Here’s what a comfortable income looks like in Canada
How much household income do you need to be comfortable in Canada? In June, we posed this question to more than 9,000 Canadians in a web poll in partnership with LEO, the market research panel of Leger Marketing.
Of the five income options given, $100,000 was the most popular answer, chosen by 37% of respondents. The next biggest group (25.8%) aimed higher, selecting $150,000. Slightly fewer, 23.8%, opted for the median Canadian salary of $74,200. Smaller cohorts chose $200,000 (8.5%) and $250,000 (4.9%), which is very close to the top federal tax bracket.
There isn’t a clear consensus around how much money it takes to live comfortably in Canada. Your own answer will likely depend on your age—younger and older respondents tended to choose lower sums, and people in their prime working and child-rearing years chose higher ones—as well as the size of your household, the city you live in, whether you own your home outright, and any number of other variables.
What we know about Canadian incomes
The average Canadian household had a disposable income of $100,702 in 2024, according to Statistics Canada. Households in the top (fourth and fifth) income quintiles averaged $115,656 and $212,741, respectively.
To crack the top 10% of income earners in Canada as an individual, you must earn at least $125,945. For the top 25%, the threshold is $81,184. People who earn between $57,375 and $114,750 are considered middle-class. Note these are individual earnings; household earnings would be higher, on average.
Just as there are varying ideas of what constitutes comfort, so are there measures of its opposite: poverty. Living Wage Canada is a non-profit that measures what it considers a sufficient hourly wage to cover essential living expenses in communities across Canada. It pegs a living wage in Calgary at $24.45, and in Vancouver, $27.05. In the Greater Toronto Area, it’s $26. That works out to $48,672 a year based on a 36-hour work week.
Likewise, Statistics Canada measures the cost of living in different locations to find the point at which the low-income cut-off (LICO) applies for federal tax rates and benefits. The highest costs for raising a family of four are all in the far north, peaking at $125,784 in Iqaluit, Nunavut. South of the 60th parallel, the poverty line for families is highest in Vancouver, at $59,508.
The economics teams of major banks try to get a little more sophisticated about what constitutes “affordability” in the housing market. They examine the share of average incomes required to cover average home ownership costs in various cities. But even this makes certain assumptions, such as the rule that average shelter costs should not exceed 30% of gross household income. Focused as the banks are on the mortgage market, they don’t take in a range of other contributors to the cost of living.
How MoneySense calculates a comfortable income
In an attempt to get a more scientific measure of what it means to be comfortable in various parts of Canada, we turned to a cost-of-living tool developed by the job site CareerBeacon. Below, you’ll find a list of Canadian cities with populations of 50,000 or more and the monthly cost for the average single person renting their home to live there, including rent, transportation, food, utilities, clothing, leisure, and other expenditures.
We then considered the additional needs for income taxes (including Employment Insurance and Canada Pension Plan contributions), which typically net out to between 20% and 25% of gross income for middle-income earners, and savings at 10% to 15%. We then rounded up a further 10% to 20% as a “margin of comfort” allowing for unplanned expenditures or additional savings.
Using this as a guide, we took a comfortable living in each community to be approximately double the calculated average cost of living. The pie chart below gives a rough diagram of the assumptions that go into this methodology.
While the cost-of-living numbers from CareerBeacon are based on single earners renting their homes, in most cases they can be extrapolated to similarly comfortable living standards for two-income households and home owners. For example, a home-owning family of four with two parents in the workforce would likely need to clear $200,000 to feel comfortable in Vancouver or Whitby, Ont., but could get by very comfortably on just $115,000 in Trois-Rivières, Que.
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Comfortable income levels in Canadian cities
In the table below, the communities are listed alphabetically to make it easy for you to find the comfortable income for your community, or one close to you. Only municipalities with 50,000 or more residents are included in CareerBeacon’s survey.
The annual income required for a comfortable lifestyle varies from about $58K to over $106K, which is almost a two-fold gap depending on where you live. In general, though, the most expensive cities are around major job centres, like Toronto and Vancouver, while more affordable cities fall outside or large metro areas and have lower housing demand.
Cities with the highest and lowest income levels
The cities requiring the highest incomes to feel financially comfortable are:
- Richmond Hill, ON – $106,536
- Milton, ON – $106,392
- Whitby, ON – $105,624
- Coquitlam, BC – $104,928
- North Vancouver, BC – $103,512
The easiest cities in which to hit a comfortable income are:
- Trois-Rivières, QC – $57,936
- Sherbrooke, QC – $64,920
- Medicine Hat, AB – $70,416
- Fredericton, NB – $71,784
- Sault Ste. Marie, ON – $72,744
Of course, just because you make the cut in your city doesn’t mean you’re living comfortably. Likewise, a person or family with no debt who owns their home outright may feel content living on a lesser income. Many other variables—not to mention your own expectations—may affect your personal situation.
Nevertheless, we hope this basic measure of comfortable incomes in various Canadian cities can give a rough idea of the possibilities for households and individuals seeking to improve their financial prospects.
If you’d like to learn more about saving, spending, growing, or protecting your money, you’ll find plenty of info and resources on MoneySense.
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Read more about personal finance:
- What is financial well-being? What does it mean to Canadians?
- How much income do you need to buy a home in Canada?
- Mortgage affordability calculator
- How to find a budgeting app that works for you
- The money-saving tips and tricks I’ve learned while living single
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