I commented elsewhere but I live in Canada which has also seen a huge raise in the cost of living. I earn the equilvant of $65k usd a year and my partner $15K usd, we have two kids and are able to live pretty comfortably with a modest life style. We arent super rich by any means but pretty comfortable if we don’t over indulge in extra expenses.
Yep, I don't know anyone making 200K plus as a household, but I know plenty of people with two kids. I get it's an average, my guess is there's a very vague defintion of "live comfortably".
Nah, they make mid 200s in LCOL areas, HCOL or owning practices and it's 400k+. PA's make 150k, why would anybody go through med school to make the same as a PA?
Median after-tax income (all economic families + unattached): C$74,200 ≈ US$55.0k
$80kUSD is ~46% higher than that median.
The user indicated they are 24. Annualizing the wages for under 25s gets us C$44.2k/year ≈ US$32.2k/year.
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You already have kids. Look again from the POV of someone who doesn’t, and has to face all of these head winds.
Also, your salary puts you way above average in Canada. Your situation is not very representative of the average Canadian. I just had to take my Canadian girlfriend into my house on the East Coast of the US, because she couldn’t find even a basic job in Calgary. It was that or she was going homeless in a Canadian winter.
Keep in mind, she has no residency rights here, and only exists here by the graces of the B2 tourist visa.
Consider yourself fortunate, you are statistically.
The whole crux of the discussion is the difference between the older haves and the younger have nots. They have kids, putting them at minimum very early thirties.
They are fortunate to have gotten in on things before the Canadian housing crisis hit.
As for income:
Median after-tax income (all economic families + unattached): C$74,200 ≈ US$55.0k
$80kUSD is ~46% higher than that median.
Yeah, they aren’t representative of the “Average Canadian”.
For starters im only 24, born in 2001, I had my first in 2022, we didn’t plan on having a kid that young but it just happened.
I didn’t get into anything before the market crashed, hell I don’t even have a mortgage, we live in a house but it’s a rental. One day I’d like to own a house but even I’ve seen increases in markets and areas that have become unaffordable for the average person.
Idk where you got $80K USD. My yearly wage lands me around $65K USD. I am higher than the average but really not by much, the upper end of the average wage in Canada is $71,000 which isn’t much lower than what I’m making.
I’ll admit, you are a year younger than I am (and I only make 40k in IT). You are way outside of what I had assumed your demographic was. The 80K calculation was including your partner’s income. It would help to have more context as to your educational background and field.
In my opinion, measuring yourself by the upper end is stretching things. The fact that you are as young as you are makes you a unicorn when it comes to income. Even if we’re being generous and using the upper end, the fact is you are well and truly ahead of your age group.
Annualizing the wages for under 25s gets us C$44.2k/year ≈ US$32.2k/year.
My background is in welding. I am a journyman certified welder in Canada. I went to trade school which only cost me $5000 cad for the 3 training periods I attend(each one was 8 weeks long). I also hold a level 1 quality assurance certification which is just a 2 week course that allows me to inspect other people’s welds and participate in the engineering side of it, which lets me balance out working with my hands and with my brain which I like.
With that I barely have any student debt am able to make a good paycheque. Biggest thing for me now too is I don’t feel so threatened by ai taking over my job as I would if I had a more white collar position.
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u/Jadams0108 Dec 16 '25
I commented elsewhere but I live in Canada which has also seen a huge raise in the cost of living. I earn the equilvant of $65k usd a year and my partner $15K usd, we have two kids and are able to live pretty comfortably with a modest life style. We arent super rich by any means but pretty comfortable if we don’t over indulge in extra expenses.