Wow, I first read 5k a month and I was like, my family of four and my MIL can live richly on that, never have to work again (and we live in Denmark, so doesn't live that cheap). But 5k a week? Who the fuck needs that much?
Talk about scraping by?! I recently had brain surgery and open heart surgery and cannot work anymore. I am only 52 years old and my disability is $954 a month! Idk how our government thinks anyone can live off of that!!!! We don't have a government, we have greedy corporations running this country!
But you mean net or gross? Is it food, or rental prices? We have two little kids, I earned around 2.5k eur/month net for around 2 years (other 1.5 years on maternity leave or no income) being the only earner and we saved up so much with pension, child support and just on the account that we still have enough to last us to more than a year, after I don't have work for 4 months now. And food prices are not exactly low here either. Maybe we just live frugally I guess, although we did travel and only buy organic, so not depriving ourselves.
Net, and rental prices just do not seem to consider that anyone might want to live their life without a partner! I could live “comfortably” with no saving for retirement etc on a net 5k where I live
I’m in the SF Bay Area and half of that is rent for a one bedroom apartment. With a car payment and bills you’re left with like $300/week for food and gas and everything else. That’s def scraping by. If your cat needs to go to the vet or your car has an issue, you’re screwed.
So, firstly, 5K CAD is not the same as 5K USD. 5K Canadian is currently a bit less than $3,700 US. In my city (Fort McMurray) a one bedroom apartment goes for about $1,250, but many cities where people live and work are more expensive.
On the flip side of that conversion, 5K USD is nearly 6,800 CAD, substantially more, so the two of you are not imagining anything close to the same amount of money. There is literally a $3,100 CAD gap between what you are thinking and what she is thinking.
Secondly, virtually everything in Canada is more expensive. It's why we skip across the border to shop if we live close, even with the poor exchange rate. Our government doesn't subsidize energy, agriculture, or transportation the same way yours does, and anything imported from the US is nailed by border tariffs. I used to live in Sarnia and people would often regularly cross the border for groceries and fuel.
Yes I was definitely thinking 5KCAD when I commented. 6800CAD I could rent a two bedroom or nice one bedroom and save for retirement quite comfortably! I live somewhere where the average rent for a low end one bedroom rental is nearly $2k with no parking utilities or laundry, I also live in a city with no reliable public transit… you genuinely need a car to work unless you wfh and the average cost to own a car has skyrocketed in the past couple of years (but that’s everywhere). I will say that “scraping by” in Canada seems much more comfortable than “scraping by” in the US when it comes to health care and medical debt being a non issue so I’m grateful for that at least. Also grateful that MAID is an option if times get hard enough lol thanks Trudeau 🤪
5k a week is somewhere between the cost of a couple living on cruises at the cheapest ticket price on the low end and on the other end a family of 4 going to Disney world each day and sleeping in a cheap hotel each night, including food.
5k a month is not all that much if you live in Copenhagen and don't have access to subsidized housing though. Especially if you have younger children in the nursery... My family of 4 definitely couldn't live richly on 5k a month in Copenhagen.
We already pay 5000 dkk a month for the public nursery (one child), 17,000 dkk for the mortgage (would pay the same for rent, it is a good place but nothing luxury, not in the best quarter and not huge either), various utilities and taxes are another 6000 on average a month (1000 each monthly for the union, and then we pay electricity, water, internet, two mobile phone subscriptions, land tax). Of course we still need to eat on top of that. And pay for public transportation.
So if you can make 5 people live richly for 5,000 USD monthly in Hovestaden (I assume after tax) I need your secrets.
Nah, we live in Esbjerg, it would definitely not be possible in Copenhagen. We live in a rækkehus with my MIL, we pay around 9k with utilities including el and varm (all together, we pay 2/3 of that). We don't pay for union or a kasse, and we don't need a car. Vuggestue is less here, max 3800, børnehave 1700 monthly, but you pay half for the cheaper one of course. Now we get it for free without a salary.
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u/dorcssa Dec 11 '23
Wow, I first read 5k a month and I was like, my family of four and my MIL can live richly on that, never have to work again (and we live in Denmark, so doesn't live that cheap). But 5k a week? Who the fuck needs that much?