Price Comparison

I thought it would be really interesting to work out the price difference from living in the UK compared to living in Vancouver.

I started gathering the prices and working on the post, but got a bit lost in a bunch of maths trying to work out percentages, so dropped the post… But having done most all of the research, I decided I’d drop the maths element, and just share the prices!

To gather the prices from the UK, I based it on bills we were paying before we left, and then did a supposed online shop at Morrisons for the grocery prices. I drew a close enough comparison as I could to different things. I did the price comparisons back in January, so the exchange rate has probably altered quite a bit since then (*cough* BREXIT*cough*). I did all the research before we got a car too, so I haven’t added that in!

Vancouver is well known to its residents for being an expensive place to live. It’s interesting because living here is expensive compared to Southport, but there are some things that stand out as being much more affordable here. One key thing to bear in mind here is that, although I am doing quite a different job, I probably have a similar level of responsibility, and am being paid about $5/hr more here than my pay back in the UK. Minimum wage here is $1 more than in the UK for over 25s too, so even my Starbucks job pays better here than it would there – plus I get tips!

Something else to bear in mind, is that Vancouver is a city – we live a 35 minute bus ride from downtown Vancouver, a 2 minute walk from the bus stop, and have about 13 restaurants and 5 coffee shops within an 8 minute walk of our apartment, also a beach about 12 minutes walk away. To try and put this into numbers – the lower mainland has a population of 2,759,365, Vancouver’s population is around 610,000. It’s the biggest city in British Columbia. Richmond, Burnaby, and Surrey are all suburbs of VanCity and on the Transit system where it takes less than an hour to get downtown – combined with Vancouver, they have a population of 1,580,437. Southport’s population is 93,426. While London’s is 8,787,892. Birmingham’s population is 1,141,374. All of this to say that prices don’t necessarily compare that well for things like property and going out between Vancouver and Southport…

The area that maths failing me kind of matters is the groceries. If you look through the individual items with groceries, you can see that the amounts you get for the price varies in the two countries – Vancouver tends to sell larger quantities, so when you see the overall groceries prices, that’s not actually accurate. I was going to work out price per 100g or 100ml or item, but my brain and numbers don’t go so well together.

I have categorised these somewhat for ease…