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Interesting - the cost of living (i.e. rent) is so absurdly high in London, and so much less in other cities, that you could have a better lifestyle there on a
by f_allwein 9y ago
Interesting - the cost of living (i.e. rent) is so absurdly high in London, and so much less in other cities, that you could have a better lifestyle there on a much lower salary. But I can imagine not everyone does the maths and people will still flock to the higher pay checks.
- nip 9y agoExactly, what matters is the money left on your bank account when everything has been paid.
- PaulRobinson 9y agoI have saved far more in London than I ever could in Manchester. Living costs in Manchester took out about 85% of my pay each month. In London it's more like 75%. Why? The salaries are vastly higher for the same job, it outpaces living costs. Do you honestly think we're all idiots and hadn't done the maths?
- nip 9y agoIf you have saved more in London than in Manchester then I don't understand the reason of your comment as this is what I explicitly stated in mine: the paycheck doesn't matter. If you saved more with a bigger paycheck, that's good. If you saved more with a smaller one, that's equally good.
- PaulRobinson 9y agoDid you read my post? I directly call out living costs as a poor argument. Rent is high - it's the worst one of the lot. My rent is about 2x what an equivalent place in Manchester would cost me. My salary is 2x-3x what Manchester will pay me. And I get to live on the outskirts of a city that holds some of the finest museums, galleries, theatres, bars and restaurants on Earth.
- kinlan 9y agoI'd actually like to get the data on this, because I don't see it. Housing in London is exorbitant not to mention commute times and travel costs in my experience outweigh the the difference in living costs you mention.
- jaymzcampbell 9y agoI highly recommend the metropolitan line. I'm living in a nice 1 bed in Harrow for £995 a month (not cheap but not a massive stretch for me). The fast met line in the morning can have me in Liverpool street within 45 minutes from leaving mine. As fond as I am of hating on London to my friends, I would be worse off moving out to take a job at half the salary and unless I could walk to work within 30 minutes, I think the london transport network is very hard to beat.
- stuaxo 9y agoI live in near London Bridge for just a bit more than double that, in a two bed, sharing with partner and daughter. The prices on the edges have gone up much faster than the middle, it's worth considering living centrally. On the outskirts I don't feel like you get the benefits of living in the city, I may as well live actually outside.
- switch007 9y agoJust to expand, to live and commute it's more like: £995 + £200 (council tax, utilities and Internet) + £216 (monthly travel card) = £1,411?
- notahacker 9y agoThe data would strongly suggest he's an outlier (as are those fortunate enough to be employed in extremely lucrative jobs that don't exist outside of London, or where London-based firms have specialisms or connections which justify charging clients much higher fees than their regional counterparts) Major employers with fixed pay scales, for example, tend to pay a "London weighting" of £1-7k[1] which doesn't get close to covering housing cost differences and don't have trouble hiring for London positions. There might be more interesting work and work far more specialised to your skillset than that available in most cities outside of London, but there's also more competition for it from a workforce that doesn't mind renting rooms rather than buying houses and not even considering owning a car. [1] e.g. http://www.lboro.ac.uk/news-events/news/2016/july/london-weighting.html http://www.lboro.ac.uk/news-events/news/2016/july/london-wei...