I am now on parental leave for a second time (although it's about the same baby). A good moment for some reflections.
It was a great decision to move to Montreal from Toronto. Quality of life is much better here. I recently purchased a three-bedroom house for 336,000 dollars, on a 12,000-square-foot lot with many maple trees. It's 10 minutes (on foot) from a national park. A house like this would cost at least a million in GTA, in a much less attractive neighbourhood.
I decided to purchase this house after running through my financial model for rental properties. This one would not be a great rental property. However, since I plan to live there myself, costs are much lower (no management fees, no vacancy, no expenses to find the next tenant, etc.) The conclusion was that it would be NPV-neutral if I assume that a) I would be willing to pay 1,700 a month to rent a similar house, b) house price will increase by 2% per year, and c) I will keep it for at least five years. (Google 'NPV-neutral' if you don't know what it means.) The landlord of my current dwelling would raise the rent from 1,300 to 1,350 if I stayed. I was kind of okay with a net cost increase of 350 a month on housing, considering a) the environment will be much better (quiet neighbourhood with a lot of trees vs. proximity to a major road), and b) I can potentially make a profit if its property price goes up by more than 2% per year, which seems highly likely especially with the new liberal plan to "help home buyers". (Their plan is in my opinion beneficial to home owners of a certain segment and banks, instead of home buyers. But that's another topic.)
A downside of this house purchase is that it will limit my mobility for the next few years. I made a decision to delay my retirement by two years. (My employment income is about 310,000 a year pre-tax so the purchase price is about two years' net employment income.) Obviously I would not have made this decision if I hated my work. But I actually enjoy my work more than before because of the people aspect of it. As a lead, I try to understand the motivations of my team members and to figure out how I can help them achieve their goals. The reason why I am willing to spend time on this is simple. Given my time horizon for retirement, I do not see a lot of value building up my technical skills. (Also, I believe the ability to see real-world problems intuitively in mathematical terms is more important than any specific knowledge about a programming language or a machine learning library.) On the other hand, I have a child now and I would like to develop my coaching skills which I will be able to apply to my own child.
Enough for now. I'm getting back to my daily routines.
It was a great decision to move to Montreal from Toronto. Quality of life is much better here. I recently purchased a three-bedroom house for 336,000 dollars, on a 12,000-square-foot lot with many maple trees. It's 10 minutes (on foot) from a national park. A house like this would cost at least a million in GTA, in a much less attractive neighbourhood.
I decided to purchase this house after running through my financial model for rental properties. This one would not be a great rental property. However, since I plan to live there myself, costs are much lower (no management fees, no vacancy, no expenses to find the next tenant, etc.) The conclusion was that it would be NPV-neutral if I assume that a) I would be willing to pay 1,700 a month to rent a similar house, b) house price will increase by 2% per year, and c) I will keep it for at least five years. (Google 'NPV-neutral' if you don't know what it means.) The landlord of my current dwelling would raise the rent from 1,300 to 1,350 if I stayed. I was kind of okay with a net cost increase of 350 a month on housing, considering a) the environment will be much better (quiet neighbourhood with a lot of trees vs. proximity to a major road), and b) I can potentially make a profit if its property price goes up by more than 2% per year, which seems highly likely especially with the new liberal plan to "help home buyers". (Their plan is in my opinion beneficial to home owners of a certain segment and banks, instead of home buyers. But that's another topic.)
A downside of this house purchase is that it will limit my mobility for the next few years. I made a decision to delay my retirement by two years. (My employment income is about 310,000 a year pre-tax so the purchase price is about two years' net employment income.) Obviously I would not have made this decision if I hated my work. But I actually enjoy my work more than before because of the people aspect of it. As a lead, I try to understand the motivations of my team members and to figure out how I can help them achieve their goals. The reason why I am willing to spend time on this is simple. Given my time horizon for retirement, I do not see a lot of value building up my technical skills. (Also, I believe the ability to see real-world problems intuitively in mathematical terms is more important than any specific knowledge about a programming language or a machine learning library.) On the other hand, I have a child now and I would like to develop my coaching skills which I will be able to apply to my own child.
Enough for now. I'm getting back to my daily routines.
Last edited:
