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Your road to the RFD $250k Household Salary. The un-realistic salary discussion thread.

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Jan 6, 2002
6833 posts
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Toronto
OK, which household is richer:

1. Couple, both earners in the mid/high 100s, two kids, mortgage paid off years ago.
2. Couple, one earner in 500s, two kids, just bought a detached house in Toronto w/ mortgage 20% down.

I agree with some of the comments about "if you know a couple who are both mid-career professionals" and they've been living in Toronto for awhile (in the housing market for 10-20 years) it's likely they are far more wealthy, in practical terms, than the freshly minted golden paycheque earners.

ie the concept of "upper middle class" is a huge sliding window of circumstance, it's not just determined by your most recent T4 numbers.
Si Tacuisses, Philosophus Mansisses
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Dec 11, 2008
13064 posts
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unshavenyak wrote: God, your in-laws must be my mother. Divorced at 50 with a 4,000 square foot bungalow that is never clean. It makes me die inside every time I visit.
I have known them for 11+ years and their home keeps falling apart. They don't clean, hoarders and just gross. The couch in living room is no couch, it is a place for jackets. I find one seat and sit on it when I want to get away from the crowd.

My MIL said "wow you keep your stovetop so clean..." It isn't very hard lady...

Everytime I am over there and they cook, I swear SOMETHING is boiling over LOL
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Dec 19, 2015
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Calgary, AB
StatsGuy wrote: why would it get less common to be a dual income household? that's more common than single income ..and why do you mean as they get older? they don't lose their degree or you mean less common because one of the spouse stays home? well that tells you something if a household can go down to one income and still manage?

but then this is just median, so half of this subset makes above that ..so ya one spouse could be pulling in 200k or whatever and the other one stays home..but it's no different to me than people who choose not to work because they can afford not to..and then include them to say housing is unaffordable...because someone who chooses not to work can't afford a home lol
Bolded. Yes, people take time off work to have kids, many don't go back to full time. And yes, it does tell you something, that indeed it's assumed that in those households one person working makes enough money.

Two full time degree level adults living together is relatively rare, which is my point. It doesn't represent most households.
StatsGuy wrote: here's median income from 2015 tax filer data

https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-rece ... 24-eng.cfm

add on the change in avg wage increase (24%) for those working FT, 25-54 of age (this was closest dataset i could find to align with the median income dataset) from 2015-2022

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en ... 2C20220101
Those figures are pretty much the same as the ones I posted. The key difference seems to be estimated wage increase. They surprisingly reasonable for what you said. That said, to move the argument slightly (because I did a bunch of calculations before realizing what you had in the second link)

According to Statscan wage increase from 2016-2020 was 7% https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en ... 1110023901 , in 2021 wages rose 3.7% and in 2022 wages rose 5.1% (so ~13% overall for all workers)

Average salary of degree level individuals based on my link is $69k in 2016 ($80k with wage inflation)
Average salary for for full time degree level (from your links) for men is around $82k and women $68k. Assuming a 50:50 split that gives around $75k average. ($105k with wage inflation).

There seems to be a growing income disparity between full time degree educated couples and everyone else.
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Dec 20, 2018
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Andy34 wrote: Bolded. Yes, people take time off work to have kids, many don't go back to full time. And yes, it does tell you something, that indeed it's assumed that in those households one person working makes enough money.

Two full time degree level adults living together is relatively rare, which is my point. It doesn't represent most households.


And frankly most households aren't in market to buy a new sfd anyways so not a big deal

If you expand to any post secondary, then it's majority
Canada has the most educated workforce in the world, with 62% of Canadians aged 25–64 having graduated from post-secondary institutions

For college grads it's around 89k for males and 62k for females in Ontario using same dataset I linked for 2022 (2015 wages escalated by average increase in wages)
Bachelor's is around 1/3 of work force

Image

And frankly if you're a two income household where where education is not even a bachelor's... Ya you're as likely to be living/afford a sfd in the GTA and that's absolutely reasonable to me with how many people have higher education and higher salaries correspondingly

But again regardless of education, these are median numbers...so half of the total subset of these workers make more than that figure ..so ya you have a degree holder and college grad... So that's like $170k or so (male with degree, female with college) ... For two person household... And half make more even with just one degree holder
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Dec 19, 2015
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Calgary, AB
StatsGuy wrote: And frankly most households aren't in market to buy a new sfd anyways so not a big deal

If you expand to any post secondary, then it's majority



Bachelor's is around 1/3 of work force


And frankly if you're a two income household where where education is not even a bachelor's... Ya you're as likely to be living/afford a sfd in the GTA and that's absolutely reasonable to me with how many people have higher education and higher salaries correspondingly

But again regardless of education, these are median numbers...so half of the total subset of these workers make more than that figure ..so ya you have a degree holder and college grad... So that's like $170k or so (male with degree, female with college) ... For two person household... And half make more even with just one degree holder
And to bring that round to the discussions in this thread. That basically means that around 1/3* of double degree educated households may end up getting to $250k, and even less to $500k.

*Assuming approximately 2/3 have two people working full time most/all their lives, which is probably an overestimate.

$250k and even more so $500k is a lot more than the vast majority of households can even dream of, hence why they represent 10% and 1%ish respectively.

This thread was started in 2019, so maybe we should be calling it the $275k thread instead....
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Jun 18, 2020
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Andy34 wrote: And to bring that round to the discussions in this thread. That basically means that around 1/3* of double degree educated households may end up getting to $250k, and even less to $500k.

*Assuming approximately 2/3 have two people working full time most/all their lives, which is probably an overestimate.

$250k and even more so $500k is a lot more than the vast majority of households can even dream of, hence why they represent 10% and 1%ish respectively.

This thread was started in 2019, so maybe we should be calling it the $275k thread instead....
Sorry if I missed it when I skimmed last couple days of posts, but was 10% and 1% for those incomes posted with a link? I recently tried to find a nice clean source for that, either Canada or Ontario and couldn't. Just not sure if you or anyone had a link handy. Specifically I was looking for HH income percentiles.
Sr. Member
Dec 21, 2009
567 posts
534 upvotes
Oakville
hoob wrote: OK, which household is richer:

1. Couple, both earners in the mid/high 100s, two kids, mortgage paid off years ago.
2. Couple, one earner in 500s, two kids, just bought a detached house in Toronto w/ mortgage 20% down.

I agree with some of the comments about "if you know a couple who are both mid-career professionals" and they've been living in Toronto for awhile (in the housing market for 10-20 years) it's likely they are far more wealthy, in practical terms, than the freshly minted golden paycheque earners.

ie the concept of "upper middle class" is a huge sliding window of circumstance, it's not just determined by your most recent T4 numbers.
One single earner making 500k = 22k~ a month after tax

Two earners making 150K each = 16.5k~ a month after tax

Mortgage on detached = 7K~ a month = 15k a month for the 500k earner.

Not to mention the first couple has a bunch of equity.

So... the 300k couple much better off.

So many jobs out there to make that kind of money if you are in the remote world too.
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Dec 28, 2005
7805 posts
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Germany
speedyforme wrote: I wonder how other families do this then without $250k HHI
I feel like some people live in a completely different universe. My parents did not make anywhere close to that money when I was growing up. After school was a baby sitter paid in cash and when my sister was old enough, she walked me home and watched over me. There was no hockey, but I did play soccer and basketball, which was cheap. The rest of the time, we went out and played with our friends (usually riding our cheap CCM bikes from Crappy Tire) until it was dinner time. Every Sunday, my Mom took me to the library to get books to read. I didn't have a SNES or Playstation, but I did have a big tub of Lego. Oddly enough, we did have a lot of esoteric sporting goods, as my dad was huge into the Fan 590 radio show and won a lot of contests. I paid for my undergraduate degree through a mixture of academic scholarships, a $14k RESP and working part-time. It doesn't need to cost millions of dollars to raise a child. We didn't have all the niceties that other kids did, but we still turned out okay. My sister is a Chartered Accountant who was the youngest partner at her firm and I'm a Global HEOR, Market Access and Pricing Executive Director.
Deal Guru
Dec 11, 2008
13064 posts
3754 upvotes
unshavenyak wrote: I feel like some people live in a completely different universe. My parents did not make anywhere close to that money when I was growing up. After school was a baby sitter paid in cash and when my sister was old enough, she walked me home and watched over me. There was no hockey, but I did play soccer and basketball, which was cheap. The rest of the time, we went out and played with our friends (usually riding our cheap CCM bikes from Crappy Tire) until it was dinner time. Every Sunday, my Mom took me to the library to get books to read. I didn't have a SNES or Playstation, but I did have a big tub of Lego. Oddly enough, we did have a lot of esoteric sporting goods, as my dad was huge into the Fan 590 radio show and won a lot of contests. I paid for my undergraduate degree through a mixture of academic scholarships, a $14k RESP and working part-time. It doesn't need to cost millions of dollars to raise a child. We didn't have all the niceties that other kids did, but we still turned out okay. My sister is a Chartered Accountant who was the youngest partner at her firm and I'm a Global HEOR, Market Access and Pricing Executive Director.
That was basically myself and my siblings. All had part-time jobs; worked at McDs in high school and did not own any fancy video games.

Of course in terms of competition today; kids MAY require more extra curricular activities and other "development" stuff that isn't free or isn't organic social activity like we had the freedom of doing on weekends with friends outdoors etc.

Some people think private school, Harvard and a paid for house gives their kids a leg up on what they perceive to be success. Hopefully whatever their children decide; given the privileges' of exposure they have the means and ability to pursue what they want given their advantaged upbringing.
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Dec 28, 2005
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speedyforme wrote: That was basically myself and my siblings. All had part-time jobs; worked at McDs in high school and did not own any fancy video games.

Of course in terms of competition today; kids MAY require more extra curricular activities and other "development" stuff that isn't free or isn't organic social activity like we had the freedom of doing on weekends with friends outdoors etc.

Some people think private school, Harvard and a paid for house gives their kids a leg up on what they perceive to be success. Hopefully whatever their children decide; given the privileges' of exposure they have the means and ability to pursue what they want given their advantaged upbringing.
Yes, the competition gap/inflation is legitimately a problem, but I have my hope that the leaders of tomorrow who replace me can see through the bullshit on paper and ascertain how talented someone really is. My point was that the posters saying $250k HHI makes you poor and can't raise a child properly are absurd.
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Dec 11, 2008
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unshavenyak wrote: Yes, the competition gap/inflation is legitimately a problem, but I have my hope that the leaders of tomorrow who replace me can see through the bullshit on paper and ascertain how talented someone really is. My point was that the posters saying $250k HHI makes you poor and can't raise a child properly are absurd.
Agreed. I've also seen MANY couples with large HHI and honestly their children are a mess. Entitled, unmotivated and just not self-sufficient because parents don't cook, no time to spend together, everything is paid for, house is cleaned for them, wasteful, don't value the dollar etc

Although I have also seen families with low HHI with the same issues with children.

It really comes down to how people respect and handle finances, wants/needs and the lifestyle that they can truly afford responsibly.
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Dec 28, 2005
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speedyforme wrote: Agreed. I've also seen MANY couples with large HHI and honestly their children are a mess. Entitled, unmotivated and just not self-sufficient because parents don't cook, no time to spend together, everything is paid for, house is cleaned for them, wasteful, don't value the dollar etc

Although I have also seen families with low HHI with the same issues with children.

It really comes down to how people respect and handle finances, wants/needs and the lifestyle that they can truly afford responsibly.
Oh my goodness. You're giving me flashbacks to coffee chats with my friend who ran a private psychology practice. Kids who were raised by their housekeeper and had next to no contact with their parents. Domestic murder cases waiting to happen.
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Dec 11, 2008
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unshavenyak wrote: Oh my goodness. You're giving me flashbacks to coffee chats with my friend who ran a private psychology practice. Kids who were raised by their housekeeper and had next to no contact with their parents. Domestic murder cases waiting to happen.
All depends on the family or course. My cousins had a nanny; hard working mother and father. But ultimately the mother did not trust children to make mistakes and learn and sort of did everything for them.

Flash forward, cars were gifted, homes are paid for, wedding paid for and minimal financial literacy taught and just every day things like getting your own insurance and bills. Even the mom at the time said "you give my kids $1 they will spend $1.25"

Now that she passed away (too early, very sad), the kids aren't good with value of dollar, barely cook etc. I mean why bother when almost everything was paid for? They aren't THAT terrible with money but the wealth the parents built won't grow with the next generation.
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Dec 19, 2015
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Calgary, AB
GTA12345 wrote: Sorry if I missed it when I skimmed last couple days of posts, but was 10% and 1% for those incomes posted with a link? I recently tried to find a nice clean source for that, either Canada or Ontario and couldn't. Just not sure if you or anyone had a link handy. Specifically I was looking for HH income percentiles.
Household income is a bit of a mess. Those were estimates based on comments from a number of sources. I don't remember seeing any official stats but in general this seems reasonable (note, after tax), average total household income in Canada is around $100k last year.

Here's one unofficial estimate, Note, those are after tax numbers.
The 1% household income in Canada earns $315,911
The 5% household income in Canada earns $162,210
The 10% household income in Canada earns $125,942
The 25% household income in Canada earns $81,184
The 50% household income in Canada earns $46,151
The 75% household income in Canada earns $22,465
https://www.thekickassentrepreneur.com/ ... or-canada/

That seems to stack up well with other sources, for example two 10% earners in a household would only make $200k so I'm probably way overestimating the 10% making $250k+

If anyone actually has some official ones then that would be interesting to see.
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Feb 19, 2017
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unshavenyak wrote: I feel like some people live in a completely different universe. My parents did not make anywhere close to that money when I was growing up. After school was a baby sitter paid in cash and when my sister was old enough, she walked me home and watched over me. There was no hockey, but I did play soccer and basketball, which was cheap. The rest of the time, we went out and played with our friends (usually riding our cheap CCM bikes from Crappy Tire) until it was dinner time. Every Sunday, my Mom took me to the library to get books to read. I didn't have a SNES or Playstation, but I did have a big tub of Lego. Oddly enough, we did have a lot of esoteric sporting goods, as my dad was huge into the Fan 590 radio show and won a lot of contests. I paid for my undergraduate degree through a mixture of academic scholarships, a $14k RESP and working part-time. It doesn't need to cost millions of dollars to raise a child. We didn't have all the niceties that other kids did, but we still turned out okay. My sister is a Chartered Accountant who was the youngest partner at her firm and I'm a Global HEOR, Market Access and Pricing Executive Director.
You basically described most kids in Canada back in the day. 30 years ago, Canada was like a backwater country imo. It's an entirely different ballgame nowadays. For example, people in their 40s now, who bought a home or multiple homes in their 20s and bought as big as they could, are now super well off. People in their 20s who want that same house now would have to make like 3x because of all the foreign money that flowed in and drove prices up. It'll likely be worse for kids now when they get to into their 20s.
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Walch1102 wrote: You basically described most kids in Canada back in the day. 30 years ago, Canada was like a backwater country imo. It's an entirely different ballgame nowadays. For example, people in their 40s now, who bought a home or multiple homes in their 20s and bought as big as they could, are now super well off. People in their 20s who want that same house now would have to make like 3x because of all the foreign money that flowed in and drove prices up. It'll likely be worse for kids now when they get to into their 20s.
I'm 37, so it can't be that long ago, no? You say it's a different ballgame, but I think I'm competing just fine. My wife and I each earn more money than 99% of the population. That's not bad. We're not millionaires and we don't aspire to be. You can absolutely raise kids on less than $250k HHI per year. They won't have the sexiest of childhoods, but they'll make it.
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Feb 19, 2017
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unshavenyak wrote: I'm 37, so it can't be that long ago, no? You say it's a different ballgame, but I think I'm competing just fine. My wife and I each earn more money than 99% of the population. That's not bad. We're not millionaires and we don't aspire to be. You can absolutely raise kids on less than $250k HHI per year. They won't have the sexiest of childhoods, but they'll make it.
Different ballgame for kids growing up now. Not 37 y/o you. You've worked for 15 years post-university? 13 of those were in the longest bull market in history. Of course you're fine, as would be expected of most hardworking university grads.
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Walch1102 wrote: Different ballgame for kids growing up now. Not 37 y/o you. You've worked for 15 years post-university? 13 of those were in the longest bull market in history. Of course you're fine, as would be expected of most hardworking university grads.
Sure, and I grew up in a not so Bull market. I'm alive and well. You can raise kids without a comparatively massive income. You assert Canada was some backwater, when we have the most highly educated populace on Earth. Canada has always been competitive. It is only this era of hyper materialism where people feel like it's not and honestly, it's their own doing.
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Nov 27, 2013
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hoob wrote: OK, which household is richer:

1. Couple, both earners in the mid/high 100s, two kids, mortgage paid off years ago.
2. Couple, one earner in 500s, two kids, just bought a detached house in Toronto w/ mortgage 20% down.

I agree with some of the comments about "if you know a couple who are both mid-career professionals" and they've been living in Toronto for awhile (in the housing market for 10-20 years) it's likely they are far more wealthy, in practical terms, than the freshly minted golden paycheque earners.

ie the concept of "upper middle class" is a huge sliding window of circumstance, it's not just determined by your most recent T4 numbers.
Thats what I keep saying but a lot of people don't get this.
A couple earning a modest 100k combined a year but with no kids and paid off mortgage on a 1.5 mil house will be a hell of a lot more comfortable than a couple earning 200k with 2 kids and a 5k a month mortgage.


The wealth discrepancy between 2 person with the same income can be extreme.
I'm pretty sure the vast majority of home owners in major cities across canada could never afford to purchase their own home if they were to start over from scratch.
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Feb 19, 2017
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RaphaelG041 wrote: Thats what I keep saying but a lot of people don't get this.
A couple earning a modest 100k combined a year but with no kids and paid off mortgage on a 1.5 mil house will be a hell of a lot more comfortable than a couple earning 200k with 2 kids and a 5k a month mortgage.


The wealth discrepancy between 2 person with the same income can be extreme.
I'm pretty sure the vast majority of home owners in major cities across canada could never afford to purchase their own home if they were to start over from scratch.
This is a very simple concept that the majority of the people on this forum don't understand. There are a lot of people more well off than the guy earning $500K a year. Not surprised though, as most people are not good at reading a situation with more than a couple variables correctly.
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