New grad wage in each city gets you...

HK - 13-18k HKD pm ~ 80HKD/hr
- Can't afford a spot becuase rent is your whole salary even in remote ass NT.
- Share bunk bed with your parent in Kwai Chung, government housing and gramps/grandma live in the unit.
- Eating poverty food, McDonalds is a treat and more than 1 hour wage
- Haven't left NT for a few years because MTR is expensive by distance
- Leisure is walking to the soccer field or sit at Victoria Park in the humidity lol

Vancouver - 40k or ~20/hr
- Living: you have your own room, or a $1400 studio in the west end/yaletown
- Eating: 1 hour wage gets you $16 sashimi salad with WILD sockeye salmon at Shizenya by Robson Square
- Leisure: FREE: Volleyball at english bay, tennis at SP, swim in the Kits public pool by the ocean

- Skiing: Translink pass gets you to Grouse for your $269 season pass
- Driving: 0.5 hour wage puts you in MX-5, Abarth, 86 and ZeroCar
- Cycling: $300 road bike means u can train on North Shore / Stanley Park

People pay thousands to come hike the Grouse Grind, ride the triple crown, and skii our olympic mountains.
Toronto is fucked though - need at least 80k to have an ok life and even as you make more, day to day still blows.

well as long as you have any type of full time job then you should be making at least $3000 after tax, even at minimum wage.
if you can only find part time work or no work at all then ya thats different.

of course in the real world people have all sorts of debts and other obstacles in their lives that make it difficult to just rent a bedroom for $1000 and have $2000 leftover, but ya..

It's actually even cheaper than that, I just looked at the pic of the receipt noodles alone were $35 and $30 a bowl, I got the 3 topping so it was more, 2 topping was only $30, added cold drinks $8 x 2, added fried fish skin $15, total was $96 hkd for two people. $17.21 cad lunch for 2 people. You can't even get one fried fish skin at a restaurant for that here.

ok tell me more about these 24h 3 person massages lol

you're talking about it as a tourist.. for people earning a middle class wage in RMB that's probably not considered cheap

Like in Canada, my buddy got a BCIT boilermaker cert in like a year and makes 100k now. You don't even need good grades...

Whereas working in trades / bus drivers / shit job in HK? good fucking luck

Did you forget tax, there's no way you can rent a studio in DT for that price unless it's East Hastings and main.

Living: you have your own room, or a $2000 studio in the west end/yaletown
- Skiing: Translink pass gets you to Grouse for your $269 with tax? season pass
- Driving: Modo is renting MX-5, Abarth, 86 and ZeroCar is renting Teslas, how much is this, renting a Prius evo is already like $15 to drive 20 min.
- Eating: $16 sashimi salad with WILD sockeye salmon at Shizenya by Robson Square, did you even tax or tip? A California roll at fujiya is around $8 now I think

bro did you forget how to be cheap

Studios in the West End for ~$15-700, 5 minutes from the beach still exist - gotta walk around, not every spot's on Craigslist. The windows are going to be single paned tho.

Skiing? Yeah sure, add tax, add some price increases, you’re still under $400 CAD. That’s one lift ticket and a sad burger in the U.S (269 USD at Tahoe).

Modo? $6/hr + 35c/km, $18 overnight. You’re crying about Evo Priuses while teenage me was doing donuts in 86s and Abarths. We did crash one but their damage waiver was $50 for the YEAR.

Food? Even with tax and tip, wild sockeye sashimi under $20 downtown. If you’re paying more, that’s a you problem.

Going out? Bring 3 hot besties so you don't pay cover, they get to work getting free drinks, all you gotta do ois make them laugh and let them bitch about their problems here and there.

I took a picture of sushiro hiring poster while I was waiting, full time starts at $17000 hkd a month, has full transportation allowance, food allowance. That's $3048 cad a month. As the most basic entry level job. According to the HK gov tax calculator I'm not sure if I did it correctly but on $204000 hkd annual salary tax is owed is $2320 hkd.

Min bc wage $17.85 x 37.5 x 4 = $2677.50 x 12mth = $32130 gross annual, according to Wealth Simple bc calculator after tax is $27258 / 12mth = $2271.50 a month net

So as a poor person it definitely is better in HK, you pay way less tax, there's no tax tip on anything you buy, you keep a lot more of your $ to spend on housing or whatever else.

i say this all the time too.. in asia especially east asia, if you dont get into a good uni you are screwed and stuck with being lower class your whole life. its difficult to break out of because of how competitive everything is there.

over here you can go to a 2-4 year trade school and make middle-upper class money even working for someone else, it's totally doable.
somehow i doubt that plumbers/electricians/hvac in china are making bank like they are over here, even when corrected for living standards.

i just did the calculation myself and 17.85 x 80hrs x 26 / 12 + vacation pay 4% = $3000 a month after taxes exactly.

Wait, how come? What's the rationale behind this?

That's not the most basic level entry job, not everyone is going to be able to walk in and take that job. The most likely basic requirements is going to be a good demeanor during interview, clean, young, decent looking, and they are most likely going to choose to hire girls before anyone else. Good luck as a 40 yr old dude trying to get that job.

Working at a restaurant is also going to have it's up and downs, when it's busy you are going to be worked hard, when it's not busy you are going to have your hours cut.

Well a cheap studio here puts you in the west end or new west, both are kinda ok to live in.
OTOH being cheap in Toronto puts you in Rexdale or a corner of north York.

Park, leisure, access to water/mountains totally ass in Toronto. high park is pretty nice tho.
Leisure is largely entertainment based + Mexico and Miami trips.

As we discussed, transit sucks.

Personally I paid the Toronto tax because it was easier to start my career there & big tech wasn’t in Vancouver yet. Wouldn’t wanna live there now tho.

Here's a bunch of pictures/receipts from HK.

McDonalds - $22.49 CAD fed like 3 ppl? Cocount Latte is fucking awful btw. Grilled chicken is amazing. $3.05 CAD for a McFlurry and $1.79 CAD for ice cream cone - on par? BFast meals range from $6 CAD to $7.53 CAD

https://i.imgur.com/zWRYuOE.png https://i.imgur.com/P9av0vw.png
https://i.imgur.com/fhg18GN.png

Some random CCT at Festival Walk.

https://i.imgur.com/PWRoyiz.png

Random restaurant in KT

https://i.imgur.com/lsemMya.png

Michelin Star Restaurant for 6 ppl. Pretty good ngl. Slightly cheaper than Vancouver pricing - $263 CAD / $44/pp not awful to take the relatives out.

https://i.imgur.com/1f5XCxA.png

Japan is definitely the cheapest for food. For comparison, this was a high quality seafood restaurant in Nara. $19.87 CAD - $27.44 CAD for a set meal, per person. Other things listed are appys. Also weirdly enough, I'm allergic to all seafood here in Vancouver (technically it's shellfish but most fish here also makes me sick) but allergic to nothing in Japan.

https://i.imgur.com/hh2jiQ6.jpeg

Also M+ Museum in West Kowloon was like $35 CAD/pp which was kinda expensive but idk what to expect for museum pricing, sounds cheaper than Van. One of my uncles bitched about going because apparently it's not for commoners like us (eyeroll) not like he was going to be paying for it anyway.

Also speaking of Sushiro job - I found a posted job ad at the Panda Express. Listed wage range was $30-$40 USD/HR for Assistant Store Manager, $20-$25 USD/HR to just work there as a regular ass dude. Crazy.

Dude,

Why are you having a full meal deal at McD when you're in Hong Kong? There are sooooo many other better choices than McD that's available there!

Aging parents (mostly my stubborn dad) wanted a mall + AC. It was either McD or Cafe de Coral.. and I ain't eating Cafe de Coral again. So since I left for JP before the rest of my family flew back to Van, apparently they ate Fairwood every morn for bfast even tho Australian Dairy is within the same distance lol.

This trip definitely made me realize that 10 years is a long time for my parents to age and travelling with them is annoying as fuck - particularly my dad who possess traits of a typical trad. asian man.

On a very far tangent, but for context and ref, my dad verbalized that he would rather my mom walk around with aching feet in $20 target shoes instead of letting us buy her insoles/proper shoes from a proper brand because he thinks that paying for branded things is a waste of money (eyeroll). Then after us (the adult kids) insisted on buying mom some proper shoes, he has the audacity to tell my mom she's ruining the entire trip because she doesn't want to listen to him about HER body. LOL. For fucks sake. This ended off with my brother dragging my dad away and me taking my mom on a shopping trip, separately.

The ugly 40 year old dude can be dish washer which is even higher in demand and pays even more

Food is cheap in HK I'm not gonna argue that, but transportation is so fucking expensive, a round trip from the suburbs to TST or the island can buy you a meal.

For a lot of people, going to Maxims or Coral would be cheaper than cooking at home

Cafe de coral breakfast is insane, fried noodles, fried chicken strip, sausage, milk tea, noodle with meat strip, toast and egg for like $35 hkd it's so big I can't even finish it and has to be shared.

Their baked pork chop rice which is huge, combo with Portuguese tart and drink is $57 hkd, $10.22 cad, half the price of Aberdeen and bigger

We can't compare price here - when you look at it relative to wages (whether IB/PE or a basic job) that food costs a full hour of wages!

Our food here is cheap! look at waht you can get for 16 bucks at richmond public market

https://i.postimg.cc/85ky43KW/IMG-6993.jpg

https://i.postimg.cc/76BKWVd1/IMG-6994.jpg

I just bought 2 cuz i wanted to compare captain wah (top) vs wonder wok (bottom)
I would say wonder wok is still better. Higher quality

anyways its so much food that you can easily feed 2 with 1 of these monsters....

fucking westopher and his lesbian vegan queef cookies for 5 dollars each.... just thinking about it makes me queasy.

Also, they have the economy of scale in HK. Definitely not a fair comparison.

I couldn't agree more with that. We live in a country where we can be the most unremarkable yet most of us manage to make it into a job that would pay 2x median salary after working 10 years with any education or skilled trades.


That's why I can't leave Vancouver.
- S2000 is 1.5-4x in any other city
- Golf is $20-100/play here
- Free tennis/pickleball
- Volleyball drop in $5-15 for 2 hours
- All Sports + activities are within a 3-25min drive during traffic
- Economic opportunity to be in the top 10-20% even if you're unremarkable
- Cheapest food in NA even with 40% rise in food costs
- $2,000-3000 CAD rent is cheap when you convert it to Tokyo, Hongkong, US, etc and realize ppl pay $2-3.5k+ USD for same same