New survey finds nearly half of Canadians are living paycheque to paycheque

Source: bo-n-es

27 Comments

  1. RedEyedWiartonBoy on

    I want to stay categorically and for the record before anyone else does, the Liberal Party of Canada which has been in power for the last 11 years and counting and for the most part with a majority or de facto majority is it no way responsible or the financial hardships faced by Canadians.

    All of the problems were caused by the Conservative Party of Canada which had no power or decision making authority for that time period.

  2. ApprehensiveAd6603 on

    49% living paycheck to paycheck is sort of meaningless without any comparison to previous times. What was the percentage in 2020 or 2010 or 2000? What is it like in other G7 countries?

  3. Conscious_Candle2598 on

    only half of Canadians?! Westons and Irvings gotta bump those numbers up! theres more money to be made off these suckers.

  4. ProudVancouverLL on

    And there are voters in this country who thinks we’re not being taxed enough lol

  5. suspiciousserb on

    Insulting that they needed a survey to state the obvious. Wages haven’t kept up with costs of food, fuel, utilities, insurance. This was all by design. All parties and politicians are to blame. This is a class war.

  6. William-Riker on

    Whenever I hear ‘living paycheque to paycheque’ I am never sure if they count access to credit? Do they mean people are literally waiting for their next pay cheque because they NEED the funds? If they don’t get that money, they can’t make payments? Do these people default of they don’t get their pay, or do they have a reserve in credit?

    Example. It good advice to have access to enough credit in case of an emergency. I spend all my regular pay on things I need to live, then dump any extra on the mortgage. So technically I am always waiting for that next pay cheque. and I seldom have much liquid cash.

    So in a sense, I am always waiting for that next cheque.

    However, I have a HELOC of $500,000 available at 4%. It has zero dollars on it, but if my pay stops for any reason, I’m not missing any payments.

    When they say people are living paycheque to paycheque, do they take into account equity and credit?

  7. VertGreenHeart on

    No shit. Employers are in a competition to race to see how much they can suppress wages and jobs for citizens and people without gainful employment cant get it ever again.

  8. MethodicallyRight on

    I’m too much of a cynic about this topic because I’ve done volunteer work related to credit counselling. I do *not* have faith in people’s ability to accurately describe their own financial situation.

    I know, I know… How can someone be wrong about their own personal experience. Easily. There are people with budgets and people without. There are people who live within a budget and those who don’t. There are people with accurate records of their income and expenditures and there are people without. To hear 49% of people say they *feel* like they’re living paycheck to paycheck is a red flag.

    Feeling like you’re living paycheck to paycheck because you have disastrous spending habits is quite a bit different than having little to no money leftover after covering basic expenses. That and people kind of sick at answering questions because of how they ‘interpret’ their own reality.

    I have seen and personally know people who will say they live ‘Paycheck to paycheck’ because after they’ve put money aside in their TFSA, maxed out their RRSP contributions, set aside 10% in their own private savings, maxed out their children’s education and FHB fund and topped up their 6 month of salary safety cushion in their checking account they’re left with barely enough to cover their groceries mortgage, car payments, entertainment activities etc.

    These people are the types who think it’s ‘obvious you *have* to do all of those things’ it’s not like a rational person could earn a paycheck and *not* max out all of their saving options first. So for them ‘paycheck to paycheck’ is measured after all of their savings goals have been met. These people are great, more Canadians should be like them *but* they’re idiots because they live in their own fantasy world where their situation describes what most random people and researchers would define as living ‘paycheck to paycheck’.

    Like hell, I recently got into a spat with a friend of ours (A teacher) because she was talking about how tight her finances are and how she can’t afford things that are well within her income bracket. Come to find out that she has lived her whole life depositing her first check every month into a savings account and living her life off of the 2nd and sometimes third paycheck each month… She has done this since College! I love her to death, she’s a wonderful human being but I lost it when I realized that she thought she was communicating clearly. The girl could retire tomorrow if she wanted to… She’s set for life but I guess she’s still cutting out Crave and Netflix and it’s going to be a Disney+ only month until they swap out another service.

  9. I would guess that half of those are falling further and further behind each paycheque.

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