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You may be beating CoL inflation in some basket-of-goods sense; you may even have more than doubled your salary (starting from a pretty low number) in the last ten years -- but you still can't afford a house, and the average home price in Toronto has been quite consistent in doubling every ten years since well before you were born. How much more than twice your current salary will you be making ten years from now, that you will be able to afford the house that you can't afford now?
This is... mostly false? O&G in Calgary offices pay quite well. Not "Bay Street Investment Banker" well, but it sounds like you are not that.
You don't have a home to sell -- you can't afford one and your rent money is disappearing instead of being (partially) stashed away as equity. This is unlikely to change for you in the future.
Says the guy from Toronto
"I like having fun, I can always have kids later" is... not a really unique attitude, but not a long walk from "I don't really want kids that bad".
And now you want to inflict this pain on your own (hypothetical) kid -- you need to break the cycle somewhere man.
I do actually hope to double my salary in the next ~5 years. I'm currently in PE-adjacent consulting and plan to move into actual PE once I get bored where I am.
Even without a doubling, I'm pretty confident we'll be able to buy in Toronto in the next 5-8 years, I mean hell, prices are so good right now we've been debating going all-in and being house-poor. It seems quite miserable though, I have worked extremely hard to not be paycheck to paycheck, so going back to that level of penny-pinching... Ugh
You make a fair point, I'm sure the O&G gang need people to do modelling, etc. I was interviewing at a mining company way back when and they were just so boring and dry. Maybe O&G attracts more charismatic people.
I know I know, Toronto governance is absurdly bad. I think what differentiates it is that Toronto is run poorly because no one does anything, Danielle Smith and her merry gang seem to be actively trying to break everything. Which feels worse I guess?
It's not so much "city fun kid boring", I fucking loved growing up in Toronto. I want my kid to experience that. And Toronto is so much better now than when I was a kid.
The Toronto escape plan is probably Hamilton, which I actually think is super under-rated. Although with Metrolinx shitting the bed on electrification that plan just got less attractive.
This comment is gonna be an answer to all the comments you've posted, so apologies in advance if its a bit scattershot/accusatory.
I completely respect the desire to raise your kids in Toronto, while maintaining a quality of life approximately equal to your own. However, I'd urge you to reconsider how you view the challenges facing you. I've personally seen the apartment that my grandparents raised their kids in, and they raised 3 children in a small 2 bedroom apartment. Space challenges are almost always actually about the challenge of giving up space, and not about the physical impossibility of fitting in a child.
I'd also like to point out that your career trajectory lines up with your family planning; your (hypothetical) child won't need to have their own room until they're a couple of years old. That matches up with when you expect your salary increases enough to be able to comfortably sustain a 2-bedroom apartment - the best time to have a kid is now, because you'll be able to afford a bedroom for them, when they need it.
These two statements are contradictory with respect to your desire to provide a better life for your children. If Toronto is so much better now than when you were a kid, how could it possibly be a downgrade in quality of life if you raise them up in Toronto now?
As for education, look into IB. Cheaper than Private school, more rigorous than Ontario High Schools.
I agree, Hamilton is underrated, but have you considered the towns in the Greater Toronto Area, such as Burlington, or Oakville? Boring yes, but damn good places to raise a kid.
Thanks for sending me your thoughts!
I have no doubt we could raise a kid here, for a bit. It would be a huge pain, but you are right it's likely the timing would work alright between career progression and the space needs of the family. I mentioned this before, but there is something shitty about having to "downgrade" versus your childhood. Scary thought if there's some job losses and we get stuck here, the den doesn't even have a door.
Honestly, the timing thing you mentioned is a compelling point. I think that's been percolating in my head for a while, and one of the reasons I latched onto this topic. The narrative of "we can't do it yet" is starting to have some cracks in the foundation (is this what brain development feels like?).
This is kind of in the weeds, but the existence of tents in Toronto parks doesn't mean all of Toronto is worse off. The city is bigger and more full of interesting places all over. It just sucks not having a backyard, OR living in a fancier neighborhood. I have never seen tents in Ramsden park (in Forest Hill) for example, but downtown residents don't lean on their city councilors very much (or have the wealth/clout to make their lives suck).
To be honest I find the existence of Burlington and Oakville both mildly offensive to my sense of what makes for a good city (terrible for the environment, unsustainable financially, and deeply opposed to anything changing ever). I don't want my kid to be shackled to me until they're 16, and despite being an avid cyclist in Toronto, I would be very uncomfortable with my kid biking around the streets of Oakville with their friends (not because of crime/stranger danger, because of oblivious drivers and a complete lack of bike infrastructure or respect for cyclists). And they can't walk anywhere because everything is at car distance.
My friends and I were taking the streetcar to and from school in packs at age 11/12, it was great. We could bike (or walk) to each other's houses without riding on or near mega-roads with average speeds north of 60km/h.
Also living in Hamilton means I can at least live and work in downtown Hamilton and have a quick commute. In Oakville or Burlington I'm either taking the GO train into Toronto (awful, especially now that electrification got fucked) or I am driving to some random business park in perpetually worsening YoY traffic (proven to be shitty to your life satisfaction).
This has turned into a shameless downtown elitist rant. Thank you for your perspective. I think you are right, I have not been considering the play you get with timing in the first few year's of your child's life. They don't get born with a need for a full on room to themselves, that takes time.
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No offense, but I started out predisposed to believing you, but the more you post, the more I think the revealed preferences people are correct, at least in your particular case. Whatever you wish to be true, large, especially capital cities in the west have been on a trajectory of being increasingly fun and cool for the young, childless and high-powered careerist, while becoming less and less affordable for families. The same goes for all the popular jobs. You pay a significant premium to have a job that is fun, and if that premium is so expensive that you can't afford kids, it means you value that fun higher than kids. No, people in the past didn't have fun jobs, in fact if boring and dry is the worst you can come up with, that's probably a top 1% job in terms of satisfaction right there, certainly in the past and to some degree even currently.
I did my PhD in London. For my career, and probably even for that of my wife, it would have been MUCH better to stay there. My PhD supervisor was ready to take me over as a postdoc, and she is quite successful. My wife, meanwhile, had worked with Friston (the neuroscientist), and would have had a decent shot at getting a postdoc there as well. But we both chose against it, for multiple reasons, but primarily because raising kids in London sucks. My PhD supervisor had her first child almost simultaneously with mine (just a few weeks difference), and I really can't see her getting more than one. We went back to [small university city in germany] and are now on our second child and counting. We will probably have three, maybe four (though more are unlikely, since we didn't start early enough and I'm also not a particular fan of having babies past 40).
And it was totally worth it! Kids really are the greatest meaning-generators. Fun also gets a lot cheaper; Suddenly, I don't need to go on expensive vacations or the like. All the simple things that have become boring for me, if I do it with our eldest and she is having fun, I have fun as well through the magic of empathy. Hell, even playing peekaboo with our baby is lots of fun. And no, doing it with other kids isn't the same.
Tbh, I'd say that you're stuck in a local maximum that is pleasant and fun right now but will lead to you being dissatisfied in the long-term, and you even recognise that fact, but you don't leave bc you aren't willing to suffer a little in the valley on the way towards a better maximum.
No offense taken! I post here because I find the people (generally) smart and insightful. Exposing my ideas/thoughts/beliefs to the gang means I get challenged, and I learn something about their beliefs, or mine. It would be silly to expose them to public scrutiny and then get mad!
I do feel slightly misunderstood, although maybe I instead misunderstand you.
I am not putting off having kids because I love slamming craft beers with the boys. I am putting off having kids because housing is expensive (and other reasons, elaborated earlier).
You're right, capital cities are expensive. It honestly feels kind of like a lose/lose trap. If I live and work in the periphery, I risk not earning enough money to escape renting, especially with the rate of growth of housing costs (I have 0 faith this issue will be satisfactorily resolved in my lifetime, the political situation around it is too broken).
If I live in the city, I make more, but everything is more expensive. If I live in the periphery and work in the city, I can have cheaper CoL with higher salary, but an absurd amount of my waking hours are now spent driving or on a train.
I also do have a preference (hah) for growing up in the city. I really liked being raised in Toronto. I would love to give this experience to my kid. Maybe this is an unreasonable or unrealistic want.
Thankfully, I'm also getting far enough in my career that I could sometime in the nearish future make a lateral move to a smaller city and be some flavor of finance manager and make "can afford a house" money. But for entry level jobs, you're looking at a ~20k haircut on your starting salary if you're not in the big city.
Grinding finance in Toronto has always felt like the best option in a sea of shitty options. Plus from a personal level I derive a lot of enjoyment from living here (not just the craft beers, but also the vast majority of the people I know and love live here).
This is very true
This I'm less convinced by, most alternatives right now don't feel like there's a better maximum at the end of them. Although I'm obviously not omnipotent.
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The West is like this in general. Despite what Ottawa would have you believe, it's a different country out here- one where you can afford a house at the price of [what you perceive as] your Canadian identity.
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