And you'll be retired too.
If people living around you keep paying more and more for expensive lifestyle, eventually you will be paying 5mil for a 2bd house in a so-so neighborhood. Because everyone already paid 7mil for the houses with 3bd.
SF totally jumped the shark.
But even if my figure is wrong then it's only because I accidentally posted it from three or four years in the future. But I suppose it's good news that a one bedroom is only $40k a year rather than $60k. At the moment anyway. And if you made 100k, then it's only 2.5 times more than taxes and leaves you a full 40% of your salary to thrive on, so that's nice.
Only the new construction in soma is more than that.
You can get a 3 bedroom with that budget.
I admittedly have never lived in SF with kids, but this seems like a series of choices and likely some exaggerations. If one of you is making >$500k and both of you chose to work, have kids, and you don't have the option to shift morning/evening so nanny/daycare is only 40 hours these are all choices.
Even at the rate you quoted it doesn't seem unreasonable to be able to stash away significant amounts of money. The problems are very similar, but the solutions are a lot more enviable than most of the US.
4k a month is probably average for an over the table nanny at 45 hours a week with 1 kid.
Au pair is an inexperienced person which is fine, but not for the type of nanny work someone may need if they are working a lot of hours.
I believe you should be able to save serious money at 500k if you dont over extend yourself on a large apartment, but things add up very quickly so I can see how it might not be much left over with 2 kids.
$200k/year is middle class in the most expensive areas.
The conditions may have their downsides but they are the ones you agreed to and in exchange for agreeing to them you were provided access to opportunities that would not have been available to you in your home country. It sounds to me like now that you have reaped the benefits you want to stop paying the price you agreed to in exchange for those benefits.
Compared to (most of) the rest of the country, Toronto has pretty moderate winters though (if a bit of wet cold off the Great Lakes). 4-5 months in Toronto being horrible though? I've lived in Vancouver a bunch, and the late fall/winter there can be a dreary mess (though I still like it).
You are right though, that much of Canada has absolutely brutal weather. I grew up in one of those places. It's help set my barometer for what really bad weather looks like.
Keep in mind there's much of the States that is way colder in winter!
I realize there are places in Canada that are much colder than that, though.
Also, there are other places to work, even if they don't pay as much as the Bay Area (but they also cost less to live in). Canada is pretty immigrant-friendly. If you don't like the weather, that sounds like some pretty petty complaining; you enjoy a lifestyle and income that most of the people on the planet would envy.