Monthly Expenditure in Ontario

[Ryze]

Thinking of moving to Ottawa. Anyone can give me a rough estimate of the monthly expenditure?

House rental (3 bedroom apartment)
Furniture instalment
Utilities
Cable tv
Internet
Phone line
Car (intermediate, used)
Fuel
Parking
Kids schooling(public elementary Y1 & Y2)
Groceries n marketting (2 adults, 2 kids)
Other items (clothes, medicine)

**yearly insurances (car, house, health, etc)

If you have any input, please, help me...

[oddball]

Originally Posted by Ryze

Thinking of moving to Ottawa. Anyone can give me a rough estimate of the monthly expenditure?

House rental (3 bedroom apartment)
Furniture instalment
Utilities
Cable tv
Internet
Phone line
Car (intermediate, used)
Fuel
Parking
Kids schooling(public elementary Y1 & Y2)
Groceries n marketting (2 adults, 2 kids)
Other items (clothes, medicine)

**yearly insurances (car, house, health, etc)

If you have any input, please, help me...

All or most of this information can be garnered from a local newspaper , not guestimates , actual numbers , areas , life styles , expectations are an individual requirement and need . They are all there for your first hand perusal . Colin .

[cbelanger82]

Hi Ryze,

I'm now living in the UK, but originally from Ottawa. We got here 2 months ago so the information I have is up to date.

House rental: this is a bit tricky as it varies greatly depending on the area, size and quality of the house. Realistically, you should expect to pay between 1400$ to 1800$ a month. You could find cheaper or more expensive, it'll all depends on what's on the market when you are ready to move.
Furnitures: Most of apartments/houses for rent will include a fridge/freezer, cooker, dishwasher and washer and dryer. Their is an IKEA store in Ottawa so you might want to have a look at their website for some furnitures. Sears.ca also have some great deals. An other option would be to check the kijiji.ca website for used furnitures. Once again, it all depends on what you're looking for, but you should be able to buy a dinning room set, a couch, 3 beds (1 queen and 2 single) for about 3000$ new.
Utilities
Cable tv: 50$
Internet: 50$
Phone line: 40$
Car (intermediate, used): 6000$ (you could get a 2002 Toyota Corolla or Honda Civic for exemple)
Fuel: around 1.20$/ litter. So probably around 50$/week
Parking: Depends where you work. Some offices have free parking. If not, probably around 80$/month.
Kids schooling(public elementary Y1 & Y2): Free excepts for the books and furnitures, around 200$/year
Groceries n marketting (2 adults, 2 kids): Groceries, around 400$/monthly, miscellenious: well, it all depends on what you need. I'd say around 200$ to 300$.
Other items (clothes, medicine): Maybe your company has a medical insurance and that should cover most of the cost of medicine (prescription).
For the stuff that is sold off the counter you should expect to pay between 30 and 50$ monthly (ie: cold medicine, anti acid, pain killer)
Kid clothes average price: Jacket 50$, pants 20$, sweater 25$
Adults: Jacket 100$, pants 60$, sweater 75$
I'm sure you could find cheaper then that, but I wanted to give you an idea of what it costs in the boutiques.
For the insurances, you should expect to pay around 100$/month for the car and around 50$ for contents. It could be higher if the rent doesn't include the building coverage.

Hope that's help.

Cheers,

Cindy

[Ryze]

Dear Colin,

Thanks for the reply. I understand what you mean by individual requirement. I'm not in canada so dont have access to local newspaper. But I'm continuing my internet search.

Dear Cindy,

Cant thank you enough. At least I would have a general budget For my 7 and 8 year old children, do you have any recommendation of good elementary schools around NRC? Is there any info of academic achievement of the schools? I searched the ocdsb website, got info on schools around that area but do not know which school to choose and write to. Look forward to any available info.

[oddball]

Hello , you can get newspapers on the internet to read , type in Canadian newspapers , or hamilton newspapers or whatever . I do this quite often to keep up on local news so you can get a perspective on all kinds of things regarding costs and activities . Hope this helps a little for you . Colin

[Alminka]

Hi Ryze - this is just to add a little more information to Cindy's very comprehensive list of Ottawa cost of living - great job, Cindy, thank you!

Auto insurance will cost you more than $100/month, more like $300/month in the beginning - unless you have had Canadian driver's license of category G for several years that is if you can prove you Canadian driving experience. This affects the insurance cost - for example, I have been driving in my country for 10 years before coming to Canada but only got my Canadian G2 licence 2 months ago and had G1 for 1 year, so my insurance (which I haven't purchased yet) is now estimated at $3,576/year by RBC insurance dot com

About licenses - if you don't have Canadian driver's license, you have to go through the stages of getting G1 then G2 then G license which takes at least 2 years, and G1 and G2 have some limits. I'm a still a newbie at the forum and can't post URLs, but try to type this link -- www mto gov on ca-english-dandv-driver-gradu-index -- with dots instead of spaces and slashes instead of dashes You can read more about htis graduated licensing process there

Note - G license is better cos you don't need to take drive test again every 4 years as you do with G2

If you have your country's driving license, you can authenticate it at your country's embassy to Canada (for a fee) and with this additional piece of paper you can apply for G license at once after your arrival, but it still doesn't give you enough Canadian drivng experience to have a smaller premium for the car insurance. Only Canadian (and I think US) experience matters. You can read more about exchanging your license on -- mto gov on ca-english-dandv-driver-exchange

Of course insurance also depends on the car make and year etc.

So, I decided for now to continue taking a bus Good luck with your move!


!!! A side note to "Oddball, the Expat Expert" - please do not post "recommendations" that are not recommendations at all, but are just referalls to other websites without even mentioning the actual websites- this is not helpful! I try to believe that this forum was created to help potential and actual immigrants and sending them away to "go read local newspapers and a lot of other information available on the internet" is simply impolite and not to the point. If you don't really want to help immigrants, simply leave the forum. Not thank you