Moving out: Canada vs. US

[Julius Seeker]

BL and Kali both moved out of home at age 16 as well. Yeah, an afterschool job at Pizza Hut, the video store, or the Supermarket can generally pay for all your needs (if you have a few roomates) and you also have a bit of cash to play around with if you're careful.

If yopu drive by the high schools, you'll see a lot of town houses across the street or very near by. That's where students generally live.

[SineSwiper]

Even though I had the overly expensive rent at the rich part of town, I still don't think I could have really made it with car insurance, and all of that. It's was basically mac&cheese dinners with a broken car, no insurance, no A/C, etc., etc.

I dunno...I squeaked by a lot of money issues and survived. I just don't see how anybody else could "live well" with a pizza job or some other minimum wage shit. Nevermind having "a bit of cash to play around with". (Yeah, sure, we spent the money, but we needed it for more important things anyway. Remember going to the plasma center once or twice...)

[Julius Seeker]

I don't think I paid anymore than about 300 a month for all expenses. My rent was only 100 a month. I didn't bother with a car until later either, I already knew plenty of people who had them. My first car was a $900 used two door Toyota Tercel, what a piece of crap =)

Most people who live on their own here though, often until the end of University, are living off of their parents money anyways.

[Zeus]

Seek lives out in the Atlantic provinces, which is like living in Wyoming ;-)

[Julius Seeker]

So when I posted this article, I hoped people would read it, think about it and comment on what the author said. I wanted to avoid the "My personal opinion which is based solely on my own perception" posts.

Quit trying to be such a control freak Kupek. You should be glad people responded to you post at all considering how dead this place has been lately.

By the way, didn't we all decide long ago that if you post a NYT article requiring registration thatyou should paste the text of the article in the original post? I vaguely recall something like that... Maybe you could do something like this next time?

My rent was only 100 a month.

Wow Seek, no wonder you were able to do it... and that's $100 Canadian, right? Wow. The least expensive place you can get around here is for $400 US, and that's not much more than a two room piece of crap apartment. An apartment for 2 or more people would cost at least $600 US. Even then, you'd still be paying $300+ just on rent.

St. Louis has a very low cost of living too... In places like California, a single bedroom apartment goes for like $800+ at the cheapest.

Well between the four of us it was $400, it was a three bedroom townhouse. So about the equivilent to $340-350 US. Yeah it is fairly cheap to get Townhouses in the smaller towns. It depends where you are though, luckily the town I lived in was not close to water (property close to water is insanely expensive, PEI is a huge seasonal tourist trap, so generally the closer you are to water, the more valuable the land).

Speaking of land, I was insanely lucky to get a few acres of land on the shorefront of PEI when I was very young, before the bridge went in (there's a 15 kilometer bridge that links the island to the mainland). It is now worth a lot of money and is going up every year. It is not possible to get good shorefront land now without spending at least 100K.

Atlantic Canada is a beautiful place to live, though I don't know which I prefer, the East Coast or the West Coast (they're the two most beautiful places that I have ever been to). I will probably end up living back on the West Coast eventually; but for now I will remain on the East Coast because of the better education opportunities.

[kali o.]

Very random...or was this excised from some other thread and deemed worthy of a thread unto itself?

Either way, I moved out at 15 and was fairly pampered and paid for, all things considered, until I purchased my first place at 17.

Vancouver (BC in general) is comparatively pricey, when weighed against anywhere else in Canada, as far as I know (roughly $600 per bdr in the east side, $800 per bdr on the west side/UBC or $1800+ to rent a house, $1300+ per bdr downtown).

Of course, since I have no idea what the original topic is, I doubt I'm adding anything useful...just rambling.

[SineSwiper]

Sorry, it was hard to split, due to the mixed-topic replies.

[the Gray]

Zeus and I are just conditioned by the previously astronomical rental rates of Waterloo Ontario.

With 2 Universities and a huge College, housing was at a premium here. It was not unheard of to pay $600 Cdn for a shitty basement apt.

Finally the Universities have taken more action and have built more dorms and off campus housing, Apt's etc. Because of the rental rates here I had no problem whatsoever charging my roomates $500 a month for per room + use of the house. It's still a really damn good deal around here.

[Julius Seeker]

I was going to go to Wilfrid Laurier originally. It was actually a last minute thing that I cancelled those plans and decided to go to the East Coast. Yeah, I think living expenses did factor in. I hate losing money, and I wouldn't have been able to go to University there without losing money; I can afford it now, but there isn't much point now since I am already on graduate level programs and have invested so much into relations with people, on the east coast, who can get me to where I want to go.

[the Gray]

Oh hell, I wouldn't come here if I was you right now either.

I have no doubt I would love the atmosphere out there on the East coast myself. But, there are things about this place I do like. I miss the whacky Mennonites/Amish if I'm away too long. They make some damn good maple syrup and summer sasitch.

My cousin is now living somewhere in Nova Scotia, so I'm thinking of imposing myself on them sometime soon. I've never been to the East Coast, and I want to drink beer with some maritimers.

[Zeus]

You know they'll drink you under the table, Grey. They're like the Irish, they have that shit for breakfast :-)

[the Gray]

Oh I know, I know. There were a lot of East Coast blokes up in the NWT while I was there. Jebus Murphy they drank pure spirits and pissed Cognac.
They treated Beer like it was Welch's Grape juice, a nice tasty drink but not for serious drinking.

I wouldn't even attempt to keep up with such fine Alcoholics. I'd just salute them as I sip my kiddy juice.

[Julius Seeker]

You know they'll drink you under the table, Grey. They're like the Irish, they have that shit for breakfast :-)

Actually, I did have beer for breakfast on Tuesday, but it's exam period, I deserved it dammit!

I admit though, I can't hold up to a lot of people here. The reaosn why a lot of people do drink like Irish is because they ARE Irish. Newfoundland, they still even speak with an Irish accent, the province is nearly all Irish. The Acadians (who can be identified because their strong accent makes them sound like bumpkins, I think their accent originated from the same place that those in the Southern US did; and Acadians also listen to Country Music and Metal, two very popular forms of music in the Southern US. I would actually like to do a study on that sometime, to find out why the cultures have those similarities) also drink a hell of a lot more than what is good.

As for alcoholics, there are those who may drink a lot and alcohol consumption is a habit. A true alcoholic is someone who has taken that habit to a whole new level, their bodies have become so used to the intoxication effects that if they don't have it, they go crazy and may even possibly die. An alcoholic sees the world through totally different eyes from regular people, if someone took a piss in a beer bottle and tossed it, an alcoholic would pick that up and drink it; it's still beer, just with some urine in it, no big deal.

I am not entirely sure but I think drinking is a large part of the culture of most of the western world. Eastern Canada, much of the US, Much of Western Canada, and all of Europe (except parts of Austria, and that's about it) have drinking cultures. I think the Japanese also have a big drinking culture as well. Ontario and some of the States in the surrounding area do not have big drinking cultures either. These are just my observations from travel =P Latin America is another place with a large drinking culture, but that was also settled by Westerners. The Europeans are the worst I think. Every time I go to Sweden, they don't greet me with a hug or a handshake, it is by giving me a beer =P

[Nev]

I'm glad I'm not the only one here in the "morning beer" category. I've only done it once - it was an interesting day - and my friends gave me hella shit about it, but it was still fun.

On the subject of rent, I pay $725 (utilities included) for a studio down in Los Angeles, and I'm in a pretty ghetto neighborhood too...I wonder if rent really is more expensive in the U.S. than Canada?

[Kupek]

Rent depends on the cost of living of the area. The two bedroom apartment I live in in Williamsburg, VA costs $680 a month; my share is only $280. In Christiansburg, VA (which is right next to Blacksburg, where Virginia Tech is), a couple I know leased a <i>house</i> for $900 a month. A <i>new</i> house. It was not large, but it had plenty of of room for a married couple with no kids. But Christiansburg is the middle of the nowhere.

But up in Arlington, VA, near DC, my brother paid $1,400 a month for a single bedroom 17th floor apartment.

[the Gray]

I'm only paying $940 CDN for my mortgage per month on a Two Story House. Not overly large (I forget the sq footage) but it's not too high.

A good studio apt in Toronto would set you back over $2,000 in the right neighbourhood. Even shitty neighbourhoods are expensive there.

Here in Waterwoo $725 US will get you a fucking incredible apartment. And we are a huge Tech sector area. RIM, Ratheon, ATS etc etc are always hiring. (Hint hint, if you are looking for a high paying job in the tech sector)
$600 CDN will get you a very decent, servicable apartment if you look hard enough in Kitchener (basically the other half of Waterloo, or the other way around?)

Little more expensive in Waterloo.

[SineSwiper]

$950 for a 5BR house over here. The 1BR apt we had for a while was around $350-$400. The cost of living elsewhere still boggles my mind...