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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.
More options
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