:nyan:

You can never have too much money lol.

EI is 55k so 70k is only a small top up.

I don't think it's possible to enjoy "a middle class" lifestyle in the major metros in Canada at 200K/year without some help/subsidization. Governments seem to be understanding this as programs are now targeting traditionally higher income families, such as the IVF subsidy program.

By middle class I mean detached house (or 2000 sq/ft+ 3 bedroom townhouse), 2-3 kids, and two safe vehicles that are capable of carrying kids and strollers.

https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/...6/702/3f2.jpeg

At a risk of turning this into RE thread #2, you own a house in Van or TO with only small help from parents, own two decent cars and some extra curricular activities for the kids or daycare, 200k household barely cuts it.

Very true. We have no help from parents with money or day care and have one kid in high level baseball and the other in high level cheer. Without the government refunding us a portion of our daycare services when they were younger, we would have been up shits creek.

Even now, we are both financially well off by most people's standards but find ourselves struggling month to month at times. The hardest part for us both is saving for retirement. Neither of us have a job where we get a pension or even rrsp matching so it is all on us.

I know these are first world problems but they are major challenges when trying to raise two kids in the lower mainland.

Wife started working on our taxes. At ~200k last year, we get ~$200/m with two kids. If you only have one kid then I guess you can just suck it.

Parents have it WAY easier these days when it comes to supports from the government... we put our two kids through full-time daycare when there were no provincial subsidies.

Speaking of cheerleading... my daughter was accidentally given some merch ordered by another parent. We took a peak at their invoice and the invoice totaled over $500 for team merch. I pick up my daughter from cheer practice with my 15-year old beater and all of the cheer parents are driving late-model SUVs, pickup trucks (because suburbs) and Teslas. Cheer moms with botox. Maybe balancing books these days is truly an anomaly and families are living on that HELOC life or running non-profitable MLM businesses.

Not that 30k is insignificant, but a 2019 X3, the one we drive right now, that's how much it's worth and it's half of a brand new one while looking almost identical on the exterior (there's been a facelift).

With what you said, using their HELOC and looking good isn't a terribly hard challenge, plus you get the peace of mind that you are driving a modern and safe car and the unfortunate fact is, some of these parents probably need that.

Granted they have a HELOC they can use instead of just rolling cars forward.

I got both kids for the day, wish me luck

How did things turn out? It's a win as long as the house is still standing when mama comes home~

We survived, the kids are still alive and haven't choked to death.

We went down to riverfront park and lots of kids were out and about, but they were all under 5 it seemed. No idea where all the older kids were. Probably at home playing Minecraft.

When the 1 yo went down for her second nap, the older one and I even managed to get our strawberries and raspberries replanted.

When did you guys start doing kids birthday parties where the parents could just drop the kids off with you? My buddy's kid is turning 5 in two weeks and they're doing the drop-off thing (for 6 kids). We're doing a party next week for my 5 year old and we're not doing the drop off thing - my wife would have a stroke if we did.

Only slightly related but I went to the Hastings-PNE Farmer's Market on Sunday and it's a nice spot to take your kids as there's a playground right next to the area with picnic tables. Lots of food stands and a couple food trucks as well so you can play a bit, grab some lunch, and play some more. If the kid gets bored you can walk over to the other side of the park where the Slidey Slide park is (about 10 mins) and play there for a while. Parking is free for the farmer's market too. The family washroom is pretty disgusting but if you've been in Chinese restaurants you'll manage.

We ended up being there for nearly four hours and the kid had a great time - never got bored b/c of the variety.

This is an issue that I've been contending with for some time.

My wife and grandma were concerned that there will be some sicko pedo parent(s) molesting the kids in the absence of other parents. I see their point and concern, but I don't really have a good solution since I can't always afford the time to accompany my kid. And the issue isn't limited to just birthday parties either -- once the kids start moving into the middle primary grades, they start asking to go over to their friends' house to play after school and such. And then it really becomes a problem, cuz by then, it would just be impossible to accompany your kid after school everyday.

For now, we are only limiting house visits to select parents that we know well enough, but even then, my wife and grandma are still occasionally giving me grief for it.

It is never going to be 100% risk free, and IMO, you just have to try your best in trusting your gut on how comfortable you are with the other parent(s). We can teach our kids all we want about inappropriate (adult) behaviours, but even then, if it were to happen, there is a chance they might not realize it until afterwards when the damage -- be it physical or psychological -- is done.

God I just hate the ugly side of human nature...

I thought it was more about having to essentially having to also take care of other kids and not just your own...rather than getting molested by the other parent(s). Or am I just too naive...

Are child molesters that common? We do have a friend who said she was molested by an older cousin, but that's the only real world account that we have.

I would be more concerned about being responsible for someone else's kid. If something happens to said kid I ain't got another kid to pay them back.

I dunno how common child molesters are, but I remember some guy I met in university saying that he was touched by someone older when he was a kid. He didn't know any better at the time, and it didn't really affect him. But then when he became an older teen, he realized what had happened back then, and he just felt gross about it.

And then there was another girl I know that was inappropriately touched by a religious leader when she was in her teens. It happened again when she was in her late teens, and again in her early twenties. I don't remember what she told me her reaction was in the earlier encounters, but in the early twenties' encounter, she fiercely lashed out at the person, and the religious leader never darned to appear anywhere close to her again.

The thing is -- you never know how much damage can be done should an incident like that occur. It can range from nothing to everything, and the psychological impact could be irreversible.

My sister worries about this stuff a lot, I told her you can't control the completely random acts of other people... do your due diligence and that's all you can do... conversely, the psychological damage of teaching them to constantly live in fear of what might happen all the time and never experience anything is also irreversible.

Around 8 seems to be a point for the drop off play dates/parties. At the last party my 9 yr old was at was a drop off, at extreme air park. I stayed though, as I didn't trust that they're at the point to make decisions like not blindly leaping into a foam pit or not falling on top of their friends on purpose. Not quite mature enough to think things through. At least one kid sprained an ankle still.
That said, everyone's perception of risk is different. Had to talk to the younger kid's teacher about the 6 year old in their class that was walking to school alone 5-6 blocks away. Kid barely spoke any English. Parents thought it was fine. Apparently even tried to leave house keys with the school so the kid could latchkey home alone.

Well shit. Just got an email from Oppenheimer that they do not have a space for our eldest despite being in catchment for kindergarten. The email said they'll find us a spot, but what now?

Not surprised -- the catchment that feeds Oppenheimer is waaaay too big for the school, and they are known to have a good kindergarten and elementary school program.

For shxts and giggles, back when my kiddo was due for kindergarten, I signed him up for out-of-catchment registration, and my spot on the waitlist was something like 150+ LOL~

Schools will register in-catchment students before they process cross boundary students, so there isn't very much you can do for the time being. VSB is supposed to try and place students like your kid into nearby schools first before they consider other cross-boundary applications, but the process is opaque enough that the most regular parents can do is to wait for VSB's email and hope for the best.

If Oppenheimer would somehow still have the physical space available (and the waitlist is long enough, which is guaranteed to be true for Oppenheimer), they will hire extra teachers to open up another class. If not, your kid will get assigned to a nearby school -- probably Douglas, Kingsford, or Waverley. Cook seems pretty packed as well, so I don't think your chances of getting sent there will be all that high.

For our kid, the start of the school year in the last few years have been pretty chaotic. Families with young children are back in the area again, so that's a good thing. But the (elementary) schools were unable to get all their ducks lined up before the first day of school, so assignment to teachers / classes were sometimes not fixed until as late as the 3rd week of class. In my kid's case, his principal is a good administrator that kept everyone up-to-date on all the potentially changing arrangements as things happen, but I can't say all school administrators are that on the ball with communicating with parents.

That's terrible news.

Turn up your religion and open your wallet. Corpus Christi isn't far from Oppenheimer.

We applied to Corpus already, was turned down because we are not religious and they prioritize their own churche, then other christian faiths, then us hell bounds.

Good to know that we have priority over cross boundary applications. Wife was bemoaning the fact that she didn't apply cross boundary to Douglas. So it sounds like it doesn't matter and we'll just have to wait.

End of March came and gone and we were hoping for some closure of the kindergarten thing so we can tell our son where he's going in Sept.

Oppenheimer came back to us, and told us we are 32nd on the waitlist. This is for IN CATCHMENT. They said they are in the process of confirming enrollment for the ones that have a spot and will trickle down.

We asked how many classes do they have and are they going to open a new one, since at 32, that's already 1.5 kindergarten classes deep.

I never would have thought getting into kindergarten was such an ordeal. Whatever happened to falling birthrates and all the shebang about schools having to close due to not having enough kids?

If you look at this map:

https://media.vsb.bc.ca/media/Defaul...5f8ad69671.pdf

Oppenheimer's catchment includes a good chunk of the older River District. The population density of that is definitely higher than the catchment for Douglas and Kingsford Smith.

Cook and Champlain Heights would also be pretty packed too, since their catchment includes a good chunk of medium density (Cook & CPH) as well as high density dwellings (CPH) in its catchment.