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Comment by bombcar | Hacker News Reader

> Nowadays, at 69, I receive $1,700 a month from government assistance, $232 from the Canada pension and $1,500 from old-age security. My partner, brings in about $1,200 a month. We still can’t afford to buy food.

This is $4,632 a month. Something needs to change if that’s not enough to buy food. Perhaps spending less on candles.

Edit: Apparently the numbers are doubled up so we’re at 2,932

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No it's $2,900 a month. The $232 and $1500 are the breakdown of the $1,700 a month referred to above. The editor missed a semicolon.

Still, she has a really low rent by Toronto standards of $1,100, leaving $1,800 for all other expenses, which given her medical conditions and the fact that provincial governments are cutting, I can see a lot of that getting eaten up pretty quick.

Yeah, that rent is incredibly low for Toronto. But also, 1800 for all utilities, potential medicine, transportation,… does not get you too far.

My wife and I do shopping for a full week at Farm Boy (not the cheapest) and this runs to about $300 for a week of food. Does not include other things such as detergent, toilet paper, etc..

you're talking about expenses that are like $5 there and $10 there

$1800 for everything shouldn't be starving

Where do you live that utilities, public transport, and niche medical expenses are $5 here and there?

Beijing, China

Thanks for pointing that out. It confused me too.

If that’s correct (and it seems it is) there still seems to be some room, especially for applying for additional assistance (but I don’t know how Canada handles it, the USA would likely grant SNAP).

Canadians don't have the easy option of moving to Florida or Arizona to avoid heating bills, either. That could be a big portion of the remainder.

Florida insurance (all types) each costs far, far more than heating bills. People with cars just got (or are about to get) a 40% f.u. for living in FL bump in their auto. It makes no difference if you've no collision on your own car. And - that 40% is just this year's increase.

Building insurance is many magnitudes worse. I personally know small biz owners that are teetering on shuttering after the legislatures latest insurance fixes.

One of my dads friends lives in Florida and wants to sell her house and move. She doesn't seem to really believe that moving would mean her auto and homeowners insurance would go from $1500/month to that a year.

It is really easy to use Zillow to compare houses across the USA - I can find nearly identical properties in almost any metro area I could consider, and it will list prices, taxes, and even estimate insurance.

But it's much harder to compare all the other expenses involved with month-to-month living (utilities, car insurance, car maintenance, etc).

I'm vacillating between curious & skeptical about how Zillow can give accurate FL structure insurance estimates, while those numbers are changing from month to month or even faster.

I only turned on heating for one month this winter because I padded windows with extra thermal tape. When it's above 0 °C it's enough to just keep windows closed. Inside the room the temperature only dropped to 20 °C up until the outside temperature started freezing

but she only has $60 for food? if you assume phone and internet is ~$250/m and two bus passes are another ~$250/m, that's $1,300/m for other stuff? I can't really make heads or tails of this budget without knowing more.

It's super easy to hit $1k/mo in routine medical/dental expenses. That's one Dr visit, 3 meds and a bit of dental work w/o insurance. Tack on 1 non-routine medical issue and that can easily go up by a factor of 2 or 20.

Total nonsense! All but dental are fully covered for retirees where she lives.

Maybe the location becomes a problem? In my home country life is expensive too. Moved to a lower cost one. Bought land, build a house have a big garden. Raise animals and grow my own crops. I build solar panels and have my own waterwells. I have almost 0 cost. Just my internet. I would never ever be able to this all in my home country without going into debt so much I would be paying for that well into my retirement.

I was working in a well paid IT job almost living from pay check to pay check. Now I work remote for a lower pay and most of it just goes in my retirement savings.

Not sure what my point is but there are alternatives...

It’s somewhat understandable that people being “forced” to move from where they have always been is annoying, but sometimes it’s the best option.

It takes a fat wad of ready cash to move. Twenty years ago it cost $4k for a local do-it-yourself move (inexpensive state), after the last everything was totaled.

Today it's common to compete with dozens->hundreds of applicants for a rental. We just did a similar move to that $4k of yesteryear (same region, modest house, local move) and it was about $16k.

That's sort of the point, location in a city? Yeah. But an entire city or country where $4k/mo isn't enough for food? Sounds like the people of the country got scammed by politicians and corporations.

Welcome to Canada comrade, where interest rates, monetary policy, corporate consolidation, and corrupt politicians combined to create a country where house prices became obscenely unaffordable first in a few major cities and then in recent years in every podunk town in every province in the country. And with obscene housing prices comes obscene cost of living. $4k/mo doesn’t get you anything close to a reasonable lifestyle.

I feel betrayed; everyone has been telling me Canada is perfect and does everything right :(

Our economy has been based for too long on debt and real estate. When Canadians became the most indebted households in the G8, the government simply opened the floodgates to immigrants to ensure rents and house prices would stay high.

We are following the same path as the UK now in that the conservative parties are moving rightward and gaining ground on populist notions of “this isn’t the Canada we grew up with” (because of immigration) which plays to certain folks who are upset that their quality of life has eroded due to the increase in housing costs. Now these groups have been whipped into such a fury they’ll vote against their own interests like electing politicians who commit to privatizing healthcare, one of the cornerstones of our identity.

Wild times.

I've looked into houses in the Yukon out or curiousity and it was the same thing. Middle of nowhere in the arctic is also expensive.

In the middle of nowhere I'd not buy a ready-made home but a plot of land - which I assume still to be affordable - and build my own house there. I've been to the Yukon - paddled the whole thing from Whitehorse to the Bering strait in a canoe in 2001 - and actually planned to do something like that. I ended up moving to Sweden instead and more or less count my blessings now that Canada has managed to lose a lot of its appeal in the decades between then and now.

Since they have health conditions, they have no choice but to live in the GTA to be able to see their doctors. Trying to find affordable housing and specialists in other cities will have multi-year long wait lists (ignoring the fact that they don't even have the money to afford movers). Nothing in the GTA is remotely cheaper than what they currently have unless they want to rent a 5bdr basement with 4 random students in a firehazard sharehouse. They are effective trapped there until they die.

The subject of the article mentions having multiple medical conditions, some of which (to my knowledge) require specialists. It's not inconceivable that those consume a significant portion of their take-home, even in a country with socialized medicine.

Perhaps it's meant to read "I receive $1,700 a month total from government assistance: $232 from the Canada pension, and $1,500 from old-age security."

I'd probably buy rice, beans, and frozen veg rather than salad, but if the majority of her expenditure is medical then I'm not sure it matters.

Doesn't Canada have a socialised medical system like the NHS in the UK? Why then does she have so many medical expenses?

a quick web search would say seem to indicate that the most someone her age could receive from old age security is $700/month?

aslo I personally wouldn't describe old age security and Canadian pension as "assistance" as I imagine its more of an entitlement rather than an something needs based which I would consider more of assistance.

https://www.canada.ca/en/services/benefits/publicpensions/cp...

I noticed this as well. I'm also on benefits and have subsidized housing, although in the US as a single person, and I don't have this issue with food insecurity - although now that the public health emergency has ended I lost roughly 400 dollars a month from programs that were extended. It would help if she broke down her monthly budget. Maybe she has some kind of scenario with past debt, or if she was in the US medical stuff, but that shouldn't be the case in Canada. Still confusing

Is it possible that's meant to total up to $2900 a month, where the $232 and $1500 are meant to be a breakdown of the $1700 a month figure and it got garbled?

Yeah, looking back that seems most likely, but the number 1700 not being exact and then having exact numbers following was confusing.

they also said that their rent is 1100 a month. where could it be going when they only list their phone, internet and transit bills.

The punctuation of the sentence is a little odd, but I take it to mean $1732 + $1200 = $2932.

Less $1100 of current rent, that’s $1832 per month to cover all other costs for two people. Few would elect to be traveling 6 days a week obtaining food assistance if there were easy expenditures to cut.

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