2y ago

Vet technician, 33, is scraping by in a small city Ontario house her parents paid for: ‘It’s a lot of guilt’

www.theglobeandmail.com

“It feels like I’ve been working harder and harder and sliding backwards down the scale,” she says.

Making $50k in a small town and still "scraping by" is scary. Maybe I'm just old, but I'd hoped that kind of income would be enough for some kind of comfort.

48 comments

Say whatever you want about her spending habits but $35k for a vet tech job is fucking criminal. Why are we paying essentially minimum wage for an extremely high stress job that requires at least two years of schooling??
- I feel like jobs like these are passion jobs. Or employers feel like if it’s something you’re passionate about and care about, then you should be willing to do it for less.
  For example, had a few friends work for the Canucks. I’m pretty sure the family who owns Canuck’s are billionaires, but because the people who work there are passionate about the sport and the team, they get away with below living wages for the privilege of just being around.
  Obviously not the same, but… yeh. We under pay people who care and feel indebted to their clients and the work they love.
  
  Game developers seem to get paid very little for something that's very difficult.
  At the root i think passion among a great many people for (games, animals, hockey), leads to an oversupply of talent, which leads to depressed wages.
ITT: Crabs in a bucket arguing about how "You could totally climb that wall if you weren't spending so much on avocado toast!" while the water pot next to them starts to boil.
- I would like to understand what you are saying.
  The "crabs in a bucket" idea refers to:
  The analogous theory in human behavior is that members of a group will attempt to reduce the self-confidence of any member who achieves success beyond the others, out of envy, jealousy, resentment, spite, conspiracy, or competitive feelings, to halt their progress.
  How does it apply here? She is not "achieving success beyond the others" and we are not trying to stop her from doing so. Quite the opposite! We are trying to help people who find themselves in a similar position make the best out off the budget they have so that they can make ends meet like we do.
  In other words, we are crabs who have gotten out of the debt bucket and are trying to help others come out as well.
  The other analogy you seem to be alluding to is the "frog in a pot":
  The boiling frog is an apologue describing a frog being slowly boiled alive. The premise is that if a frog is put suddenly into boiling water, it will jump out, but if the frog is put in tepid water which is then brought to a boil slowly, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death.
  What I can tell you from experience is that during periods of hardship, the ability to adapt makes a huge difference and puts you in a much better position mentally and financially when things inevitably get better. Because this too shall pass.
  
  They are referring to the people in this thread are debating about her spending habits without looking at the bigger picture.
  We are the crabs.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
She relies on a personal line of credit for unexpected expenses, whether it’s a broken appliance, car repairs or veterinary care for her cats.
In 2013, her parents bought her a 1,200-square-foot semi-detached two-bedroom house in a small Ontario city, a university town.
They have also previously paid off her credit card debt, bought her a used Honda CRV, covered a kitchen renovation and helped with other expenses.
At her job, Caitlyn handles everything from drawing blood, performing X-rays and giving injections to answering phones, doing paperwork and cleaning the office space.
“I think the old-school principle is if you go to school and you get good grades and then you go to post-secondary education … the thought process was then you live comfortably,” she said.
She rarely eats out, makes her coffee at home and has cut back on ordering in and drinking alcohol.
The original article contains 770 words, the summary contains 145 words. Saved 81%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Really? What do her bills look like? Is she ordering DoorDash for every meal?
Give me a free house and car, and I could easily live on half that much money.
EDIT: Here's what the article says. This looks like a pretty random budget, and the house was not free as the headline suggests.
Her typical monthly expenses:
Investments: $0
Savings: $0
Pensions: $0
Taxes: $415 in monthly tax deductions
Household: $2,175
Mortgage: $1,162.70
Utilities: $233
Hydro: $165
Internet: $135
Property tax: $216
Property insurance: $184
Phone bill: $80
Transportation: $384
Car repairs: $50
Car insurance: $184
Gas: $150
Food and drink (total): $520
Groceries: $400
Eating out: $60
Coffee/tea: $20
Alcohol: $40
Miscellaneous (dental, clothing, other shopping, nails, hair, spa etc) - $680
Her cats: $350 (food, meds and litter)
Haircuts/cosmetics: $150
Prescriptions: $100
Dental: $0 this year
Clothing: $50
Apps: $30
Vacations: $0
Hobbies/recreation: $0
- Maybe you agree with this, but where's the fat? Is a vet not allowed to have pets? It's still a barebones budget.
  And the thing to realize about high stress professional jobs is that you have to eat out more and make use of services to save time and energy. It's a tough demanding job, especially for the pay. There's a reason why vets have amongst the highest suicide rates of any profession.
  
  Vet techs too (family member manages a vet hospital) with the suicide risk.
  There are so many frustrated, worried people coming in who don't understand the vet is busy doing so much with so few staff and the reason your appointment has been bumped is because the vet is gone, either left the city, the profession or this plane of existence. All too often the last option, and everyone's working through the fall-out.
  And vets largely don't see people unless during the exam with an animal; the rest of the time its vet-techs or reception/admin staff. And people lose their metric shit at appointment changes, bad news, or even the bill (because it's always high; get insurance, kids). Admins and techs take the full Karen tornado, which while understandable is still not justifiable. Not cool.
  So they shed a customer and sometimes they lose staff too. And they're no longer losing the slackers who don't care about animals: they're losing the animal nuts whose hearts used to be in it. Sometimes those people leave this life as well. It's that bad, that often, for that long.
  So yeah, they blow off a lot of steam and leverage those social peer bonds, and I don't see that pressure valve here. You're either gonna spend money on frivolity, psyche sessions, or worse. So those numbers need to be higher for the short term.
  
  Her utilities are higher than my 3 bedroom house's. Phone bill is a bit high, Internet bill is double what it should be, property tax and insurance are high, haircuts, cosmetics, shopping all could be reduced. The cat bill is ridiculous, unless those are some sick pets with long term illnesses or she has about 30 normal ones.
  Bottom line is that is not the budget of someone who's "Struggling" in life. Struggling would be not having the money to do half the things on that budget.
- $135 for Internet and $80 for mobile is criminal. I pay $130/month for internet, but that's for high speed fiber, because I work from home as a software engineer. I also only pay $35/month for mobile after switching to Virgin because Telus' prices are insane.
  I miss living in California and paying $20/month for Google Fi.
Canada grew by one million people last year. House prices and rent are going to keep going up at insane levels as long as the policy remains extremely high immigration. This is basic supply and demand. Let us hope that people vote for change.
- For this to be true all immigrants would have to be wealthy enough to be able to scoop up all supply of homes in Canada. This just can't be the case considering the refugee status of many immigrants.
  A complex problem like this has significant other factors including speculation, reduction of public housing, inflation.
  We should welcome more people, and continue our Canadian values of supporting those in need through out the world. Learn some compassion for your fellow human beings, or go to Florida, where you can be surrounded by like minded people.
  
  No. They simply increase demand. They scoop up rentals, causing rent to increase. Then landlords get richer and buy more properties. And we don't build the required amount of houses for the amount of immigrants we have.
  It's not the immigrants fault, in fact they are the victims of being scammed into moving here.
  
  For this to be true all immigrants would have to be wealthy enough to be able to scoop up all supply of homes in Canada.
  No, it would require them to rent houses. Investors buy all the houses because they can reliably rent them. If they couldn’t, their business case would be completely different. They wouldn’t be buying houses, and they certainly wouldn’t be paying so much.
  Further to this, so many renters places upwards pressure on rent prices.
  Then we have to accept that some consequential proportion of immigrants do indeed buy houses, and place upward pressure on house prices.
  We agree it’s a complex system, but I do not agree with your implied argument that supply and demand doesn’t exist for housing in Canada. Clearly it does, and higher demand increases both rent and housing prices.
  
  The vast majority of immigrants to Canada (~84% from 2016-2021 according to statcan) were not admitted as refugees
We are a family of four (renting) and we don't spend much more than her living alone. She needs to make some tough decisions if she wants to save some money every month.
- Where is the difference in your budgets?
  
  The differences are everywhere.
  We live in a small apartment and I personally can't see how a single person having budget constraints is living in a house. College towns have plenty of apartments suitable for single people.
  We use transit, walking and cycling instead of having a car. She could probably do the same since she lives in a college town.
  Our internet & phone bills are much lower because we shopped around and went for a basic plan and cellphones. We don't have pets or other luxuries.
  Ultimately, if you have trouble making ends meet you have to start from scratch: what are the bare minimums that you need to be healthy? Housing, transportation, etc.
  I understand that some people have trouble accepting that their generation's standard of living is worse than their parents', but their inabiliy to adapt isn't helping them. Most people around the world live much more basic lives than what is common in Canada, and they are able to thrive. They could learn from them.
Her typical monthly expenses:
Internet: $135
Phone bill: $80
Car repairs: $50
Car insurance: $184
Gas: $150
Groceries: $400
Eating out: $60
Coffee/tea: $20
Alcohol: $40
Her cats: $350 (food, meds and litter)
Haircuts/cosmetics: $150
Apps: $30
Ok, she doesn't have an income problem, she has a spending problem.
The internet + phone bill of over $200 a month is insane! She can negotiate/switch her internet bill to at least half that. And she can switch her cell phone to something like public mobile for 1/4 of what she's paying now.
Car repairs, gas, insurance... if you can bike in your small town, this will save you a fortune. Also, consider switching to CAA's pay-as-you-go insurance, which works incredibly well if you also bike.
Food... way, WAY overspending here. $400 a month could feed a family of four, so that needs to be looked at. And "eating out, coffee, alcohol" should be cut completely if she's struggling.
Her cats... well, pets are a money pit. This will always keep her debt.
Haircuts/cosmetics. I'm not a lady, so I can't say whether this is a typical expense or not, but unless she makes a living based on her appearance, this should be trimmed (no pun intended) to a more reasonable level.
Apps... I'm going to assume these are subscription services totalling $30 a month. Insane. Cut those out unless absolutely necessary.
If someone can help her budget, she could easily be saving $500+ a month with little effort.
$50k for an individual living in a small town should have her living like a queen.
- Public mobile is Telus's discount brand. They have service everywhere Telus does. The other major carriers have their own discount branded services. You don't get much (or any) data, but it's a lot cheaper.
  
  I pay $112 for bell fiber internet and $42 for virgin 20gb after taxes. No bundles. Phone is paid for. I live in a small town 45mins from the 401? You can certainly get cheaper internet/phone than $200 a month. Although between the 2 of us, we average more than $100 person/week. We certainly don’t buy the cheapest we can but we budget where we choose.
  
  Public Mobile is owned by Telus, there shouldn't be the problems you describe. I live in the middle of nowhere with Lucky Mobile. Text and talk with no data is $15/month.
  But that's not what is normal amoung my peers. The expenses look reasonable to me, but could be optimized further. Normally, optimizing your expenses that much wouldn't be your part time job, but with the current wage situation, that's where we are at.
  
  Good luck getting an internet and phone plan for less than $200/month.
  My own bills:
  Internet (Beanfield): $40/mo including taxes.
  Cell (Freedom): $34/mo per phone, incl taxes.
  Beanfield may not be available everywhere, but Teksavvy has similar plans.
  
  What an incredibly out of touch comment. Do you live in Canada and do you pay for telecoms? Those are the going rates. Good luck getting an internet and phone plan for less than $200/month.
  All my life. Perhaps you haven't looked for savings in these areas?
  FYI: Public Mobile (my provider for years) has unlimited calling and text w/ 1gb data and ongoing perks for $25 / month. Even $40 would get you 30GB of data and 5g... not sure why you'd want anyone to spend double that when they are struggling financially.
  Internet isn't as easy, but all these companies can offer discounted rates. She needs to get internet that fits her needs (I pay $84 tax in for Bell TV and 1GB fibre to my home). $135 is crazy.
  It’s not feasible to switch to small carriers like public mobile because they only have cell coverage in major cities. The moment you leave and go towards suburbs or rural you’re on roaming.
  LOL. She lives in a University town, and you're saying she won't get cell service from a company like Telus? Give me a break.
  I’d like to see you suggest to someone in real life who’s living in Canada that they should use their bike in the winter to do groceries. The fact is, having a car in Canada (unless you live downtown in a city) is mandatory.
  Oh boy. She doesn't have to get groceries in the snow by bike... but if she can offload some of her driving to bike (for any reason), she'll save money.
  It also doesn't suggest that she's commuting out of town, so biking in a "small town" should be simple for anyone.
  Also I know for a fact you have never done groceries in Canada because $400/month is BELOW average for households. In my house we always buy the basics and we spend around $650 per month. That’s with the cheapest versions of every item and we don’t buy processed foods.
  Have for decades... sounds like you need to figure stuff out on your end.
  Troll somewhere else.
  Amazing how someone can take actual advice based on personal experience, and consider it "trolling".
  Learn more about how to be frugal, and perhaps you'd agree with my suggestions. Or continue to overspend.
  This woman is obviously struggling, and there are very easy fixes for most of her spending habits.
- You're missing the point. Someone who does well in school and has a decent job requiring advanced education should not be struggling to make ends meet in a first world country.
  
  Yes, even if she trimmed her expenses (which I agree is possible, though I don't know much about Canada) she would still not be living a "good" life despite being well educated, and fully employed with stable housing. She would be living a safe, healthy and financially functional, but it would not be a sustainable, happy, and enjoyable life, and her savings contributions would be not be enough to give her financial independence without some serious investments.

48 comments