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triplexpac posted:My brother went to school for medical engineering and ended up working doing work for cell phone networks. He's bummed about not being at all in his field, but he's making tons of money so I tell him to shut up. Yeah, I specialised towards biomedical engineering stuff in school and ended up in general software consulting because it turns out most biomedical engineering jobs in North America are in random places in the States or pay terrible salaries by comparison (and of those there ain't many here). But its a decent stable job so I can't really complain and can always go back and do a Masters if I want to respecialize so whatever. Honestly, when I graduated from Engineering it was basically understood there was a good chance you weren't going to work in your field. I've got friends doing everything from coding to project management to finance to public policy. But none of them are impoverished by any stretch of the imagination. Mr Luxury Yacht fucked around with this message at 22:38 on Jan 12, 2015 |
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Jan 12, 2015 22:35
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Reminds me of a guy I know who despite having a rather cushy bank job, also set up multiple companies in his name in order to deduct pretty much everything he earns from his real job against vague imaginary business expenses in personal companies that conveniently make no money. I think he claims he gives "financial advice to immigrants" or "general consulting advice" or something through his "companies" but will do things like drive across town to visit friends, claim he takes about finance and write the trip off as a business expense. Like...I know it has to be illegal, but none of us can figure out the exact law and he's convinced the CRA won't gently caress him because "He's just a little guy, they've got bigger fish to fry".
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Feb 17, 2015 16:29
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The thing is though, if they audit him on his personal taxes isn't he going to have to explain by extension his shady "businesses" he's claiming deductions from? And aren't random personal audits more likely? I mean hell, I was sorta audited three of my first five years of paying income tax because for some reason they kept not believing I was a student 
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Feb 17, 2015 16:47
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Dreylad posted:I got audited by the CRA when I was 19. Behold, CRA, my vast financial empire of having a part-time job for 4 months and paying tuition to a university. Was this like 2008 or 2009? One of those years I think they must have decided to audit like every university student, because myself and more than half of my friends got hit all in one tax period.
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Feb 17, 2015 21:19
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Things I've heard from coworkers planning on buying in Toronto over the past few weeks: "Renting is literally throwing money away for nothing. If I throw it into a mortgage I'm guarantees to money." "The demand for condos is still sky high! Look at how many they're building. Would they do that if people weren't going to buy them? Clearly its a great investment." "Even if rich foreign investors from China stop buying the Indians will just take their place. Demand won't drop" "Okay even if the market is overheated and prices correct downwards by 30% that'll just spur foreign investors to jump in at great low prices. It'll be back to profitable in no time." "But I've heard rumours they're going to drop the prime rate again in a few months. If I don't buy now the price will skyrocket once that happens!" Oh and the best: "Sure housing crashes have happened in other cities, but Toronto is the New York of Canada. There will always be massive demand here, a crash can't happen".
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Feb 23, 2015 21:54
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tagesschau posted:According to the New York Times' handy Case-Shiller tool, housing prices in New York were down 19% from June 2006 to June 2014 (you'll have to adjust the sliders), so good luck with that. I sent that to the guy who said it and apparently "It means values are actually going up because thanks to micro housing they're just building units half the size for 75% less so housing actually increased in value by 40% instead of dropping by 20%" I don't know much about real estate but this sounds loving dumb to me. Is it?
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Feb 23, 2015 22:56
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Thank god most of my family is buried in the wasteland that is Windsor. Can't imagine that place is filling up any time soon. Plus the toxic waste has a non-zero chance of one day resurrecting me as a hella cool zombie 
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Feb 28, 2015 02:18
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Renting a lovely condo in Toronto has opened my eyes to how poorly a building can be built. Things that set off my unit's smoke detectors: A bit of steam from the shower if I forgot to turn the fan on. Things that don't set off my unit's smoke detectors: A cooking mishap literally filling the apartment with enough smoke that I have to spend five minutes on the balcony to get some oxygen. It's drafty as poo poo, there's water damage thanks to all the water that pools when the inch thick ice sheets that form on the inside of the windows melt, and at least one elevator is broken at any given time. And according to the building management this is all normal and there's nothing they should have to do about it 
Mr Luxury Yacht fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Mar 5, 2015 |
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Mar 5, 2015 19:40
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To be fair to Microsoft, in their case I'd bet for every job in the Canadian office filled by a foreigner, there's a job in their US office filled by a Canadian. They hire Waterloo and U of T Engineering/CS grads like crazy. A good chunk of my classmates ended up in their Seattle office post grad.
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Mar 20, 2015 16:10
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PT6A posted:And yet pharmacies will simply refuse to stock certain things. I had to go to 4 pharmacies before I could find Sudafed that didn't have bullshit painkillers in it. I'm not making meth for gently caress sake, I just want to clear my goddamn nose without taking extra drugs! The normal non-painkiller stuff is usually just behind the counter with the pharmacist, presumably so they can just hand you one package instead of someone buying several dozen for Meth. At least that's the way it seems to be in Ontario. Never had an issue getting it but you just have to ask. Not even close to the way it is in the states where you have to put your name on a registry and they take drivers license info, etc...
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Mar 29, 2015 23:19
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My building has a 4th, 13th, 14th, and 24th floor  All those load bearing ghosts are keeping it structurally sound.
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Apr 24, 2015 20:09
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Yeah, I think I've said it before in this thread but throw me in the pile of folks considering moving to like KW or something to settle down eventually. I mean, what are my other options? A decent house in Toronto is realistically unaffordable. And gently caress moving to the suburbs. Couldn't wait to get the hell out of there growing up. And in my field there's jack poo poo out west in terms of jobs unless I move to the even worse housing market of Vancouver. At least in KW there's somewhat of a tech industry so there's decent employment for me there, housing is affordable, transit is pretty good (compared to the burbs), and there's more to do than like Ajax or (lol) Oshawa. I mean it's no Toronto but I don't see myself winning the lottery any time soon so meh.
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Jun 9, 2015 17:21
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One of my coworkers is drinking to Kool Aid so hard when I asked her what would happen after her planned condo buy if prices dropped she looked me in the eye and said "Toronto real estate will never ever drop in price from here on in" and then went on to try to justify it. Like never as in she honestly believes prices can only continue to rise literally forever never dropping once. This is woman with a business degree  On the flip side, my other coworker is convinced they won't raise interest rates in the next decade because the economy is in the toilet (and will be for the next ten years) and raising even a little would cause it to toilet harder, so why not buy now. That feels kinda dumb to me but I don't have anything to counter it with, so does anyone got some ammo for me? I'm getting really invested in these lunchroom debates because I think I'm the only one left who thinks condo buying is retarded in this market.
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Jul 8, 2015 21:52
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triplexpac posted:Well to be fair, does she believe prices will continue to rise, or does she think that we are reaching the peak and it will then plateau forever? The first.
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Jul 8, 2015 21:58
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Furnaceface posted:Maybe trying to help someone from making a potentially life ruining decision? Not everyone just wants to watch the world burn you know. It was originally that, but to be honest at this point it's just from an insane fascination with the mental gymnastics they're going through to paint it as an impossible to fail investment. Plus I mean, poo poo I'd rather have a lively debate over lunch than just stare at my food. It's a far safer topic than politics anyway. Mr Luxury Yacht fucked around with this message at 05:37 on Jul 9, 2015 |
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Jul 9, 2015 05:30
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Either I'm reading that wrong or you're paying $96,000 for a 55K truck, of which you only owe 20K on.. wat
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Jul 23, 2015 20:17
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Powershift posted:But it's ALUMINUM I see. I'd made the boneheaded mistake of assuming that 2014 truck had already been paid off. Silly me, this is Alberta we're talking about 
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Jul 23, 2015 20:26
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Yeah, you can get a one bedroom in a decent location in Montreal for what you'd pay for a share of a 4 bedroom in Toronto. Montreal is hella cheap.
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Jul 24, 2015 19:39
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Killin_Like_Bronson posted:The actual truck he is buying is 'worth' $65K but he is refinancing $30K in bad decisions along with his truck. This is the part people forget when they trade in a vehicle and the value is 50% of the buyout. What kind of brain damaged justification did he say for trading away a vehicle only a month and a drat half old?
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Jul 29, 2015 23:21
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JawKnee posted:loving According to the internet like, $2000. So yeah he spend like $100,000 on something he could have got in probably the same amount of time for 1/50th of the price hahaha burn Alberta to the ground.
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Jul 29, 2015 23:42
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I know of a lot of people going on about foreign ownership just on the assumption of there's not that many jobs in Vancouver can support the insane prices for homes so the sales have to come from somewhere. I mean the average sale price of a single family home in the greater Vancouver area is what, 1.5 million? A quick calc online assuming a lovely down payment of 10% leaves $1,350,000 and over 25 years at 3% interest that's like almost $6,500/month in mortgage alone. I mean with property tax and random house poo poo you could be pushing 100k a year in housing costs alone. How many jobs in Vancouver support that kind of living and yet sales keep increasing?
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Aug 13, 2015 16:38
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rrrrrrrrrrrt posted:Hmm. Hmmmmmmmm. The property market in Timmins is perfectly stable, what country wide crisis?
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Aug 13, 2015 21:21
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Yeah, bursts of tons of unpaid overtime are standard in tech in Canada. Sure we have fairer firing practices but lol at the idea of tech companies paying overtime. I've certainly never seen anything more than maybe an informal extra day off after a bunch of overtime. But the gall of a labour lawyer arguing other people should work *more* free overtime when he probably wouldn't wipe his own rear end if he wasn't billable is rage inducing. Everyone I know who's worked at Amazon has said similar poo poo to that article, put up with it for a year to get the name on the resume, then moved on to greener pastures at companies like Microsoft that have some semblance of work life balance. It's all for naught anyway since everything tech is getting slowly shipped overseas regardless where there's tons of devs and engineers at a quarter of the price.
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Aug 19, 2015 22:48
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McGavin posted:He most likely represents companies when they get sued for labour violations, rather than the employees doing the suing. I was more talking about lawyers in general. Any job that doesn't lift a drat finger except for billable hours should not tell other people that they should work for free.
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Aug 20, 2015 14:38
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I am not looking forward to seeing how much the money I socked away for grad school in my TFSA/RRSP has dropped, conveniently just before I'm due to start.  It's mostly in low risk mutual funds but I imagine it won't make a ton of difference. Maybe it'll drop a bit less than higher risk ones but really when savings accounts have sub-inflation interest wtf else are you supposed to put it in?
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Aug 24, 2015 18:25
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The Butcher posted:If it's money you know you will actually be spending in the near future, you shouldn't be investing with it at all because, well, you know now. I guess my thinking was "High Interest" savings accounts are at like 0.5% annual interest, which is still sub inflation. Thank you garbage tier interest rates.... I wasn't looking for a real profit or anything, just enough to not lose value to inflation. Hence the low risk funds. Guess I know better now lol
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Aug 24, 2015 19:34
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Judging by the fact I've never heard of these places is in the equivalent of someone in Ontario worried about being priced out of like, Belleville?
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Aug 26, 2015 22:52
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Dreylad posted:Good to know, I wasn't really clear on what would happen in that situation. Thanks! It happened to an old place of mine I was renting, fortunately just before we were due to move anyway. From what the stuff from the bank sent us seemed to indicate we would have been fine for a while, but they would have been aiming to sell the place as soon as possible and if the new owner wanted to live in it instead of rent it out we'd have to go in the usual 60 days.
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Sep 3, 2015 19:43
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Rime posted:I'm not hoping things go down the toilet so I can jump in, I'm hoping for it so millions of Canadians end up homeless and on the bread line; shocked out of their sheltered fantasyland existence and forced to realize that they got hosed by nobody but themselves and their own greed. That humble pie, I want this country to eat it. lol if you think they won't blame literally everyone but themselves
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Sep 3, 2015 21:31
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Yeah fewer and fewer Engineers these days actually do Engineering when they graduate, unless they're in one of the"traditional" subfields like Civil. A big chunk of my class ended up in some sort of position at a consulting firm (management or technical), some in finance, sales, a couple went into public policy, etc... Maybe half ended up in a coding gig or something else people would consider "Engineering" work. I did three and a half years at a technical consulting firm after I graduated because it pays pretty good and they're really just looking for people with good general problem solving skills. I knew almost nothing about the field I was consulting in until they trained me. I'd imagine IBanking is similar except the hours are even more insane. However going from a really technical/design undergrad that lets you flex creativity into something like that is pretty draining and that's why a lot of those people (myself included) end up going back for grad school after a few years. Mr Luxury Yacht fucked around with this message at 00:36 on Dec 12, 2015 |
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Dec 12, 2015 00:27
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RBC posted:Nobody is "better off" working for a bank, unless they are a sociopath. Oh dear good pay, relative job security,and minimal overtime (although from what I've heard banks actually pay overtime which is more than most Engineering or software jobs lol get hosed exemptions from the labour act). The horror. But no you're right the guy doing UX design for CIBC's iPhone app is an utter monster. Some kind of SuperHitler. Mr Luxury Yacht fucked around with this message at 01:25 on Dec 12, 2015 |
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Dec 12, 2015 01:21
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Strong Conservative Economic Policy.jpg
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Dec 18, 2015 17:19
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Kraftwerk posted:So are we ever gonna see a decline in rent prices any time soon? All I can afford are sketchy old buildings, basements and places way outside Toronto like Brampton. It blows my mind that Mississauga and Etobicoke can be just as expensive as Toronto around the lakeshore too. I mean it's overpriced but you sure as hell don't need to make 80-90k to live downtown. That's absurd. Just don't go for lovely condos they're overpriced and horrible. My roommate and I used to rent one near Liberty Village and it was vastly inferior to our current old-rear end big ol' apartment building (except for amenities but nobody uses them anyway). It had less space, weird angles so you couldn't actually use the space that's there, was drafty, had all sorts of construction issues, etc... Get a roommate or if you reeeallly have to live on your own, an older building (they aren't all terrible). I used to rent at St.Clair West (like, a two min walk to the subway/streetcar), and largeish 1BRs are like 1000-1200. Usually with all utilities included. Davisville and Yonge and St.Clair are similar prices and still loving closer than Dufferin and Lawrence because of the subway.
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Jan 5, 2016 17:08
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Kraftwerk posted:Can you give me an example of what to look for in a non terrible old building? I avoid them mostly because I'm worried about bugs, mould, smoking or spicy cooking in the vents etc... With bugs, if it hasn't been on the bed bug registry for a several years you're usually safe. But tbh newer buildings ain't necessarily better. The condo I mentioned was built like, 2007, 2008? And it was on the bedbug registry more recently than my current building. All it takes it one idiot to bring in a side of the road couch. Also silverfish or some kind of weird non-ant bug that kept getting into all the sugar. Ditto for mold. Thanks to lovely windows we had ice forming on the inside every time it got cold. Which if we didn't catch it would melt and cause gross black mold to form on the window frame/area. Also when they built the place and installed the bathtub they didn't put any sealant around the tub. Hello water damage/mold in places we can't reach. tl;dr condos looks shiny but really suck behind the scenes. "Newly renovated" can vary in what they mean. Sometimes they knock down walls to make it more open concept. i.e. a lot of old one bedrooms or bachelors had these tiny separate kitchens. These days they're removing that wall and it's a lot better. Many are installing air conditioners also. Occasionally it means new appliances (but not always). But honestly yeah. Look around the place, chat with the rental manager to get a vibe of how it's managed. Some of the bigger companies throw in deals sometimes. Current one my last month's rent was free. Area-wise might be trickier. St.Clar West and Davisville aren't the best for getting to the highway unless you want to brave Allen Road, which I'm assuming is hella backed up at rush hour.
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Jan 5, 2016 19:28
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One advantage newer condos have in my experience with noise is between units it's crazy noise proof. Never heard anything going on in adjacent units. Within the unit the walls are paper thin though. Ridiculously so. Can't say the same with my new place. Currently we get noise complaints at 9PM on a Saturday when five people are playing a board game. Someone laughed too loud apparently  . That's probably the only downside so far to the unit.But yeah actually disruptive tenants are ridiculously hard to remove. The people living in the unit below my girlfriend's place (split house) are insane crackheads. Cops have been over many times, with several arrests. Last time the landlord entered the unit he had to get a junk removal company to come in and remove several Christmas trees, a (presumably stolen) hot dog cart, and an insane amount of trash. If he can ever get them out he's looking at thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of repairs. But I think they eventually pay their rent before he can get approval to evict (which, in the winter is also next to impossible IIRC), so he's stuck. She's moving out of that craphole soon though. Can't wait to not have to wake up to someone blasting lovely music in the parking lot at 4AM every night. Mr Luxury Yacht fucked around with this message at 20:41 on Jan 5, 2016 |
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Jan 5, 2016 20:35
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It's floors for us. Parquet flooring makes cleaning a cinch but blocks poo poo all for noise. After the first 9PM noise complaint we tried to put down a ton of area rugs, rearranged furniture and added more pictures and stuff on the walls to reduce echo, anything we could think of to prevent noise transfer. Didn't do much apparently . Although we did have a few folks over for a movie night a couple months ago with no complaint so maybe the super noise sensitive folks moved. Mr Luxury Yacht fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Jan 5, 2016 |
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Jan 5, 2016 21:02
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Furnaceface posted:When my parents offered to let me live at home for free so I could career change and go back to school I jumped at the opportunity. Why should I take on extra debt when I dont have to? UW Co-ops, especially engineering and comp sci ones pay exceptionally well. Usually like $15/hour in first year rising to $20-25 by fourth year. Unpaid ones are the exception and the co-op department demands a drat good reason why they aren't paid. They were always highlighted in red and if I remember people were actively discouraged from applying to them except as a last resort. It def helped me graduate almost debt free since before every school term you've got 4 months dedicated to earning money. If you get lucky and get one in SV, most of the big silicon valley ones (Facebook, Apple, etc...) pay something ridiculous like $6000 a month + housing stipend. I know people who paid off like all their debt with a couple 4 month terms out there. drat amazing program. Graduate with two years relevant work experience, minimal debt, and in many cases a job lined up from an old co-op? Really don't know why more schools don't do it. Mr Luxury Yacht fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Jan 6, 2016 |
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Jan 6, 2016 21:34
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blah_blah posted:Closer to $8000, and housing is provided. Yeah, my last co-op was like five years ago so I ain't surprised it's gone up. It's a good deal for the companies though. Not only (if its a final co-op term or near that) do they get essentially an almost engineer for less than market, but it comes with significant tax write-offs so the actual impact on their financials is even less than that.
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Jan 6, 2016 22:53
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jm20 posted:RE is BOOOMING in the LOO It's still not super crazy. Looking at Kijiji you can rent a 3-bedroom townhouse (close to downtown, 20 min walk to the hyped up new Google office) for the price of a renting a one bedroom Condo in Toronto. House and apartment rentals seem in the same ballpark as when I last rented there as a student (maybe 10-15% higher but that was 4-5 years ago so eh).
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Jan 27, 2016 22:57
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Melian Dialogue posted:Well I mean she's already done the right thing and got a second card with a $500 limit for random purchases, and hidden away that $7k card, so I don't see why she doesn't pay off her CC with the LoC (or maybe even HELOC if its worth the risk of going from unsecured to secured) at lower interest rate then get hit with that crazy 20% poo poo. I've got a friend in a somewhat similar situation. Well paying professional job and somehow managed to rack up several thousand dollars of CC debt and she had no idea how to pay it off. What helped with her was we sat down together, hashed out what she's currently spending on everything in a month and managed to show that with relatively minor cuts (take a couple less taxis per week. Eat out once less per week, not pay for a $500/month personal trainer when you're thousands in the hole, etc...) she could pay off her debt in less than half the time than she thought. Sometimes thinking of it in "Months till I'm free of this debt" as opposed to "oh poo poo thousands of dollars" makes things more manageable. Also suggested getting a LOC and dumping the CC debt on there while she paid it off since she had never heard of them and had no idea the rates were so much lower. I know tons of people who have no idea about finances past their credit cards.
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Feb 2, 2016 20:41
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