“I’m one of the only people I know who owns a house”: how a digital marketing manager lives on $68,500 a year
Who: Christina Dong, 29
What she does: A manager at a boutique advertising firm, where she handles accounts and helps clients with marketing strategies.
What she makes: $68,500 a year, pre-tax and before her bonus.
Some of how she spends it: Mortgage payments on a three-bedroom bungalow near Birchmount and Danforth: $286 weekly. (“I am one of the only people I know my age who owns a house.”) Property taxes: $2,300 a year. Debt repayment on credit cards and family loans: $300 a month. Insurance: $265 a month. RRSP contribution: $300 a month. (“I got a raise in July, and I said, ‘Just put it in my RRSP so I don’t see it.'”)
What she bought in one week: Lunch at Mengrai Gourmet Thai: $22. (“I don’t eat out very often. I would say I go out for brunch once a month.”) Rabbit food: $15. (“Adopting a rabbit at the humane society is probably about as difficult as adopting a child.”) Polo helmet and lesson: $500. (“At a $100 a lesson, I don’t see that as a huge barrier to entry. I decided to invest in my own helmet. I’ve been saving up for it for months.”) Downtown parking fees: $65. Gas: $33. Groceries: $81.
![](http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https://torontolife.com/life/im-one-people-know-owns-house-digital-marketing-manager-lives-68500-year/&title=“I’m one of the only people I know who owns a house”: how a digital marketing manager lives on $68,500 a year&picture=https://torontolife.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/christina-dong-cost-of-living.jpg&description=[caption id="attachment_311911" align="alignnone" width="656"] (Image: Holly Blair)[/caption]
Who: Christina Dong, 29
What she does: A manager at a boutique advertising firm, where she handles accounts and helps clients with marketing strategies.
What she makes: $68,500 a year, pre-tax and before her bonus.
Some of how she spends it: Mortgage payments on a three-bedroom bungalow near Birchmount and Danforth: $286 weekly. ("I am one of the only people I know my age who owns a house.") Property taxes: $2,300 a year. Debt repayment on credit cards and family loans: $300 a month. Insurance: $265 a month. RRSP contribution: $300 a month. ("I got a raise in July, and I said, 'Just put it in my RRSP so I don't see it.'")
What she bought in one week: Lunch at Mengrai Gourmet Thai: $22. ("I don't eat out very often. I would say I go out for brunch once a month.") Rabbit food: $15. ("Adopting a rabbit at the humane society is probably about as difficult as adopting a child.") Polo helmet and lesson: $500. ("At a $100 a lesson, I don't see that as a huge barrier to entry. I decided to invest in my own helmet. I've been saving up for it for months.") Downtown parking fees: $65. Gas: $33. Groceries: $81.){kind=link}
Would be interesting to know what her down payment was, that seems to be a large factor here
Exactly. Article is useless without it. Plenty of people who want to own
homes in this city can afford the mortgage payments, it’s saving up the
30-50,000 downpayment that’s the barrier to home ownership.
Spending $500 in one month on polo, and still paying off credit card debt? How responsible!
Paying $286 per week on mortgage is just over $1,100 per month.
Let’s do a little math here. Assume 3% interest and a 25 year term. Doing mortgage calculations backwards, that means her mortgage is for about $230,000.
In Toronto? Yeah, no. Good luck. With a $500,000 down payment, perhaps, if we’re talking about a house.
The average 29 year old doesn’t have that kind of money. Obviously, something else is at play here. Perhaps she’s a professional poker player on the side. Perhaps she won the lottery. Perhaps her parents had a few extra hundred thousand dollars lying around.
Whatever the case, let me make one thing clear… THIS IS NOT ILLUSTRATIVE OF THE TYPICAL PERSON IN THIS SITUATION.
If this article is meant for other people who have come into extra money, then it would have some utility. But this is a poor indication of a normal 29 year old person’s financial situation.
Or …whether or not her parents made the down payment or whether she did it herself.
This is a bungalow in Birch Cliff, where bungalows typically sell in the $400,000 range. I don’t know (and wouldn’t reveal) what Christina paid, but I doubt it was much more than that.
That can be calculated: 286 per week is roughly equivalent to a 170 000$ mortgage over 25 years at 4% interest. Check what is the average value of 3 bedrooms bungalows in the area and bang, answer. Also, her finances do not account for her car-related expenses beyond insurance+gas (e.g., tires, oil changes, but perhaps more importantly: paying for the car). Assuming that it is fully paid, she should still put money aside in case it breaks/or when she`ll need a new one. Seems like a pretty big hole in her budget.
if she’s on her own (no spouse/significant other, no kids), why does she need a three bedroom house? I’d get a 1 bedroom condo instead.
I can run a reverse name search on the property registry for “Christina Dong” and find out exactly how much she paid, it’s not private by any means. I know what area you’re on about, they’re actually closer to $500,000 – plus about $15,000 for land transfer tax. She would still have had to put up a minimum of $200,000 in my opinion. Possible, yes, but that’s a big gap in information here.
Dear Toronto Life:
These profiles are infuriating. Please start writing stories about REAL Torontonians. How about you talk to the single mother who works two part time jobs to support her kid(s) on less than $30,000. How about the countless youth in this city that are thousands of dollars in dept after pursuing their university degree(s) and still CANNOT find a job. The stories you write seem to be primarily about middle class to upper middle class Torontonians who claim to be struggling when they could simply attempt to live within their means.
30-50k …… $400,000 condo carries a 80,000 down-payment unless you want to pay extra fees and lose the best rates!
the 3 bedroom bungalow in this area is atleast 450k….. so you’re talking 90,0000 to 120,000 down-payment. With only a $1239 monthly payment, there is a very good chance much more than that was put down
whatever you did there is so totally wrong
$371,800 over 25 years….If you calculated 4% interest yearly on the total $170,000 (which is not how interest is calculated) you would only be at $340,000 – Would be approx $225k mortgage and im to lazy to do the math. House is worth atleast $400k so there was a massive downpayment on the place…. not paid for by someone making 45k after taxes….. this article is pure stupidity when you factor in there was atleast a $150k downpayment put on the place (That was given to her) shes not living on her own cash, the house is half paid for
not to be rude but it is $1240/month ……… but you are 100% bang on in that this is not a 29 year old’s normal situation living on their own…..somewhere along the lines, even if she saved $50,000 on her own, she still came into another $100,000-150,000 to put a massive down-payment on the place
Middle to upper class Toronto has always been Toronto Life’s demographic.
I don’t think Toronto Life pretends anything else.
you might want to take a look at the tabs at the top….Restaurants, Drinks, Shopping, Retail and Real Estate. This site isn’t meant for things like you suggest!
Avg HH Income in the city of Toronto is close to $100,000 nowadays
The point of this series is to show it’s hard living in this city when you’re part of the middle class, and the city is pricing out all but the highest earners. Everyone knows being poor or the working poor is hard so there’s no narrative with that.
Brian! What’s up man? I’d showed you a few condos in midtown Toronto a few years ago.
You are correct – I just did a rough calculation treating four weeks as a month. Indeed, adjusting it to be 31 days, it comes out to about that much. Even then, something’s not being told in the article here, and I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks so. Hope you’ve been well!
The majority of comments following these profiles are always exactly the same:
– The very fact this person can afford a down payment doesn’t make them representative of the “everyday Torontonian”
– General attack against the person for having money / access to money
– Outright dismissal of article
– General attack against Toronto Life for posting about people who can afford a down payment
– Comparison to one’s own plight in life
Guess what….it IS possible to save and afford a down payment on your first home. Thousands of Torontonians have done it before and thousands of Torontonians will do it again.
Wow you have a good memory!! All is good, hopefully the same for you!
Wow….. why are you so angry about this? There are all kinds of different types of 29 year-old people so I’m sorry that this one doesn’t fit you. I also love how you jump on her for saving up to play a sport she really wanted to do like she bought some $5,000 sculpture. Most people have some fun whether they can afford to do so or not. Given her income, I don’t think $500 is ridiculous as most pay more for their gym membership and she indicated she didn’t purchase it on credit. Essentially, by not putting those saved funds on her credit card she speeds up her payment plan by a month and a half and avoids ~$15 in interest. Sounds like a pretty fair trade-off go out and try a new sport. Perhaps you should try some fun sometimes and you won’t be quite so tightly wound.
I adopted one of my rabbits at the humane society and I really, really hope adopting a child is harder than that (because adopting the rabbit was really straight forward).
It seems to me that the whole idea of the Cost of Living series is that it’s supposed to be snapshots. Of course you’re not going to get every single itemized detail about their expenses. Who would want to read that? TL is pretty open about their target audience. This attempt, while imperfect, is trying to get to the rest of us who live in this city that they so often ignore. They’re trying to get to readers that they literally have no connections with. If people don’t like the examples they’ve posted so far, then email the address listed above and share your story.
Damn, I thought 70k was light paper?
Actually, according to the last census, the median household income in Toronto is $71, 210 and the average individual income is $27, 600.
Please read the article carefully. She spent $500 the prior week for a polo lesson and a helmet, which would be a one time purchase. She does not spend $500 every month on polo.
Please also read my comment carefully… I said “in one month”, not every month. What I’m getting at is that such a purchase, regardless of whether it represents a recurring expense, is luxurious in its nature. When you’re still paying down expensive debt such as credit cards, is it REALLY advisable to spend that kind of money on luxuries?
Wow, calling me tightly wound, shows how much you know.
I am by no means angry. I’m just… Amazed, really, at how Christina’s poorly ordered priorities, and a mysteriously funded house purchase, justifies being published as an article that implies this to be Toronto’s average single 29 year old woman, being broadcasted to a readership in the hundreds of thousands.
If you seriously think that saving $15 in interest payments actually makes a difference here, then I sincerely believe that you are being delusional. She can have some fun, yes, but if you do the math, based on her net salary and total carrying costs of the house, she’s right near the maximum acceptable gross debt service ratio – and she’s paying off an unknown amount of unsecured debt… Doesn’t that make a $500 splurge, regardless of whether saved for or not, a little rich?
Given that in the article she states that she’s the only one of her friends that owns a house, how do you conclude that she’s considered a “typical” 29 year old? Wouldn’t that statement alone suggest that she’s in fact atypical? In fact, I don’t really see anything in this article that states or even suggests she’s “typical” – the article simply explains how THIS person gets by on that salary. I mean how many 29 year olds do you who play polo?
I think you might be reading too much into this article.
I’m sure she had a realtor and mortgage broker who told her not to worry about it and said it would be no trouble at all.
It’s my misinterpretation of what you had an issue with. I have no issue with a one time purchase so I naturally assumed you meant recurring. The article doesn’t actually say how much debt she has on her credit cards. I thought her payment was for clearing her monthly bills so she isn’t carrying a balance, which means a polo purchase isn’t overtly extravagant. If she’s carrying a credit card balance, then I’m giving her too much credit for financial smarts.
It would probably be wiser to pay off credit debt @ 20% vs. investing in RRSP.
Easier than adopting a rabbit from the Humane Society, is to foster & then adopt from Rabbit Rescue – http://rabbitrescue.ca/adoption/rabbits/ Cute bunny Christina!
Life is tough these days, high and rising costs of living, while wages continue to deteriorate, yet companies continue to report record profits. Information like the down payment and how she got it would be an important piece to this. Please include it next time!
I have no idea either. You are right that’s closer to the actual mortgage she is paying. And I was calculating the amount she borrowed to show how much of a downpayment would have been necessary.
she knows in the future the value of detached house will be a safer value than a condo, plus it’s owning land and the space will be worth it if and when meets someone and starts her own family.
I guess it depends on the lifestyle you want. I don’t know if I’m going to move out of my condo. I have a 2 bdrm.
So we’re not real people?
I can see how she saved up 60-70K if she lived at home rent free and had help paying for college/university (assuming she went). One thing most comments are missing is says she doesn’t eat out much, probably means she doesn’t go out much either.
Also, she gets a bonus which could be another big chunk of change.
You make a whole lot of assumptions from an article 5 paragraphs in length. I’m amazed too – at how much time you spent trying to decipher this article based on incomplete information, and then somehow conclude that this person has poorly ordered priorities.
Let’s face it, the VAST MAJORITY of single women who “own their own homes” in this city do so because of the generosity of their parents. Some men, too, but with young women, parents are FAR more motivated to chip in a few tens of thousands of dollars to get their daughters stabilized quickly, before they run off and do things they’ll regret (even if, in reality, their daughters aren’t the type — never can be too safe, mom & dad!).
I’m 100% in agreement with others who are skeptical of her monthly outlay for this house in this location, and as usual disappointed that TL either deliberately withheld information from yet ANOTHER “how do they live on . . .” article that would explain the obvious discrepancies, or simply never bothered to ask in the first place for fear of not getting a subject for this puff piece series.
To be fair, she’s Asian (presumably Chinese-Canadian or possibly Korean-Canadian based on the name). OF COURSE her parents threw a big bundle of cash at that house so their daughter could claim that she’s the only one she knows who “owns” her own home. Hopefully, their largesse doesn’t come with that ages-old Asian stipulation that the parents get to move in with her some day, whether she or any future spouse really wants it that way (unless she’s got an older sibling, in which case, WINDFALL!).
At least you’re acknowledging that the article is incomplete! TL does this with most of these “how I live on . . .” articles, time and time again. It’s only natural human behaviour that astute readers (which I would THINK is TL’s base) will be FORCED to decipher or simply guess at the real story. Sure, it helps TL present vivid little snapshots of the “big city” lifestyle coveted by so many young people, but in NOT providing the whole story, they’re convincing the less-informed young people out there that this is a SELF-achievable reality that they will then foolishly try to duplicate.
Well then, if it’s so affordable (to thousands out of the MILLIONS who live here), why doesn’t TL include the downpayment information — regardless of where it comes from — in ANY of these pieces? It’s only fair to the other potentially who may be considering attempting the same lifestyle, and it’s CRUCIAL to illustrating what’s necessary to getting started on the road to these TL lifestyles.
Her mortgage amortization could be 30-40 years for all we know. That would bring down monthly cost. Also, she is paying down debt, she could have gotten some of the money from a line of credit – I know a lot of people who do that!
Good for her, I would rather own that three bedroom home than a 1 bedroom condo…I pay almost the same amount in property tax!
Stop hating on the girl for finding the money to buy her home! And for the person who said the vast majority of females get money from their parents to buy a home…I didn’t… and how the hell would you know?!?
Wow.. that’s really racist.. “To be fair, she’s Asian (presumably Chinese-Canadian or possibly
Korean-Canadian based on the name). OF COURSE her parents threw a big
bundle of cash at that house so their daughter could claim that she’s
the only one she knows who “owns” her own home.”