But you don't have to go full breaking bad if you get sick. If you look at the official data[0] 2016-2018 you get this: Item 2016

But you don't have to go full breaking bad if you get sick. If you look at the official data[0] 2016-2018 you get this: Item 2016 2017 2018 -------------------------------------------------------------- Average income before taxes $74,664 $73,573 $78,635 Average annual expenditures 57,311 60,060 61,224 Which gives a net bonus of ~20% before taxes, with an average 25% tax rate (it depends a lot on where you are, so I stayed low) you get around 15% net gain, excluding medical bills. The average London household spend is around £650 per week[1] or £33.800 per year The average London salary[2] is around £736.5 per year or £38.298 per year which gives a net gain of over ~13%, but with medical bills included. But you can easily make 70k-100k in London working in finance or SWE. All in all is not that different (it actually is, UK is better on average, we are not even accounting for things like job seekers allowance - the dole in UK - or the benefits for having kids etc. etc.). [0] https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cesan.nr0.htm https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cesan.nr0.htm [1] https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/expenditure/bulletins/familyspendingintheuk/financialyearending2018 https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personal... [2] https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/bulletins/annualsurveyofhoursandearnings/2019 https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwor...