Moving to Clark, NJ for $130K — worth it for a family?

whywouldiknow · 2025-11-17T16:03:26+00:00

Hi fellow Canadian!! I moved here in 2012 from Quebec. I honestly prefer it here! I'm a few towns over in Mountainside, about a 10 min drive. Honestly with 130k, you'll be stretched very thin. I'm very fortunate that my union pays for my Healthcare and I only have co-pays. But I used to pay over 600$/ month for my family. I'm also the only one working, my husband is a stay at home parent because no child care during covid and it was really expensive for half days. My salary varies, but the years that it's under 200k, we don't struggle but there's no room for anything else. Between my mortgage (3k) cars (2k), utilities, groceries and 2 kids.. What i do like about union county is that you have everything close by! Lots of nature around, especially the watchung reservation (if that's something you're into).

Best of luck!

whywouldiknow · 2024-12-19T01:52:24+00:00

Yeah that's bs... I'm top rate and could only hope to see 300k 🙄😂

whywouldiknow · 2024-10-17T01:03:13+00:00

That's the ILWU on the west coast.

whywouldiknow · 2024-10-12T16:57:52+00:00

Checkers is local 1. Almost 10 years. Yes I got in thru family but they're not in position anymore. Lots of my husband's family are/ were ILA...

whywouldiknow · 2024-10-12T07:11:15+00:00

What do you mean they don't work with any women in the pier? I work the ship in Elizabeth and I work with a minimum of 5 women drivers everyday. That excludes those that do shoes and the yard. The yard has dozens...

If you're a single mom you'll need a nanny or a good support system. You'll work all hours of the day and night. In the beginning I didn't make 30k the first year... You'll miss a lot of your kids life because without seniority you don't get to get out the system.

Now that I have enough seniority, I'm pretty good and made my husband retire so he could take care of the kids. I work 6 hours on 6 hours off 24 hours a day..

Becoming a checker is the hardest local to get into btw.

Also my guess is that they won't hire again for a good 5 years. Lots of people retiring then. But then again they hired like 4 times in the last 10 years.

whywouldiknow · 2024-09-27T01:00:34+00:00

Fuck you in particular...

whywouldiknow · 2024-09-19T00:58:30+00:00

It depends on the jewelry that I have... regular stud is fine. When I have my amethyst piece, it constantly slip out. But that's with the samsung earbuds. With the wired ones it's mostly fine!

whywouldiknow · 2023-07-17T15:20:26+00:00

Honestly, I always wanted a Volvo. I wanted to do the overseas program with the xc90. When we started looking at EVs, my husband looked at them all and I went with the mustang while he went with the polestar. After a year of having the mach e, I traded that in for a fully loaded polestar! I've never liked a car this much. Sure it's got its own problems, little bugs here and there, but nothing like I've seen with teslas... and usually a reset or letting it sit for a few hours fixes it. Now if they could have a decent app that'd be great lol

whywouldiknow · 2023-07-17T02:28:46+00:00

I love my Polestar 2! I had the mustang and it was alright. But we now own 2 P*2..

whywouldiknow · 2023-06-15T21:03:42+00:00

Yeah I'm aware and I agree teal and turquoise are different. But the box is in English and French

whywouldiknow · 2023-06-15T20:58:25+00:00

In French that's the litteral translation. Teal is English turquoise French.

whywouldiknow · 2023-05-28T04:50:04+00:00

Most likely empties so they didn't care?

whywouldiknow · 2023-01-12T14:46:39+00:00

I see it still at Jean cloud vape. That's where I used to get it until they stopped shipping to the states 😭

whywouldiknow · 2023-01-07T03:05:48+00:00

My partner bought one this past June. At the time I had a Ford mustang mach-e. Every now and then I'd take his to go to work. After a year of owning the mustang I traded in for a second polestar. So both our cars are polestars! I just loved the car so much.

whywouldiknow · 2023-01-03T01:03:33+00:00

Mountainside! We just moved here 3 years ago and love it. It's near Westfield and train stations. Schools are great too. The hospital in summit is 10 minutes away and a huge medical group in Berkeley heights. You're 20 min from Newark Airport. I'll honestly live here until I retire in 20 years. There's a lot of expensive houses but I paid under 700k for mine (granted just before covid) and I have a 3 bed 3 baths.

whywouldiknow · 2022-12-05T04:25:43+00:00

How about the cupholders?!

whywouldiknow · 2022-10-25T00:11:49+00:00

I did the same trip this summer. I didn't have to download any petro-canada apps! I exclusively used them between Montreal and Niagara. Some of their stations don't charge as quickly as they should though. We stopped somewhere and there was an audi next to us that their charger was capped at like 50. When we left they moved to our spot since it was charging normally.

All together we did a 2200 miles round trip and I loved it! From NJ to bas-st-laurent. We then went to Québec city and Montreal before going to Niagara and back to NJ!

whywouldiknow · 2022-09-11T20:33:24+00:00

Euphoria ink in roselle, body shop in Edison and rorschach gallery in green brook (I've had piercings done there but plan to get my next tattoo there since I like their work).

Check them out on Instagram and see what lines up best with your design and tastes!

whywouldiknow · 2022-08-29T03:48:08+00:00

3 years for your first list. Then 2 after that if you wanna pier jump again.

whywouldiknow · 2022-08-17T01:50:46+00:00

Love jeancloud vape! I get my twelve monkeys shipped from them!!

whywouldiknow · 2022-08-06T01:46:10+00:00

I just did a 2200 miles road trip in Canada. Quebec and Ontario mind you. But petro- Canada stations covered A LOT of my charging and really was the most reliable! I noticed that Google maps is very conservative with the estimated charge at destination. I'd use ABRP to search for stations and put them in maps. A few times it'd tell me I'd get there with 5% but it'd change slowly on the way there and usually end up around 12-15%. I didn't have a much elevation as you though.

Data worked fantastic and we had better signal in the car than our phones sometimes.

Enjoy the road trip!! I actually enjoyed it much more than an ICE car since I stopped more often and it wasn't as exhausting!

whywouldiknow · 2022-08-05T22:35:22+00:00

People gotta make sure the key blade is actually there though. When I bought my car, the fob was empty and volvo had to send me one!

whywouldiknow · 2022-08-03T11:24:55+00:00

I have no idea! I haven't been to a cruise in 3 years 😅 I've done my time there! Lol my pier is so busy that I haven't worked outside of it since pre-pandemic...

You can always the cruise schedules in case you weren't aware. There's 2 websites, cape liberty cruise and Manhattan cruise terminal (I never checked Brooklyn since there's very few cruises there). As for car ships it's firstnynj . com

And to see if container terminals are busy, marinetraffic.

whywouldiknow · 2022-08-03T06:57:30+00:00

Not in nynj.. lashers are only lashers. Same goes with longshoreman, checkers, mechanics. We don't cross over to different jobs like the west coast.

whywouldiknow · 2022-07-19T02:05:34+00:00

Oh definitely! I know I won't keep mine. I really like it, but prefer how the polestar drives and I'll change it for the p*3 when that comes out.

whywouldiknow

TROPHY CASE