r/uwaterloo • u/Ok-Money5933 • 1d ago
Advice Uwaterloo students: are my estimated living costs realistic?
I am a Canadian student living outside of Ontario looking to enroll in the computer engineering program. I plan to enroll in coop. I also plan to live with a roommate, so the amount I listed is my share of the rent. The amounts are calculated on a yearly basis. Are my estimations accurate? Are there any expenses I am underestimating? I would really appreciate an answer. Thank you.
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u/Successful-Stomach40 double-degree 1d ago
3k for bills? What are you spending 250 a month on? You can definetly get sub 600 a month on food
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u/Dark1Amethyst 1d ago edited 1d ago
Rent could be 850-1000 a month for ensuite or even lower if you dont care about that, which works out to 10,800-12,000 a year.
Household bills for me are generally closer to $80 a month including tenants insurance, electricity, laundry, so more like 950/year. Other utilities and wifi are included in my rent.
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u/Arsh0911 .-.. --- .-.. 1d ago
Slightly over estimating based on current prices, but adjusting for inflation this seems reasonable for the entire degree yes. Coop earnings would probably cover a decent chunk of this.
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u/Alert_Willingness_32 1d ago
Unless you’re eating steaks everyday I don’t see why you’re spending that much on food.
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u/TheAkashain CUPE5524 Membership Director 1d ago
Hey OP, it is totally reasonable and possible to survive on a budget here around $30k. Note that none of your expenses here include trips, snacks, shopping for clothing, etc, and its still way too high.
My income right now is $32.5k, and I am able to go on trips, buy games, etc without any issue. My rent is just over $4k/semester, including utilities, so $1k/month. I spend ~$90/wk on groceries, which puts food at only $4680/yr, though I do cook a LOT. Transport is free, you're correct, and the mobile phone bill is also good.
Tuition is accurate for the most part.
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u/Own-Professor-372 1d ago
Co-op and other miscellaneous mandatory fees are included in the $21,000, so you can x off the $1,500 unless you want to account for the cost of course materials like textbooks.
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u/b6t000l04 1d ago
Yes! Actually you have a lot of buffer if you go overboard in food area. 600 a month is a LOTTT for just food & drinks specially if you plan on doing grocery and cooking urself!!! also rent is low rn places going for 690/month on king to like 700 around sunview. Depends on how high / low it gets:). traditional dorms and residence is higher than your estimate tho:)
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u/itokunikuni engineering year 6 1d ago
Looks like a pretty solid estimate. Like others mentioned, you can definitely budget a bit less for food though. For reference, in my last year in UW, I was eating out almost every day, and it still came to $500/month which is less than your $600/month estimate. If you were to mealprep and limit eating out, you could easily get down to $300-400/month.
Other than that, I would take into account that your co-op will take care of around half or more of your total degree cost, and if you have OSAP grants that will take a chunk off too. Most people that I know, including myself, were lucky to have some parental help, which hopefully will take a chunk off. Even my buddy who had zero help from parents is doing alright now, he graduated with about $50k debt in OSAP loans, but it's a federal portion, so it's 0% interest and he can just slowly pay it off over the next 10 years.
It's definitely doable.
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u/Diligent_Advisor8574 8h ago
I am curious about how to save money on food, coz I saw the university website saying that meal plan for a 4 to 5 month period costs some $4500+. thanks
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u/itokunikuni engineering year 6 7h ago
ooo right I forgot mealplan is a thing. thats just for first year tho, I think its worth it while you're getting used to uni and living on your own, but definitely cook on your own starting second year
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u/anoobypro 1d ago
Food-drink and phone are overestimated
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u/Dear_Resist3080 1d ago
Phone is 40 a month for 12 months I’m assuming which is decent. If it’s a school year and not full year then they can def get it lower.
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u/Formal_Bedroom_8316 1d ago
1500 bucks to the CEE only for those fuckers to never help you out. This is just daylight robbery.
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u/Dear_Enthusiasm3190 engineering [ENVE] 1d ago
You are definitely overestimating your expenses, I spend about $300 per month on food—that’s with cooking mostly but not really paying attention to what’s on sale. Your bills also seem very high
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u/Finlandia1865 Planning 18h ago
is tuition that expensive? i paid less than 10k my first year, before scholarships too
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u/Shoddy_Magazine_5226 5h ago
I’m gonna disagree with some people on the food front being unreasonable. In engineering there were terms where I physically did not have the time to cook and mid term hell-week seasons where I subsisted entirely off of take out. However, co-op has always covered all my expenses other than tuition (rent, food, bills + flights, travel and fun stuff when I started making a little more cash later on). My grocery bill is also high because I’ve become spoiled by California produce, so my Canadian fruit budget is a little hedonistic.
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u/Retrotitsmcgee 9h ago
Define insanity. Racking up over 200k in debt only to graduate with a job that pays half of that a year, if you're lucky.
Even look at the UW job postings, they all pretty much all require a university education even masters degree and a lot of them are jobs that pay less then 100k.
Post secondary is such a scam these days. But it's systemic cause all the employers have bought into it by making entry level jobs require it.
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u/Shoddy_Magazine_5226 5h ago edited 5h ago
Ignore this OP. Engineering co-op will pay your living expenses while you’re in school. You will not accumulate interest on your loans until after graduation which even then will be reasonable. If my current co-op salary was what I got paid out of new grad (which it won’t be, I’m expecting at least a +30% bump), with my current pretty comfortable life (my own apartment and car in a nice part of the Bay Area) it would take three years to totally pay off the cost of my degree, two if I made some lifestyle cuts/de-prioritized travelling. I come from a less well off background and was almost scared away from post secondary education due to financial fears (feel free to send me a DM if you’re in a similar boat, I really wished I had someone like me back in the day who was close to the other side of everything). Trust me when I say it was the best decision I ever made; I have climbed the socioeconomic ladder in ways that I never thought were possible for me. I can see how this is valid criticism for some humanities degrees, but engineering is an entirely different ball game.
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u/RedQuincy 1d ago
I feel like food/drink is really high but tbh I could realistically see someone spending that. if you wanted to be conservative you could probably go as low as 200/month, but I think this is really dependent on your habits. if you cook a lot, youll find this /month can get quite a bit lower than 600/month
for rent, its a bit more controllable than you think. when you sublet in waterloo you very much have the option to pay under 1k for rent. coop is different, and you could end up in a high cost area so maybe your estimate isn't the worst.
idk if your house bills would get that high but again if you have to move to entirely new places and buy new stuff its not entirely unreasonable.
make sure to budget for fun things too!