The Vancouver Trip Killed My Finances

Today's weather:  High = 35  Low = 28

Sunny

 

Maybe it's the world's most livable city for the rich, but Vancouver surely has to be one of the most expensive places in the world to live.  I honestly don't know how ordinary people can make it there.  If they are like me, they would head for the exits and join the brain drain.

 

Right now I'm doing some accounting of how much the recent Vancouver trip set me back financially and I'm having a hard time digesting my breakfast as a result of what I'm seeing.  To say this trip was expensive is an understatement.  Consequently, the proposed trip to Tibet that I had for the second half of the summer will have to be put on hold, and I may even have to cancel Thailand as well (which was the back up plan).  Hanging around in Shanghai for another month wouldn't be so bad, actually.

 

The shocking part was that I was doing everything I could to cut back on costs in Vancouver, knowing in advance that the trip would be expensive.  Thanks to the help of friends and family, I was able to crash at various peoples' houses and thus save on the biggest cost of all:  accomodation.  I didn't drive much at all, and mainly relied on bicycles and public transit to get around the whole 3 weeks.  But even with these measures, the trip still broke the bank.

 

Friends, family, and I had ample discussions during the trip about the high cost of living in Vancouver.  Everyone I talked to agreed that it was an expensive place to live.  But despite that, there was no indication in any of the conversations that people wanted to move out of Vancouver or seek a more affordable place to live. 

 

This attitude by residents of 'suck it up, we live in such a beautiful place, so we pay for it' is in direct contrast to what the newspapers are reporting about the brain drain.  That is to say, salaries cannot keep up with the cost of living, and so companies are losing talent, by their employees moving out of Vancouver to other locations that are more affordable.  In one example, a guy commutes to Calgary weekly for his job that pays moe salary with less taxes.  He then flies back to Vancouver on the weekend to live in a rental apartment where he has arranged a deal.

 

It is rather similar to the arrangement I had 3 years ago where I lived in Shanghai for the weekends and worked in a neighboring province. 

 

More to the point, it wouldn't be all that different from a guy who works in the USA and commutes back to the Vancouver area on a daily basis.  Or the guy who has a house on Bowen Island where it's cheaper and commutes into downtown Vancovuer on a water taxi that only takes 40 minutes and costs a good deal for the month.

 

So if guys like this are willing to come back to Vancouver for leisure (including the guy who flies back from Calgary every weekend and still saves money by doing this), then there must be something about the Vancouver lifestyle that he doesn't want to give up, despite the crazy costs.  Maybe it's the outdoor recreation, the coffee culture, the friends, the restaurants, the beautiful scenery, the bicycle lanes, Commerical Drive, or any other number of factors that make the city being #1 in terms of livability.

 

It's not all that different from me flying back every summer from Shanghai.