Learn the English Phrases TO MAKE A LIVING and A LIVING WAGE

In this English lesson I wanted to help you

learn the English phrase "to make a living."

When you say that someone is getting enough money

from work to make a living,

it means they have enough money to pay all of their bills.

I make a living by going to work and teaching

and by doing YouTube and between the two,

I have enough money every month to pay all my bills.

So it's really nice to be able to make a living

doing something that I like.

It's nice to be able to earn enough money

from my teaching job and from YouTube to pay all my bills.

It's kind of satisfying to sit down once a month

and pay all the bills and just make,

and just have enough money to do it.

So I'm not rich by any stretch of the imagination,

but I do make a living by going to work

every day and by doing YouTube,

and, of course, the flower farm as well.

The other English phrase I wanted to teach you

today is the phrase "a living wage."

So a living wage in Canada is about $18 or $19 an hour,

and working about 40 hours per week.

If you earn that much money in Canada,

we call it a living wage.

That means it's enough money to rent an apartment

and to pay your bills and to live a somewhat okay life.

It's on, a little bit on the low end maybe.

It might sound like a lot of money to you,

but Canada is an expensive place to live.

I mean, milk at the store is $7,

so making about $18 or $19 or $20 an hour,

we would call that a living wage,

but by the time you've paid rent and paid your taxes,

which are really high in Canada,

and bought groceries and maybe a little bit of money

left over to do something fun,

it's, it doesn't go very far.

In English, when you say, money doesn't go very far,

it means you spend it and then it's gone fairly quickly.

So, to review, to make a living is to work

and to have enough money to pay all your bills.

And if you make a living wage,

it means the place where you work pays you just enough money

for you to be able to have a life

where you can pay your bills,

but you're not gonna be able to save

a lot for retirement on a living wage,

but you'll be able to pay all your bills.

Hey, let's look at a comment from a previous video.

This comment is from Vitor,

and from the last video where I was in town.

Vitor says, beautiful houses, Bob.

Nice pair of colors.

Dark brown walls are matching the roofs.

Indeed, a top-notch place to live

and a calm park for kids to play.

Now that things are getting back to normal,

it is a great idea to hang out with your kids

to have some quality time.

By the way, thanks for the lesson.

And my response, yeah, I'm liking the colors as well.

This was a newer row of houses in my local town

and they were bought up quick.

So an interesting thing is happening in Canada

when it comes to housing.

We don't have enough houses in Canada.

Right now, the price of houses is really, really high

because there aren't very many houses,

especially in my area.

I live in an area where in particular retired people

like to move to my area.

It's a slightly warmer part of the province.

I mean, the winters are still really cold.

You've probably seen that in some of my videos,

but it's a little bit warmer than a place like Ottawa

or one of the northern cities in Ontario.

So around this area, houses are very, very expensive

and apartments are very expensive.

A house in my area would cost about $500,000 Canadian,

so half a million dollars to buy a house,

and an apartment would be about $1,800 a month,

maybe $2,000 a month,

so certainly not a cheap place to live.

When I was mentioning the living wage,

you might have thought $18 or $19 an hour

sounds like a lot, but once you pay your mortgage

or pay your rent, it's not really.

Anyways, thanks for watching.

I'll see you in a couple days

with another short English lesson.

Bye.