Alrite guys, where do I begin. Sorry for the essay...

- took on a new job, so far so good haha, better pay and just happier, good people, good management, automotive industry. The no base pay didn't bother me as much as I thought it would. I guess having a decent amount of savings help, and the constant pick me up/free counselling I get from wifey is awesome. She is a fucking rock star for emotional support LOL

- you guys know the drill, I am the sole income earner in the fam. Not that my wife doesnt want to work, but with 2 kids, she wont earn enough to cover the child care, and my kids have too many things that needs constant getting around...so staying at home for her is better for our expenses

- mortgage didn't change for us, we are locked in till 2024 phew

- we don't really do trips to be honest other than camping (even before Covid). So I guess not much savings there. Full asian in that way, I would love to, but always think they are so expensive. The only international trips we did in the past were China trips, the red pockets that relatives line our pockets with for my kids will actually always cover the trip, so that sense, not really any expense.

- my wife is an amazing cook, we didn't really eat out at all before covid, and don't eat out now except maybe the occasional Costco Hot Dog. I have 0 apps on my phone for Uber eats/door dash etc etc etc. I am the guy who waits for MacDonald coupons before I would go to one, and now, even with the coupons I find it expensive loool. But no complaints on the home cooking, I still get to eat amazing food from home.

- One expense I didn't expect are the kids activities, from tutoring, swimming, painting, piano X 2 kids (every program/teacher) has approached us and told us they are upping their fees. I want to say I was comfortablly under $700/month is now doing $1100/month for the same shit... and I don't see this trend stopping

- Utilities are up, fuck... I was the stupid fuck that would totally leave the kitchen light on all night and having the computer on 24/7 to now being anal of turning off everything lool...

- Groceries are defn up as well, I can walk out of T&T after $100 and felt like we didn't buy shit, We will always compare walmart/superstore/crystal mall. Only going to T&T for the special shit that are not sold else where cuz we know T&T = $$$$

- Commute wise is pretty good, wife can do everything with the electric range for the prius, the gas bill for it is basically 1 tank per year (94 octane + octan booster), and that is us intentionally using the gas to rinse the fuel system and not letting gas go bad. The miata is great as well, maintenance is cheap like you wouldnt imagine, a brand new passenger rear caliper (not a rebuild kit) a new one from Mazda dealership is $119 after tax... fuel mileage is also hovering around 8L/100KM even with me driving like a dick... and full insurance is like $110/month...

-no big expenses this year, do have refundable deposits on the new GR Corolla, Z, Prius Prime, Type R and the manual Supra (original idea was to take the 1st one that is offered to me and cancel the rest) but honestly, now is hoping none of them calls me. The more I think about it, the more I am like Miata is everything I wanted, and I know it will just be $$$$ if any of those cars shows up. I think I am keeping the deposits though, just in case if I do get it, I will ask around for all my friends, if none of them are interested, I can still back out at that point.

*** but yea, still saving a tiny bit every month... as to saving a decent chunk before. But we are still going net positive which is nice...

*** and yea, same comment, for the people that are struggling, just stay positive. Good mindset changes alot of things. Good fortunes guys!

I think it's wild that there are so many single earner households with kids in this day and age in the Lower Mainland. Like, it's not just the 1%-successful business owners with single income earners, but I see so many regular families that often have a stay-at-home parent, even after the post-maternity leave years.

We went through some hard years when we were paying over $2K in daycare fees per month. Yes, my wife wasn't making that much extra income during those years, but the sacrifice paid off as she is now a senior leader at her company.

Interesting topic, and I wish I could come in here to flex LOL~ But nope, it is really more of a slow downward spiral as far as I can tell. And the worst part is, I don't see any solutions in the "near" future, say within the next year or so.

(Apologies for the long essay.)

2022 has been a very expensive year. Home repair costs were (literally) through the roof because multiple big ticket items failed -- we got a new roof, and while that was being replaced, we were recommended to do some repairs on our chimney as well -- who knew masons were that expensive? The (exterior) stucco wall needed fixing. 2 major appliances failed; the microwave died even though it was only a little over 3 yrs old. A sizable chunk of my savings evapourated to keep the house more or less intact.

There were really a few more home repair items that were needed, but I honestly couldn't stomach the cost this year anymore. So I DIY-ed the urgent ones -- with the results looking very amateurish, but at least I think they are functional -- and the less urgent ones are deferred for now. My driveway could really use a repaving, or at least some meaningful repairs at certain places, but those are not happening for now. If I am crazy / stupid enough, I might just try to DIY it next spring / summer...

Mortgage costs have gone up by over 20% compared to the beginning of the year as I am on a variable rate mortgage where the payments change with the interest rate. But as I have found out here on RS, my 20%+ hike is actually fairly tame compared to what some of you guys are dealing with, so I guess I can't complain.

Food costs seem to have gone up by almost 40% for us this year, and that is due to a combination of rising grocery costs on its own, us doing a lot more take out because of time constraints, and me and the wifey's mutual agreement that we really needed to re-expose our kid to some basic social etiquette, table manners and just trying out different foods this year since we have largely avoided eating out in the first 2 years of the pandemic. At the same time, we have also adjusted our food purchasing habits. We are buying "cheaper" stuff, and actively reducing / avoiding the expensive items. For example, I know this sounds really bad, but I love spot prawns and cherries, and we have really cut back on those this year. But even the bloody oranges -- I mean, those damn regular navel oranges, not blood oranges -- are like a solid 40 - 50% more expensive than before.

Utility bills have gone up quite a bit this year. After the heat dome last year, we got an AC early this summer ($$$ bye bye~), and IIRC, I think the operating costs worked out to be ~$1/hr. I had just received our gas heating bill recently, and the Nov bill was quite a surprise. I am guessing it must be a combination of the really cold Nov that we had, plus the gas rate hikes themselves, but between the two, our Nov bill this year is ~25% more expensive than it was last Nov. Dec seems colder than usual too.

Transportation costs have gone up this year by ~40% because gas prices have gone up significantly, and the managers at work love seeing physical bodies at the office again. We do have a WFH policy that allows for some WFH time, but overall, I am estimating that it roughly costs me ~$10 per day for the commute to and back from the office + parking, not to mention the travel time that I lose by not being able to WFH.

Income-wise, things have been stagnant for me, which means I am just eating all those inflation body blows. The wifey's is bringing home roughly the same amount as before, but her workload has increased significantly because her work partner is taking a leave of absence. Personally, I really enjoy my job because I have a good employer. The pay sucks, but the benefits and work-life balance are good, and I work with a very good team of people. But my shrinking bank account balance has me thinking about the possibility to get out of my comfort zone and look for something with a higher pay. For the time being, I think that would still be a bad idea because of the uncertainty of the economy. But as long as the household income-to-expense ratio doesn't improve, we are slowly heading for insolvency.

For now, I am still super thankful that I have a loving family, a roof over my head, and a sports car in my garage. Increasingly though, as I head down that spiral to insolvency in slow motion, I can just picture how I'd be giving up the sports car to buy us more time, and leaving a job that I love to pursue something that pays more (but most likely with a far worse work-life balance)...

Keeping my fingers crossed that things will turn around soon before drastic intervention measures are needed...

Me and my partner bought our first home and for the first time in my life, I will be in debt.

I also lost a bunch of money in the FTX drama so my financial situation definitely took a 180.

Always took the Reddit crowd to be a bunch of whiners/down and outers but the tone here isn’t much different than the Vancouver subreddit there. You know things are rough when the RS ballers are hit as well lol. Not making light of it just don’t know how restaurants etc. survive when literally everyone is pulling back on going out.

Personally I’m much like CivicBlues. We’re DINKS with rental income. It’s just meant substantially less disposable income, if any at all.

Think it’s time for both of us to look for a career upgrade as my current company seems like it’s going to go into an extended strike sooner than later..

I don’t think Richmond restaurants are impacted as much. Me and da wife can barely get reservations the day of at our favourite places. Prices have for sure skyrocketed but I hate her cooking so much I rather pay. I cook quite well but I’m too lazy to do it after working a whole day.

love this thread, one of the most honest and down to earth threads we’ve had on RS.

Well yea because Richmond restaurants are full of people who got us into this housing crisis lol

https://bc.ctvnews.ca/never-seen-any...kets-1.6190255

It's gonna be a brutal winter for a lot of folks. For what it's worth, the food bank prefers cash whenever possible - they can just buy so much more that way.

If you're a tech worker and looking for resume advice or career coaching - I'm donating my time in exchange for donations to the food bank. DM me for details.

We did a bunch of these this year, will be doing it going forward for sure was a fun experience.

i wonder if RS can do something like a donation drive for the food bank. I know we can give directly to the food bank, but it would be nice to go for a drive w/ you broski's for a good cause.

This used to be an annual tradition but the tradition dropped as people either moved on in life (respectfully so) or a combination of lack of interest. If someone can step up to help lead this, it would be great to see this being revived again. I think rb might be able to provide some general guidance on this.

I probably made money during the pandemic because I wasn't commuting and my job stayed the same / went up in value. I made money with some strategic used car purchases / holds / sales... and I made a bit of $ messing around with crypto at an advantageous time and not being invested when it went to crap.

Nothing huge...

But my family also sold our family farm for $3M and I got a small chunk of that.

At the risk of being too open personally..... unfortunately, I saw my household income drop in half because I split up with my ex and she moved out, had to pay her out a lump sum for increase in profits of the place I'm in (owned it before I knew her)... so lost a big chunk of loose money to that (which, at the very least, is still in my place if I sell it) and now I have 100% of the expenses.

My doggy is 16.5 and has cancer, I make all her food myself she doesn't eat dog food... she's on a mix that I make every week of salmon, turkey, chicken and then rice, carrots, veggies... she actually costs more $ to feed than myself lol... she's also on CBD oil and those costs are all on me now too.

All in all though I can't complain, I have a lot of hobby cars still and I could sell 2-3 of them at any time if I needed, I have some cash left from my small portion of the farm sale (my Dad took most of it as was laid out in my Grandma's will) and I'm much happier after my ex is gone and have a new gf who's fantastic. That said, dating is expensive af nowadays. I have no idea how young people do it, you can't even go to frickin Cacus/Earl's on a date with a couple drinks for less than $100 nowadays.

^can u plz find an rich chinese girl who can take care of you? youre in richmond bro, just go hang out at dolar hotpot and im sure we can get you hooked up.

p.s. Always makes me sad to hear about the family farm being sold too. i think sometimes it would be really nice to go to an agrarian lifestyle. Id wake up at 5:30 milk some moo moo's and then go grab breakfast from mrs clucky chicken head.

hahaha I've had a few things with those type of ladies over the years, you think they're independently wealthy and then you find out AFTER the fact they have a remote husband somewhere in China/HK... they're always the biggest headcases... no thanks!

We held onto it for 15 years after my grandma died actually... but again at the risk of being tooooo open, my dad was horribly mismanaging it. He was renting the house for $800 a month in a market that commanded nearly $3,000 a month, cost us a 1/4 mill in revenue over that time and with many many many expenses coming for the house itself and other environmental risks, etc.... we had to make a call and my sister and I basically forced him into saying it was time to sell. Thankfully at the height of the market too.

I still have PTSD from spending all of last winter in the snow drifts cleaning up 70 year of junk and all my Grandma's stuff my dad never touched.

I DIDNT SAY MAINLANDER GIRL!!! jooo doing it all wrong sucka. find a nice, rich, HK girl or Singaporean girl or Canadian born Chinese (who's basically a white girl who likes chicken feet). They are more reliable, and honorable.

did you at least find anything cool in the farm? barn finds are awesome. maybe grandma had a vintage watch hidden around thats worth a crap ton of money. canadian pickers!!!

omg lol.. well even at my old age I'm still a hopeless romantic at heart, my gf is lovely even though she's an artist... I'm still picking <3 over money. i'm not ruthless enough for that high $$$ crowd!

Found lots of old cans and I grabbed the '52 Ford tractor I used to drive as a kid and scuffled it away in someone else's barn.. sold her '76 Pontiac Grand Prix and the best stuff was old tin toys my dad had... big delivery van and a space robot driving a Mercedes convertible that shoots sparks etc... all made in Japan stuff I'm sure they're worth a small fortune. My granny was a farmer till she died, she didn't care about material stuff so no watches etc haha

We can prob chat offline sometime about it tho if you ever want, I don't want this to be the 68style thread lol

I think everyone dreams of this farmer lifestyle until they have to actually do it and see that’s involved lol

my finances changed Spring 2020 when my source of income was switched off like a light w covid restrictions. No events - no money.

This required changes to the way we did business, and changes to our lifestyle.

With no staff my wife and I were able to retool the shop into a survival mode for 2020 and 2021. Each time it looked like we were coming up there were new restrictions that put us back. During this time we put our income down to essentials only to service our mortgage and cover expenses. Almost all of our retirement contributions were put on hold.

Finally 2022 has brought about a return to some form. The business is leaner - but so are we. We pick and choose our jobs, take on only what extra labour we need and have prioritized profitability over gross income. I was able to add some major pieces of equipment to the shop w the help of rebuild grants.

I think the 2 years of lost retirement savings will cost me 5-6 years on the back end, but there's no getting around it. We did what we had to do.

On the plus side, our fixed mortgage (our only debt) signed early in 2021 will allow us to keep that retirement fund flowing rather than diverting it to increased mortgage costs. I really don't fear any downturn in the real estate market for us. We're DINK's, w relatively low expenses. Virtually no commuting means fuel prices are more of a topic of conversation rather than a personal hardship (although it's created increased shipping expenses for sure). Food costs for 2, they're more for sure - but we've always run pretty lean. In exchange for eating out 2 times per week we do a ton of meal planning, brown bag lunches every day. I've had the same coffee shop $20 bill in my wallet for 3 weeks.

The investment markets starting to come around a bit. We bought a bunch of stuff in the very early days of covid. Our investments/retirement have weathered OK. I don't fk w crypto, what happens to it really doesn't affect me (other than potentially driving more people back to traditional investments now)

It's interesting hearing from folks out there. Not just here - but everywhere. People who really didn't feel the squeeze until the past year (or even 6 months). For us, in year three - I feel like we've adapted to this new normal earlier - and perhaps have some of the mental tools to deal with it a little better now.

Best of luck to RS'ers out there. This will pass, and ultimately most will weather it and come out the other side.

Judging from your posts, stay far far away from rich Chinese girls. A lot of them it's not their money but actually their parents and the helicoptering they do is insane. I know a few friends that went out with these girls and they don't end well.

I'm sure you are young enough. Though I'm surprised you have to give your ex money if you owned the place before the relationship. Things you bring in are supposed to be exempt from splits?

I'm in a non-technical role in the tech industry. Can you help me out bro? :D. I got a cupboard full of past BB date canned goods we panic bought during the early days of COVID.

No one can afford to eat out anymore! Also: No one can get a reservation anymore! Especially at any of those newly minted Michelin starred or even Bib Gourmand places. Heck even the "regular" upscale places are packed whenever I visit every month or so. Who's eating at these places? Whites, Asians, Youngs, Olds. Can't really put a finger on it. There's still a lot of disposable income out there in the city. Or everyone's just gone YOLO knowing that next year everything could cost 50% more again. SeemsGood

Revenge dining? COVID, inflation and looming recession being factored in, there are going to be a group of people who will YOLO and not GAF who will ball out and dine out for the IGs.

I'm def not young haha

It actually changed for the better rules wise... used to be if someone shacked up with you long enough (ie: even common-law) you had to give them half of everything... I knew so many people who got absolutely robbed under the old system... now timing matters in the last few years...

But basically if you're common-law or married, even if you owned the place before them, they are not entitled to the place as a whole, but they ARE entitled to 50% of the increase in value from the point they became common-law/married. In the lower mainland, that's quite a lot over 10 years haha....... I had all my cars before I knew her so I kept those.

We didn't even use a lawyer or anything, just settled up on some figures and that was that.

Keep up the good fight brother. That is the quintessential quadruple whammy. Stagnant income, increased expenses to raise a family, increased mortgage costs, and maintaining an older home during a pandemic when trades/costs/supplies are higher than ever before. Not many people, with the exception of extremely high income earners, could pull all of that off comfortably. Fingers crossed that 2022 was the peak and 2023 is easier for you.

Technically I'll help anyone who donates to the food bank - I just wanna raise money. Anything up to $75 is a resume review, $75+ gets a 30 min coaching session.

LOL. My wife and I have a date night on Saturday and I'm scrambling to find a nice place to go and can hardly find tables for 6pm. Even stuff like the Keg Burnaby is booked up. It's bizarre to me cause some restaurants are just packed especially the popular ones - I can't get a decent table at Savio Volpe 6 weeks out.

if they were common law, its as good as being married. she's entitled to half i believe. edit: nevermind, see 68 post above.

Not all these Chinese girls are bad. dont let a few bad experiences discourage you. the ones wearing Balenciaga short skirts in the middle of winter at dolar are probably the one you wanna stay away from.