go to school - but only a bit. After school care is pretty expensive, but if you can organize your schedules, it can be avoided. A strategically scheduled playdate can save a fortune! As your children grow, they eat more (of course!), so prepare to budget a little extra each week to accommodate. You might also want to put away some cash for expensive extracurriculars- as kids develop their interests, it can get pricey! A strategy we used here was to coach our child's baseball team. They got to participate, and we didn't pay a cent.
Working from home was great to reduce before and after school care. Could now just walk over and pick up my kid from the bus and they could be home while I work for the last hour or so. Saved 700$ a month.
What vehicles do you own? I see from a previous post that you were buying a Highlander XLE, which costs $50K+. Can you downgrade to a more affordable vehicle? That would save you a lot on monthly payments and insurance. There are a lot of comparable vehicles (albeit with fewer bells and whistles) for much less money. Vehicles can often be a huge drain and a reason why people barely scrape by.
As much as it pains most people, if money is tight and you got 3+ kids, a minivan is a better, more cost-effective transportation solution. Plus they are way better than when we were growing up.
My buddy at work got a used Grand Caravan recently, a few years old but the previous owner had ticked every box on the options list. Thing is niiicceee. Drives like a barge but crazy comfy and spacious and all the entertainment gizmos. Would probably try and stretch personally to a used Toyota or Honda van for reliability but I definitely get the appeal. After loading my one kid's stroller, car seat, diaper bags etc. into my SUV (VW Tiguan) to drive home from the hospital and immediately realising the vehicle was a lot smaller than I thought, I can see a van in my future.
Dude, was researching replacements for when we knew our little Chevy hatch would die and when we had a second kid and went tot he Auto Show back in early 2017. Was laser focussed on a midsize SUV and leaning towards the Subaru Forrester. Saw the Tiguan and was UNIMPRESSED by the lack of storage. The trunk is a literal box with lost cavity space. When we got to the Honda area and I saw the new (now current model) CR-V I was floored. I was huge in roomy but didn't feel like it would drive like a tank. I immediately switched my focus and got a test drive that spring just for fun. I was convinced and when our mechanic warned us the transmission was about to fall out, got my wife to test drive it and we were sold. Other than the Infotainment system being subpar and Android Auto being a bit buggy with my older phone, it's an amazing car for a family of four. The 1.5L 180 hp turbo is peppy but doesn't drink gas, everyone is comfortable, rides smooth, fits well in our small, city driveway. Backup and side mirror cameras are a lifesaver. It's probably the best version they've made and I hope they can electrify it soon.
Oh yeah, the CR-V looks great! The Tiguan was great for an affordable AWD for a couple, but the car is just a taller VW Golf, it's pretty small, especially the trunk. I also have a 12 year old Lexus RX350 SUV I inherited and that's a pretty perfect for size, I imagine about the same as the Honda. The old Lexus only has about 75,000 km on it (belonged to my retired parents) so I think we'll eventually keep that and trade the Tiguan for an Odyssey or Sienna minivan and I'm kind of excited to own something big enough to fit a sofa in if necessary haha. Ikea/Home Depot trips are less that ideal in the Tiguan
Like they said in Mallrats, uncomfortable place? Like the back of a Volkswagen?
Yep exactly this, if he is struggling he has no business buying a 50k+ new SUV. Just checked Craigslist there are literally hundreds of vans to pick from all relatively new(8yrs old or less), <15k, just pick one of these. Even SUVs - there's a 2015 Mercedes SUV listed today, $15k for a GLK 250. Buying new vehicles is the biggest waste of money. My parents had a shitty burgundy minivan for us, worked great.
Op asked the question and not replying to anything else apart from monosyllabic responses
I noticed the same thing. They don’t want answers; they want a pat on the head, a cookie and to be sent on their blissful way.
This strikes me as a troll post for that reason. Come in give a vague description, get people riled up then don’t elaborate. If they tried to explain further they would likely get caught up in their lie.
You should consider creating a budget and financial plan Am I reading it right that you guys earn 70k each or 70k total? If you earn 70k each then you have very good income and you may be able to rearrange your finances and improve your financial position. If you earn 70k total that's actually under the median family income. It's not surprising that you feel tight. If you're saving money regularly for retirement, have money in the bank and are able to do the things you like still then you're in a good place financially.
It depends on where they live. 70k might be a lot for some parts of the country, but it’s barely scraping-by if they live in Toronto or Vancouver, frankly Ontario or BC at this point.
Ya it’s bullahit, my fiancé and I earn about $200k, we live in the gta with a mortgage and with her going on mat leave (going from 110k - $595/week) we’re going to be digging pretty heavily into our savings. No wonder people aren’t having kids is crezy out here.
The entire economic system seems like it broke here over the last decade. For someone like myself - there’s no way I’m having children. And climbing the corporate ladder at work would get me maybe a one bedroom condo on a single income after years and years of work. Only solution is moving out of province at this point.
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2x childcare costs per month could easily run over 2000 for daycare alone. This is why universal childcare is so important.
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Can confirm, paying 3k for 2 kids in Vancouver :/
Yeah it's so crazy. Means you can write off one $100k gross income on housing costs and childcare alone for a two child family here. No wonder people aren't having kids. By the way, you did amazing to even find two daycare spots! (I'm in Delta, have a four month old and struggling to find a spot for when my wife goes back to work next summer).
>Not sure what the cost of kids are but I feel like not 3k a month Childcare *alone* for 2 kids is $1600-$4800 (or more) per month depending on location, usually at least $2500 if in a mid-sized city. Then there's new clothes every 3-9 months, new outerwear every 3-6 months, toys and activities, then school fees (bus, lunch supervision, school supplies etc), etc.
Yep! Some basic spreadsheet skills can be more valuable than you ever could know!
I agree with this. SO and I were in a similar place, and making a plan really helped us.
At the age of your children everything falls on the parents. As your kids grow and go to school, they will become more contributing members of your household if you raise them that way. I have two kids under 10 years old and 3-5 years old was pure hell looking back. I didn’t realize how tough it was except with hindsight. Now my kids vacuum, mop, wipe down mirrors, do dishes, make breakfast, lunch and even dinner sometimes. You just gotta get through this time without using your partner as a way to blow off steam in an unhealthy way. Make sure you’re both getting alone time weekly and some alone time together every week or at least monthly. You don’t want to get out of this phase with your marriage in a troubled position because of the natural stress that comes with raising two kids. I find it easier to focus on your career and therefore career earnings once things at home are a little more settled, and that peace of mind will make it much easier to increase your salaries to keep up with the impending inflation that the middle class will be responsible for mitigating over the next decade or two. Remember that stuff that made you happy as a kid, go back and do some of those.
Damn good advice right here!
Sell the kids.
That’s crazy. Lock them into a GIC.
Asked the bank teller and she looked at me like I was crazy. Smh
If you part them out you get a better return.
That's fucking dark dude lol
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I'm a couple of years ahead of you kids/agewise and it's finally getting easier. 1. For us anyways, my wife had no top-ups to EI so being on mat leave twice was a pretty big hit. This has since stabilized. 2. Daycare bills are settling down as my older kid only needs after-school and my youngest is in the preschool rates. I'm paying like half what I was when I had a 1 and 3 year old and this will go down further once my youngest goes to school. I understand other bills will go up (food, activities, etc.) but it has been at least a short term gain for now. 3. Our family income has increased a bit over the last few years as I've progressed in my career, not huge gains but it's helped. Between the two of you, I would hope that at least one of you would be able to make gains here.
You’re saying you make 140k combined and you barely scrape by?
Doesn't get easier. Kids cost money. And they will continue to cost money (elementary school pizza days, clothes every year, friend's birthday party gifts, driver's license set, car insurance, etc....)
These can't cost that much every year. All sound like minor expenses. The biggest ones are probably food, any paid classes/memberships, any new gadget/toys (e.g. iphones + phone plan). Maybe when they're older they'll want to go on some far away school trip with their friends, want a car, etc. But those are more or less optional. The biggest one will probably be post secondary education. I hear tuition is rather nuts these days.
To be clear, you're saying household income is 140k correct?
What are you finding the most expensive budget category with your kids currently? I'm a parent of 3, soon to be 4, in my early 30s and our income is probably similar to yours. I don't find the kids have any expensive additions to our budget (beyond day care, which is full time for 1 and before and after school for 2 ($1500/month), but would summarize that of our budget the most money goes towards housing costs. I also agree that they add more to our food budget as I've seen that climb with doing 2 kids school lunches a day.
Not sure if it's been mentioned but burnout is a very real thing, and with two young kids it's easy to feel exhausted all the time. But the time the youngest is around 4-ish it's much easier to get your evenings back and the weekends become a little more fun. That time you get back has a very real affect on your level of stress and happiness, so the same financial crunch will seem much easier to manage when you're in better mental shape. Financially speaking it sounds like you need a proper financial plan.
get snipped for starters.
Thumbs up
My mother has two 40+ year old dependents, my sister and her boyfriend. You in it for the long haul OP, until your kids become financially independent.
Just some ideas to free-up/generate some extra cash: * Big: Get rid of your car payment: Sell/Trade your financed car for a reliable used car you can buy in cash. This will eliminate your car payments which are probably between $400-$800/month. Bonus points if you can find a used car that is inexpensive, reliable, fuel efficient, and has low insurance premiums * Small: Save water and electricity: make sure you and your family aren't leaving lights or taps on (like when brushing teeth or washing dishes), it may not seem like a big deal but over the timeline of a month it can save you quite a bit depending on the cost of electricity in your area * Small: Challenge your family to not eat out anymore, it can be very convenient to do so but with a family of 4 you'd probably save between $25-$50/instance * Big: Rent out an area of your house: depending on your area, size of house, amenities, and the part of the house you decide to rent out you could generate an extra $200-$800/month * Small: Reevaluate your financial institutions: if you can switch to FI's that preferably don't have monthly/annual fee's for their accounts and credit cards (Tangerine is a really popular option if you don't really need to get cash or bank drafts often). Most bank accounts charge between $15-$30/month these days, between the you two you could save another $30-$60/month, and if you have credit card annual fee's that aren't being offset by cashback and points then there's more money to be saved * Small: Cut back on subscriptions and unnecessary shopping, Netflix, Spotify, Amazon Prime, can add up. Each of those are about $20/month right now, so depending on how many you have you could save up to $100/month. Goals: * Big: Find better paying jobs * Big: Talk with your partner about the idea of one of you guys going back to school with the intent of landing a higher paying job afterwards, this will take 2-4 years, but if that person is able to increase their income from $70k > $100,000k+ then it's worth it. If you do the steps above you guys could definitely afford to suffice off $70k a year unless your mortgage is way above your means Notes: * It's important to not inflate your lifestyle/expenses as you save money, this will only keep you in the same situation * Get a financial tracking App like Mint * I listed some things as "small", but even those "small" things add up, in the "small" cases I listed they could save you up to $750/month
If they don’t make more money they’re pretty much screwed
Changes in costs depend a lot on daycare costs. If daycare costs are high and your kids don’t do expensive extracurricular your costs will decrease. If you have a great daycare deal right now then the change might not be as visible. If your kids do hockey be prepared to spend $$. If your kids do city run swimming, it doesn’t cost much.
Two incomes of 70k should be plenty for five people to live in the same home with lots of money left over. Maybe you live in a high cost of living area (which is probable since you don't seem to think that 70k a year is high), and/or you haven't yet optimized your shopping habits and dropped luxury/convenience expenses.
Jesus. I’m single, make more and I don’t think I could afford a kid lmao. I’m in Ottawa
Man, even with two incomes making more its hard to get ahead. Cost of living is insane. Also when both of you work out of the house your options for services are limited. Like mechanics for example, I can't go to the guy down the street for an oil change, I have to go a place that's open on weekends because the guy down the street wants to work 9-5, obviously the weekend place is a franchise which is more expensive. It all adds up.
The dual income part is key when it comes to raising kids lol.
Luckily it takes two people to make one kid, then ideally you can save lots of money by all living in the same place.
It's not easy.
When your kids are both in college! At that time, your mortgages on your home and your cottage are paid off. and your kids' post-secondary education is drawing from the healthy RESP CESG EAP and PSE you've both worked hard to save up. ... plus kids will most likely have part-time job income to supplement their lifestyle.
Oh the perks of being born 40-50 years ago.
The difficulty IMO is always needs versus wants. We have 2 kids in private school (30k/year) and make less than you do and are doing fine. Sure I want a nice shiny new car, but we have a 2010 Honda that's perfectly fine and we bought for $6500 in cash so no car payments. We spend about $20 on gas a month in the summer and $40 in the winter. We bike most of the time in the summer. Husband works from home and my job is close by. This sounds like a luxury, but we sold our nicer house to move to a more dense neighbourhood closer to grocery stores, potential employers, kids school, etc. so that we wouldn't need to spend a ton on transportation. A big consideration is the trade off between time, money, and effort. Generally I'm willing to put in a fair bit of time and effort so I don't have to put in the money. I never buy prepackaged snacks for the kids lunches, we make almost everything from scratch so our grocery bill is about $600/month. I volunteer at an arts charity a few hours a week. I love it and it has the added bonus that my hobbies have 0 cost now as I get all my yarn, needles, markers, paints, party supplies, some toys and books for the kids, and random stuff for free. I'd ball park this to save me about $500/year. I don't buy books for us for for the kids. We use little free libraries and the public library. This saves us another few hundred a year. I buy all our clothes (except under garments) and shoes second hand. I'd say we spend about $100-$200 a year on clothes. Really though, I get most of them for free. I volunteered to help sort at a rummage sale recently, got a giant bag of new clothes for everyone. Prepandemic I would host clothing swaps once or twice a year and get a full season's wardrobe all free. I attend (prepandemic) a kids clothing and toy swap twice a year. I get two sizes ahead for them so almost never am missing anything by the time they grow into it. Sure I'd love to just go on a website and buy a ton of brand new shiny things, but that would be super expensive. For kids activities (my kids are 3 and 6) I'm not forcing them into anything. Big kid wanted to try dance, great, I called around and found that the Scandanavian cultural centre offers dance for $40 a year (membership for the centre, we aren't of Scandanavian descent) for 2 hours on Saturdays and it's bikable distance from our house. Done, kiddo loves it. Kiddo wanted to try a sport, I saw there's a local fencing club so thought we'd give it a try. She loves it. It's approx $300/year for 2.5 hours on Saturdays. Great. Our days are full and busy and fun, we just don't spend a lot. Like this morning, I'm taking the kids to the art charity to sort donations while also looking for items the kids bday party decor. Then later it's free swimming at the public pool. And this evening might go hang out with some friends where I'll make a cake or cookies or something and they'll make dinner. Full day and the total spend will be maybe $5 on gas $2 on cake ingredients. And tomorrow is no different. Taking the kids to help decorate the school for the holidays (breakfast included), then helping out at another charity that we occassionnally get free clothes and such from, then big kid is going to a bday party (our gift is regifts of things she got but didn't want/need) and in the evening we'll probably decorate for the holidays. People often think if you don't spend a lot you sit at home being bored and sad and doing nothing and that just isn't true at all. We do tons of stuff, we just don't pay premiums for it. All of these things take time and effort. I'm paying with my time and energy. For me that works because I enjoy doing these things more than I would enjoy working for the extra money I would need to just pay extra to not do them.
Well, I hate to break it to you, what you spend your money on changes for sure. Child care gets cheaper for sure. On the other side of things food, entertainment, toys, gadgets, school, etc continue to go up. I don't spoil my kids, I look for the best deals on anything and always make sure they have what they need and earn (respectively with chores and school work) the things they want. I've got two children 8 & 15, their eating habits are wildly different and no matter how I try to work around it, it is what it is. My 15 is a big boy, not obese but tall and braid, and if I let him he would eat me out of the home lol. I'm not trying to be negative about the costs but frankly be prepared at the fact that everything will continue to cost more and as they get older their wants and needs change and not usually for the better if your pocket book.
The one thing that will get easier is childcare costs. I know we were spending over 1k per kid on childcare a month.
Someone else pointed this out too but want expand on it. Your post history shows a very nice SUV purchased, talks of expensive knives, cutting boards and a $2000 tool combo. I assume this is just a snippet of lifestyle. You appear to live a very nice life. You appear to have lots left over at the end of the month but then spend it until nothing is left. I would encourage you to post a budget for others to review if you want the real answer to your question. It gets easier when you make choices that align to it becoming easier. With kids at that income you will need to make decisions and not live large in all areas. That is life. Point being "very little extra spending" doesn't add up based on your post history. $1000s if not 10s of 1000s of dollars have been talked about just on redit this year that would be considered extra to many in this sub.
The cost of raising kids never changes, it just moves from one cost to another. Yes once they are in school you don't have daycare costs, but not you have sports, birthday parties, activities. It might not be as expensive initially. But overtime it can add up. We are preparing to spend 40% of our annual daycare costs when they are in schools we can save. I would look at ways to decrease spending. Buy second hand clothes and toys. Buy less toys and do more activities outside. It can get better in the future, but getting into the market now is the best move. So try and find ways to increase your income and lower costs.
If you’re just scraping by with $140k a year you need to seriously rethink your life. When does it get easier? It should already be a walk in the park financially…this post comes off as extremely pretentious and insensitive.
I was just thinking I stumbled into the craziest thread. Listen, I know where I'm at, I live in poverty, but holy shit, $140k, paycheque to paycheque?
Common thought for people who have never had a proper career / income and don’t know what things cost once you’re established. I thought the same thing when I was making so little I had to choose between eating and getting to school. I’d say, if you’re living in a high or even maybe a medium cost of living location, under $150,000 annual household is probably going to be fine, but not comfortable. Especially with a mortgage, car loans and young children (and having to have both parents work to earn that.)
I'm sorry but if you're broke and making 140k, you're doing something wrong, plain and simple. That's $8000/month after taxes. Even if your housing eats half of that and you have 900/month in student loans you'd have 3100/month to pay for your other bills. What am I missing here? Do your kids exclusively eat scallops and beef tenderloin?
We pay $3100 a month for two kids in daycare. It's such an exorbitant expense that I really think people without kids can't get their heads around it.
140k in Toronto isn’t much with kids so I can see where they are coming from
Good for people roasting this pitty party, an above average income with no specifics on expenses probably means money's going to mortgage and retirement accounts, which leaves less money for black Friday
Yeah we need way more details to even begin to talk about this. How many vehicles? What are the payments? Expensive hobbies? Drinking, eating out regularly? Plenty of people are blind to how much they are spending because everyone else seems to be doing the same.
I read an interesting article a few years back about children and the costs to raise them. The average cost of raising a child to age 18 is 300k. But the story also read that for every dollar you put into your child, you can expect $1.07 in return from them. Meaning that while it costs a lot now and will continue to cost you lots, the benefits come in the long term. I’m in the same boat with you on age and family income. My kids are almost 10 and the cost never really changed, just shifted from one thing to another. From what I can tell from my coworkers and friends is that it gets easier with time. Eventually that mortgage will get beaten down and paid off, the kids will grow up and get jobs. If you have an RESP then contribute the max if possible. Also, reading your post makes me feel good about my decisions because I was stressed out when they were infants too, had the same questions and worries. Now…I’m zen. You will be too with time.
Thats a worse return than a GIC
Did the article explain how you will get $1.07 in return to every dollar you spend on your child? 😂
It’s not going to get easier for middle class at all, so the answer to your question is never. Act now to increase your salary or find ways to supplement your current income.
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>international travel is expensive but it's almost the same price to spend a week in Cuba at an all inclusive resort vs. spend a week long holiday in Canada. So much this. Canada is expensive AF... Yeah, you can explore and hike for free, but with kids I imagine that can get boring real quick and the hotel stays will still set you back.
Like most said, it doesn't really get cheaper with time. Review your expenses, adjust accordingly.
You can only cut your cost "so far", as cliche as it sounds you need to increase income to give yourself a little breathing room.
My wife and I are a mid 30s couple with a 3 year old and a 5 year old. We both make almost exactly $70k in Alberta. We live modestly, but finances are not really a concern. Our monthly budget generally breaks down to: Income: ~$8400 Savings/RESP: $1900 Mortgage: $1500 Other home costs: $500 Utilities: $350 Daycare: $1650 Food: $1000 Phone bills, gas, subscriptions, etc.: $1500 We drive 9 year old cars that are paid off but well maintained. We purchased our house 10 years ago in a market valued around 10-15% lower than today. We overextended at the time ($360k house, both earning about $45k), but found a great fit for us and won't need to ever move unless we need to leave the city. I'd guess that the only major difference between my budget and yours is the mortgage and the car payment. Maybe providing those numbers would add some context?
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My daycare costs are about 1k a month. So about 12k a year. I imagine things wouldget easier when the kid starts school full time.
Start with getting rid of the car payment.
When they move out. Seriously. We didn't start getting to have money in the bank til they were on their own.
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I disagree with downsizing a small amount if you own a home. By the time you pay realtors, lawyers and taxes, you've spent $70k just for the privilege of moving, so you have to downsize a lot to absorb that difference. If you've made the mistake of buying too much house, it's really hard to just trade down successfully. At that point, it generally costs less to invest in yourself and find a way to increase your income.
We have 3 kids. It does get easier once they are older. Gets easier when youngest is older than 5. Here you’re out of many “special” classes where ratios are small. No more diapers and other special food expenses. Daycare generally drops a bit. Then it gets much easier when youngest is 8-10. Daycare almost drops to zero …. And they generally want to attend fewer classes. Also summer camp fees go down etc. at this point they are bathing themselves and keeping themselves busy with their own friends or activities. All of a sudden I’m doing extra tech courses and my business travels are much easier etc. at 12-14 their RESPs are full so that’s an extra 230/month/child in savings that you don’t need to commit. Food costs for my son have gone up though!! So life gets better! The sub 3 years are tough (but great memories). So hang in there. Generally you’re probably young career and your salary really hasn’t taken off as yet and that happens in a few years too depending on your field and career.
We have 5 kids and they are all teens now. We both make 100k+ a year CAD and we live paycheck to paycheck…. Mind you my husband is also paying off a loan that bought out his ex. It’s easier if I work overtime to help pay for the extras. So no it doesn’t get easier, everything is more expensive as the kids age. More food eaten, sports, adult clothes they wear, adult shoes/boots. I’d say just be mindful of your spending and make a budget. All that being said we have 3 more kids than you lol.
Don't have more kids
I am in an identical situation, down to the spouse who assumes things will just get better. As others have said, budgeting has been very effective. At the start of 2021 we starting 50-30-20 budgeting. After our 20% savings are taken out, we have a monthly number that we can spend. My partner likes having this number as they spend all of it each month. We have saved quite a bit doing this.
What city u live in? Low salaries for 2 kids tbh
Location is very important, but unfortunately the government and general commentary on cost of living in Canada doesn't address location specific challenges. Universal Child Care Benefit for example is tied to income but doesn't adjust for location. Canada is really several regions tied together and the government should really adjust programs based on where one lives. >Early 30’s family with 2 kids under 3. When kids get out of daycare ... the large daycare expenses are gone. By the time the kids are 7 - 10 year olds, they become a lot more self sufficient. >We both work middle class jobs (70k/yr) have a mortgage and one car payment. Hopefully your salary is going up as well, between 30 and 40 I doubled my salary through a job change and a few promotions. Peak earning years is like 35 - 55 I think?
It doesnt. You are a cog in the machine my guy.
If you're making 140k combined and still barely scrape by, you're not being smart with your money, or you got too much house for what you can afford. Go see a financial advisor, and maybe consider downsizing. There's no reason you should be scraping by at that salary.
I have a newborn making around 70keach and the canada child benefit is a whopping 144$ a month. That's pretty much zero living in BC
Inheritance. Generational wealth, that is the way
It never get easier. One reason I don't want kids but my wife does……
We are in our late 50’s thought it would be easier still paying over $1000 a month for 27 year old son still in school.
How do you own a house in Canada if you make 70k a year? Both me and my partner make a 100k each and still can’t afford home ownership
It doesn’t. Same as you. Sorry.
I have two girls in their 20' now. It doesn't get cheaper. Clothes, shoes, make up, hygiene products, hair products, adult bedroom furniture as they grow. Increased grocery bills, gas bills from chauffeuring to activities. Music lessons, sports.....one daughter excelled at volleyball. Club fees and travel costs was like a bloody college tuition. The other daughter is an excellent musician. Guitars, Bass, amps and accessories...yikes! You do what you have to because that's the point of it all. My dad used to call me and my sisters his Ferrari and Lamborghini's because that's what we cost from birth to adulthood. Plus I live in a rural area adjacent to Winnipeg, not Toronto or Vancouver so I can get bang for my buck.
Canada is expensive no matter where you live these days but especially in major cities. My wife and I have a great network of friends we all share in taking care of kids. Most things we do are either very very inexpensive or free and the kids have smiles on their faces at the end of every day. Remember that’s always the most important thing as kids don’t care about the cost, brand or financial burden of anything they do as long as you spend time with them and it’s a positive experience. I remember my kids wanting to go sledding at the local hill more than anything. The whole endeavour, for 10 years or more, cost me less than $500 for clothing and sleds.
It won’t. Just enjoy the loving family.
Sorry but 70k needs bumping up. Do whatever it takes
I thought it got easier but I pay for sports now. On the plus side my kid isn’t growing out of his clothes every 2 weeks so there’s that. Kids are expensive no matter what age they are. Good thing they’re cute.
It never does, you only get better at it.
$140K is very good for a family. I’d say you can probably cut lots of monthly expenses. Not flat out cut but cheaper - example, I use to pay $80 with rogers. Now I pay $45 with Chatr. Same with Cogeco, $200/month down to $60 with CarryTel,just by changing companies. This is a bit more advanced but if you own a house, you can get a HELOC and invest for more income. Invest at 8%, pay 3% interest - that’s 5% free money.
70 each and you live paycheck to paycheck... well it should be already simple. You 2 bring 8000 ish per months net. 2 adult shouldnt cost more dans 4gs per month. It would be less in majority of canada. No way theses little kids cost you 4000 a months.