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Income Distribution in London
- muyuu 13y agoMakes me wonder how do 60%+ of the people manage to live in this place.
- blibble 13y agohousing benefit (which pushes up rents, further pushing more people into needing housing benefit)
- calpaterson 13y agoYeah, housing benefit (and council accommodation) is a huge part of how many people manage to afford to live inside zones 1 and 2.
- _progger_ 13y agoHopefully tories will change that at least a bit. I personally think families do not belong in central London.
- barrkel 13y agoMy GF and I's income combined puts us somewhere over the 90th percentile, but we feel like we're barely above supermarket employees - and we have no dependents. There is no way we could afford the rents on, say, the upper 70% of the whole-house / 2+ bedroom apartment rental market. I don't understand how most people can afford it, unless they're paying well over 50% of income on rent.
- tomwalker 13y agoMost of my London based friends spend >50% of their income on rent + bills. Everyone is chasing the dream and everyone thinks that they will be the 1 in 1000 that makes it big.
- _progger_ 13y agoWell, devs can already consider themselves to be 1 in 1000. The quest is to be 1 in 100000 now.
- cowls 13y agoTip: You could move outside of London (30 minute commute to one of the major train stations) and half your rent/mortgage.
- eterm 13y agoAnd then spend the difference in train fares. I'm 30 minutes outside london, an annual ticket is close to £4000.
- konradb 13y agoAnd if I'm correct about where you live, the APCOA car park for that station is something ridiculous like 24 GBP per day.
- calpaterson 13y agoAnd then there is what the time you spend on your commute is worth to you. If you decide to live >40 minutes outside, it starts to impact any social life you might want to have in central london.
- _progger_ 13y agoTip: you are not smarter then other buyers/renters. No offence but all the routes have been considered already. You always pay the price with time or money or lack of quality. Unless you work from home of course :).
- ig1 13y agoI had a nice two-bed flat in E1 for £300/week, which is about 15,600/year. If you're two people earning 25k/year each, you're household take-home will be around £40k making the rent perfectly feasible.
- omh 13y agoThe data in the post is household income, so your example would be 50k - somewhere above the 60th percentile.
- buro9 13y agoI do not think I understood just how little I survive on. Our household (girlfriend and I) have a total income of less than £10k per annum. This puts us worse off than pretty much everyone. But then, the money just doesn't bother me... not that I don't like money, but not having money dictate my life (by choice) gives me the freedom to work on the things I really believe in (the startup).
- nicholassmith 13y agoIs that less than £10k in London? Because that's kind of fascinating, I would have thought £10k in London would be mostly undoable. £10k in some areas outside of London I can see being doable, but not comfortably.
- calpaterson 13y agoWhether or not is it "doable" depends on what you mean by "London" and what standard of living you are prepared to accept.
- muyuu 13y agoIs that in London? If so, how do you manage to pay for accommodation?
- buro9 13y agoIt is in Zone 3, West London, with Chiswick being the closest High St. The 1 bed flat is on a council estate, it's not too small and is well-maintained and the rent is ~£500p/m. With the remaining money £140p/m covers bills including telecomms, utilities, etc. Because of the building being high-density flats there is a shared oil burner for heating so heating is included in the rent, and additionally it is impossible to meter the water supply and the 1 bed flat means we are on the lowest band of water bill that exists. We get a discount on council tax (student status of my partner who will graduate with her PhD soon, though she's already passed and is just prepping the final submission) and are in the lowest council tax band of one of the cheapest council tax rates (Hounslow covers Chiswick). We then spend £250p/m on groceries. This covers all meals and lunches, all toiletries and washing powder, etc. We do not buy anything pre-processed and we cook everything and think about a menu during a shop such that we can buy a few things in bulk that we can use differently in multiple meals. Think veg heavy, some rice and pasta. We tend to eat virtually no meat, but we do have fish when it is affordable. We have bicycles as primary modes of transport (I run http://www.lfgss.com http://www.lfgss.com ). Because I run that forum we are thankfully kept in cycle clothing and cycle parts (not that we consume much of either). My startup pays a stipend of £400 p/m, and then my girlfriend does a little tutoring, which allows her to indulge in fashion and preferred make-up. I generally get most of my clothes for free or extraordinarily cheap. Example: Most of my T-shirts are Continental N45 bamboo shirts that would be used in production of marketing T-shirts, and I order and pay for a few blank samples a couple of times a year from somewhere like: http://www.barone.co.uk/products/t-shirts/1/bamboo-t-shirt-from-continental/617 http://www.barone.co.uk/products/t-shirts/1/bamboo-t-shirt-f... . You can do this to most of your wardrobe, only jackets seem hard to acquire for cheap but thankfully they last the longest. As for life-style, we had good quality furniture and white goods before we took the respective paths of the PhD and startup, and we had pretty complete wardrobes. So we live very comfortably. On social things, we're into art which is mostly free, or academic seminars and CompSci user groups... events at which things like beer and pizza are provided so our cost is thankfully low. With friends we tend to do things like buy a bottle of wine and sit on the South Bank talking politics and dreams as the sun sets over the Thames, or picnics in Richmond Park, walks by the Thames, visits to new restaurants (which generally do phenomenal opening day specials as they test their systems - free meals or extremely cheap meals). We tend not to do TV, and if we have money to spend it's likely to go on books and art cinema. We want for nothing, not because there is nothing we might want, but that we changed our definition of things we need, and things we desire. We never go window shopping for example, we let needs drive us more than wants. We just live a fairly cultured, and astonishingly cheap lifestyle. Humble and active living. PS: Yes we have a little in savings, not a lot at all, but we could cope with an emergency. But in 2 years we have not touched the savings once, and the first 2 months of living with these budget constraints were the hardest... we live well and don't notice a difference between how we are and how our friends are.
- thenomad 13y agoDumb question - am I right in thinking the Y-axis here is percentage of population?
- andypants 13y agoYes, percentage of population earning below that income value.
- beaumartinez 13y ago"Household" income is a bit of a pointless stat when you're a bunch of strangers in a flat share—which I'm betting represents a fair proportion of London's earners.
- ig1 13y agoIt depends where the data is coming from, but generally (in government analysis) flat sharers aren't treated as members of the same household.
- anovikov 13y agoSounds like communism, is there really anything like that flat distribution?
- _progger_ 13y agoWell UK is socialistic. Probably more benefits then in USSR.
- tome 13y agoThe Institute of Fiscal Studies' application seems to be net of income tax and council tax. Is this the same for the linked graphic? I can't tell by trying to track down the data source on http://data.london.gov.uk/ http://data.london.gov.uk/