Where you can enjoy your best CERB life, for about $2,000 a month.

Not all cities are equal when it comes to surviving on $2,000 a month

Call it Justin bucks, or Tru- dough, but $2,000 in the bank is $2,000 in the bank. Every four weeks, if you’re a CERB applicant — that’s Canada Emergency Response Benefit — you’ll get the cash to help float you through the next month of life. It’s like regular income; you’ll be taxed on it down the line.

Otherwise, it’s sweet cash money, even if it’s not really all that much. At $500 per week, it’s less than a person working 40 hours per week earning $ 15 an hour would take home. Better than nothing.

Obviously, that depends on where you live. Don’t even bother trying to live on CERB in Vancouver, where rent for a one-bedroom apartment is $2,006 on average per month, or Toronto, where a one-bedroom apartment averages $2,213 per month, although you might be able to scrape by in the ‘ burbs, such as Brampton, Ont., or Burnaby, B.C.

Here’s the National Post’s look at where you might live your best CERB life, if you’re single and living alone in a one-bedroom rented apartment. The data has been gathered from a variety of places, across a few metrics. Rental data is from rentals.ca 2020 Q1 rent report.

The grocery data, by province, is from the latest available Statistics Canada data, from 2017. It’s extrapolated from the average household spending per year on groceries.

And then there’s discretionary spending: Let’s say you’re getting into the baking game and have had your eye on a standing mixer. What better time to splurge?

There was no rental data readily available for several provincial and territorial capitals, including Fredericton, N. B., Charlottetown, P. E. I., Whitehorse, Y. K., Yellowknife, N.W.T., and Iqaluit, N.U. As a result, they’ve been excluded from this ranking.