Parent Time

Everyone loves snooping in other people’s medicine cabinets, right? Now, here’s your chance to peer inside their bank accounts. Like us, you’ve probably wondered how some families manage on $40,000 a year, while others struggle to get by on six figures. And why do certain couples choose to raise their families where they do? Today’s Parent crunched some national numbers and sat down with three different families — one in a village, one in a mid-size city and another in a booming urban centre — to give you an inside look at the cost of family life today.

The reality is that how much families earn, spend and save varies wildly based on where they live. Sure, the average Canadian couple raised their children on a combined income of $90,845 before tax in 2004, according to Statistics Canada. That same average couple paid $627 a month to stock the fridge and $890 on the mortgage, if they owned a home. But parents spend vastly different amounts on child care across the country. Couples in Quebec can pay as little as $7 a day for government-subsidized daycare, while some Toronto parents shell out $600 a week for a nanny. And while urban couples generally spend more than rural parents overall, they also earn more and sock more away for retirement. (See Costs by Community Size).

Calgary’s Tracy MacAskill, a working mother who pays $1,440 a month for her children’s daycare, admits living in the city probably costs more than commuting would. But she’s happy just where she is; her urban lifestyle offers a convenient five-minute drive to work, and therefore more time to spend with the kids. “Everything’s right at your fingertips,” says MacAskill. “You don’t have a half-hour drive to find a store that’s open.”

Meanwhile, couples like Connie and Mike Anderson can’t say enough about the sense of community in tiny Markdale, Ont. Rural parents typically earn and spend less than urban couples, but raising children outside the city could mean paying more down the road if the kids leave for university. The ideal situation would be for a family to live in a smaller city like Red Deer, Alta., says David Ablett, a senior tax and retirement planning specialist with Investors Group in Winnipeg. It’s small enough that housing is affordable, large enough to have its own college, and close enough to a major urban centre that parents can commute and bring home big-city salaries.

Of course, what’s ideal from a dollars-and-cents perspective may not be what you want. Sometimes careers and extended family determine where you live. And, as the three families we’ve profiled contend, you can’t put a price tag on quality of life.

Originally published in Today's Parent, March 2007