I should add that my SH grandmother was a badass. When I stayed with her during summer holidays (in Vancouver) she'd go to her room after lunch every day and pour herself a glass of cognac and have a smoke (grandpa made lunch everyday). She also gave birth to 11 kids while running a business with my grandfather and was one of the last women to have her feet bound (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot_binding) which made walking pretty difficult for her.

condo finally got built this spring and locked into a 5yr @ 2.24% which im pretty happy with, but on the flip side our commercial property has a 3m mortgage and we went variable 2 years in a row, 1 year too many. now we're paying 5k/month extra... huge mistake. the only good thing about that is commercial has gone up significantly so as long as we keep our gaze towards the long term then it takes the sting off the mortgage payments.. or at least thats what i keep telling myself.

girlfriend moved in but i havent asked her to start helping with finances yet, asides from groceries. she makes pretty little money since she's a part time care aid. they make about $25/hr but unless you're f/t you're only getting like 24hrs/week, so it pretty much equates to a minimum wage take home. we talked about adjusting her contribution based on salary, so like she would maybe pay 1/3rd as much as the expenses as i do or whatever, but since she was injured for a few months from a bike accident, i haven't really bugged her to start helping out yet since she needed a little time to pay off debts and get back on her feet. the good thing is that she does most of the house work since i'm working 50-55hrs a week lately, so i don't have to worry about that stuff too much.

investments are an area where we're just ignoring like most others here. had a lot in crypto, lost a lot in crypto, holding a lot in crypto, but at least i didnt lose anything massive like through FTX or Celcius or any of the exchanges that went bust. most of my investments are in eth which at least still has the potential to go up again, not shitcoins. all my nft investments have gone down but i havent lost money there since i took money out along the way and put it into my bank account, but a lot of lost opportunities for sure.

other than that, i think just like everybody my expectations for the future and my goals have basically been delayed/extended due to this market slowdown and interest rate hike. still cant complain too much, don't have difficulty paying my bills and putting food on the table, so i'm just going to tighten up my unnecessary expenses and brave the storm. times are tough so this xmas everyone in my family is getting a pair of socks lol

There is definitely an element of depression to this thread, but at the same time there's something comforting hearing from other people sharing their stories. It helps build a community around here and I think there's a nice feeling of knowing we're not alone and there's ben a lot of supportive comments too, which is great. So it's kind of depressing but also uplifting.

It also feels 100x better than Reddit where everyone just whines and complains and acts all woe-is-me. Reddit is full of whiners and complainers.

Coles notes: shits fucked fam

Reddit is terrible, you follow PFC and if you don't have a paid off house by the time you're 28, then you need to be eating rice and beans until you do.

Lolol when EFF-1 made that post I was gonna reply “everyone in a similar thread on Reddit was saying they can only eat plain rice and beans”

Lol

Gotta drive a beige 12 year old Corolla or you're wasting your money.

As much as most of the stories so far are of a pretty rough 2022 I have a feeling that 2023 will be as bad or even worse. Fingers crossed that's not the case for people but I'm not optimistic.

Reddit is a circle jerk of self pity.

There are lots of people on reddit who aren't suffering as much financially but they never speak up because if they do, the mob will crucify them. Lord help anyone on reddit who reveals they a own place and go out to nice dinners once in a while. Yikes.

This is interesting, anecdotally speaking, between my friends groups I haven't really felt a difference, still go out the same, still travel the same, still spending money the same.

Based on things like restaurant wait times, seeing the amount of people spending $120/person to go to Mann farms for halloween, christmas events, I really felt like everything was pretty normal.

I'm variable on my mortgage for the house I closed on October last year, but my plan was always to make huge lump sum payments every year anyway. It does suck that the main payments aren't going to the principal as much anymore, but hopefully the rate increases calm, and next year they start to come back down, if so I will probably still be ahead of the 3.3% fixed rate I was offered.

Reddit skews probably 10-15 years younger than RS now. I'm guessing the average age is now 40 here?

Also skews towards more newcomers. I don't think new immigrants are signing rushing to sign up to post on some BB board from the early 2000s. :lol

We gotta get some fresh meat on these forums, I wanna see more riced out 92 civics and cherry bomb mufflers

I still look for them on marketplace, only to see that they are automatics (instant nope), nowhere close to road worthy, or listed with massively inflated prices. Last month it was not easy finding a manual vehicle to replace the one I had.

Some ppl are like that here

Your gonna hurt my feeeeeeelings if you keep calling me out like that

On a side note, what's PFC?

r/personalfinancecanada

I remember going on /r/personalfinance, financialindependence, personfinancecanada when I was young. It taught me a lot but the mob mentality was that if you wanted a high salaries, you were scolded on how it's not attainable and how close to impossible it is.

Almost convinced me to not even try lol. I think that forum also fails to understand that the individuals that read a lot of personal finance content are likely to skew higher on income and savings.

people who post tend to be the ones who has something to complain about, similar to google reviews (or any reviews)

Thought I would post this relevant r/vancouver thread here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/vancouver/c...s_2021_census/

Lots of people claiming they make incomes in the 90th percentile but can't afford to buy a house or live their best life.

Uhh I don't know about you and what your background is, but if 90th percentile is 125k for 35-44yr old, then yeah you can't buy a house. Condo 100%, even townhouse could be a challenge.

I'm at 5.1% var, and that's probably avg or cheaper than average right now. Say you are a successful individual and saved 300k. A 700k mortgage on a 1m TH at this rate right now is right at $4000 a month. Your take home at 120k is ~$6k a month. You won't be able to afford anything else after insurance (~700/y), property tax(~2k/y), strata fees(Lets say $400/m), utilities(avg $200-250/m), and food ($400/m if you are cheap and don't eat out much).

In Jan this year you could do it, but you'll be in a world of hurt right now if you went var.

130k for average family income isnt gonna buy you a house without some real stressing and saving in 2022.

Imagine making 125k/yr, living in Canada where quality of life ranks in the top 10 of 195 countries, and complaining that they aren't living their best life

90th percentile of a top 10 country puts you in the top 1% globally, quality of life wise

These people should do a "life swap" with any random person globally for a week, they will be begging for a one way back to Vancouver within the first hour

I useto have Reddit for about 3 months, ended up deleting it because it's a hyper version of Facebook. I feel like I lose IQ every time I go on there, from the comments that I read

I'm sure life is better in Haiti right now than in Canada :troll:

I scanned through that thread and it didn't seem to be people complaining at all - just folks pointing that at 90 percentile that they still can't afford a home which is a truthful statement. I've seen worse threads on reddit on this topic.

It can be both true that someone can appreciate how great life is here AND say that it's tough out there or that it's harder than it should be cause it IS shocking how expensive major cities in Canada are relative to income.

Yea.. that train of thought it definitely not accepted lol.. here or there.

You should be thanking the homeless drug addict breaking into your building with the 950k 1br condo