that's not the question to ask, the question to ask is what is the ideal salary relative to average cost of living for an average person.

My answer to that is take home pay = 2x cost of living. live on half, invest other half. will never have to worry about money if you do that for a while.

In Vancouver, I don't think $100K gross salary allows for a comfortable life, and I do not live an extravagant lifestyle at all, nor did I when I lived in Vancouver.

i don't think that's a fair comment.

As a honky, I don't think I would put my kids in private school for a multitude of reasons. I put the emphasis on learning through experience and from one's home life. School is a great social situation, but teachers are only so skilled, and really, I do not trust them to be smarter than the average person on the street.

the one main reason to send your kids to private school is the connections. A member of my family went to Eton, no university, is now head of wealth management in the City (London) for one of the major Swiss banks after being in the Caribbean for many years.

The guy is nothing special, just made killer contacts through secondary school / college. He probably knows ppl in the Panama Papers, knowing him!

depends what you define as comfortably?

Rent + general needs, little extra money on the side for travels

No question that's a huge factor these days, the home looks shit but people see the potential so they don't mind spending that extra money when the house isn't work it yet. Fricken crazy stuff and frustrating as well.

Some of those Strata fee's are beyond crazy which is why I'm leaning closer to Pitt and the West side of Ridge since I can get a better bang for my buck.

^

There are a multitude of reasons why private school is a better choice than public school. I won't get into them all, but I will say that when you're working for the gov't and have the union backing you, it's very hard to lose your job regardless of how poor your performance is. So why care? We have had some great teachers over the years. We have also had some very bad ones.

A prime example is my daughter's high school math teacher. The lady is horribly disorganized and a poor communicator, and that makes it harder for me as a parent to monitor my daughter's math education. Rewind to when I was in private school, and the teachers were in contact with my parents the moment I slipped up. In essence, they cared a lot more than the average public servant. It goes beyond "smarts". It's more about caring and doing a good job.


Chances are that guy would have been a douchebag regardless of where he went to school. Going to a good school introduced him to a higher level of individual. Whereas if he had gone to a public school, chances are he would have been a great car salesman.

Your example pretty much proved the point that Z3 guy was trying to make.



PS:
I'm a white guy too. My parents figured that their only job was to put me in a good school and be done with it. That didn't work.
I thought I could put my kids in a public school, and make up for the inbalance with good parenting. That didn't work either.

The solution is to put your kids in a good private school, while being involved in their life. I wish I knew that before.....

Is it that they don't care or they can't afford it? I can't afford to comfortably send my kid to a private school. I want my son to have a good education but I think that falls on myself and my wife to supplement it at home. I understand he won't gain those future leader of industry friends that he would in the hoity toity schools but I'm honestly satisfied with the education he's receiving.

He was invited into the Challenge Program this year which is a program for gifted and highly able students so I feel the school, my wife and I are doing something right.

We're going to try and get him into an out of catchment high school but that's only so he can play high school football which is one of the things he loves most.

65k

you're absolutely bang on - i suppose the difference is that my wife and I will be taking a massively proactive interest in our kids' development and learning - when they are born, my life will be all about generating wealth to leave to them (via a trust accessibly at age 65 - sorry kids, no freebies!) and developing them to live a life better than the one i have had (as should be all parents' desire, in my opinion, no matter where you come from).

To me, school is there as a social thing and to provide text books. Beyond this, and I will get chastised for sounding arrogant, but what do i care, i believe I can teach my kids better than some government employee. (One should note that I have taught finance courses at UBC and in post graduate professional designations).

I absolutely see the value of private education to most. If someone else were paying for it, i would strongly consider it.

Leaders are usually born with certain traits. They usually rise to the top regardless.

But private education does help - but fuck it, if life were easy, what'd be the fun!

When I was making $50k gross a year I always thought $70k-$80k gross is a nice comfortable salary. Now that I've been making that the past 5-6 years its still not enough for me. Cost of living has risen too fast for that salary to be comfortable.

When I was still living at home making $50k/yr that's exactly what I did. 50% was my cost of living 40% went to rrsp/mutual funds and 10% was my liquid savings. In 2 years I saved $40k for a down payment for my first condo in surrey. Sold that 2.5 years later and was able to move back into Vancouver. Now to make more than $80k a year ......

Driving the huracan my dad bought me for getting C's in my arts program at UBC sounds like fun!

I've felt the same way. But as my gross earnings increased, a more expensive lifestyle seem to have developed as well. It takes a strong will to make more money, and spend the same amount.

Vancity posted this today...

(insert pic of coke and hookers)

Dude. NSFW.
Least you could do is spoiler it with a NSFW tag.

I hate how all those articles are framed around Vancouver and buying "homes" as in a place to raise a family.

Like yea..if you need a 3 bed room condo, your "average" person is going to go into debt, period.

Has one of these articles ever been framed from a lower mainland point of view as opposed to "Vancouver" ?

5 months ago a 1 bed room den at Hastings and renfrew was 200k, that's not good enough to be a "home"?

I can't sell my 200k 2 bedroom condo in Surrey at a loss right now, that's not good enough for a "home" ?

Still a bit vague.. where are you renting, what kind of building, are you single, do you go on 5k vacations every year?

I think if you rent a modest place in bby, coquitlam, or surrey, and don't have 3 expensive hobbies and don't go on 3 week overseas vacations every year, you can get by with 50k just fine.

If you want to live in a newer condo, have expensive tastes, and go on big trips every year, then yeah you need like 65k.

Sorry I was reading the Vancity report when the bolded section caught my eye.

Are they fucking serious? Is this how PC we are nowadays, we have to refer to Vancouver as "Vancouver/Coast Salish Territory"?

Between this and the whole private school debate, It's just another SMH day today .

edit:
found this on the link:
If I wasn't forced to bank with Vancity I'd drop them for this stupid crap at the drop of a hat.

should call themselves coast salish credit union :lawl:

No, they should rename themselves the Kwakwaka’wakw Credit Union :badpokerface:

Didn't realize/was oblivious to the following behind private schools... I'm a little surprised to be honest. Although I see and understand most of the arguments presented I still don't agree and think that public school is perfectly fine. The best support/mentor you can have is your parents. Mine gave me my space at times but definitely were realistic with me about what the consequences were should I not succeed.

I just think private schools are a waste of time. Had a few friends that went to them but for the most part we just "made fun of the rich kids", and they probably did the same to us lowly public schoolers.

Bit off topic:

Malcolm Gladwell wrote the book David and Goliath that talks about strengths and weaknesses and how our perception of them is not always accurate. In the book it discusses how small classrooms have a negative effect because they have less diversity and it leads to less discussion. His book Outliers also points out that being from a prestigious university doesn't increase your odds on winning a Nobel Prize. I'm going to be sending my kids to public school, I know people that went to public school and others that went to private, I don't see that much of a difference career wise.

This. I grew up in this country thinking we paid more than just lip service to equality. But it seems like with each passing year we're getting closer and closer to the ME ME ME!! state of things South of the Border or over the Pacific.

I doubt there's a significant difference between public/private schools in terms of quality of education. However, assuming the student attending either schools has average or above average social skills, I absolutely expect them to be better connected in the future in a private school environment.

Unfortunately, not everything in life is about how smart you are. If you sell widgets for a living and have billionaire buddies vs a bunch of scrubs who are scraping by. I fully expect you to do better in life, money wise.