10 ms·

London, it’s over, and it’s not me, it’s you

81 points by SandB0x 11y ago

Nursie 11y ago
This is what happened with me a few years back. Was there nearly ten years. Five years in I would have laughed in your face at the idea of leaving, but the expense, the cramped conditions and crowded feel, the bad air... all eventually got to me. I now live an hour and a half away by train. It's nice here. And I can still come to visit some of my friends in London quicker than they can visit each other.
- zimpenfish 11y ago
  Yeah - it's about the same amount of time from my local station (east Greenwich) to Euston as from e.g. Milton Keynes to Euston.
  - neotrinity 11y ago
    the issue with the travel from milton keynes to euston is that the peak hours virgin trains are completely packed and will struggle to find space in there.
    - zimpenfish 11y ago
      A fair point. Although I'd be happy with the Midland Mainline trains that take ~50m (IIRC) since I can work on the train. Plus my plan is no more than two days a week actually commuting since there's zero requirement for me to be in the office as a developer.
      - neotrinity 11y ago
        niicee ! Yeah apparently midland trains are quite empty. Maybe I l do that as well !
  - gadders 11y ago
    I live about 40 miles from London in the middle of kent. It takes me only 10 mins or so longer to get in than people in Richmond on the District line.
    - DrBazza 11y ago
      HS1 with the £6600 per annum travel card? :)
- xamuel 11y ago
  This would be great, except if the rent doesn't get you, the train fare will. Coming from the U.S., I had to pick my jaw off the floor when I saw what they charge, it's obscene. Say what you will about U.S. public transportation, at least it's cheap. Here in the UK if you so much as glance sideways at a city bus, it'll be five-pounds-change.
  - Alphasite_ 11y ago
    That's a london thing, it's (approximately) only a pound or two in a lot of other places.
  - Nursie 11y ago
    >>if the rent doesn't get you, the train fare will. Hence why I only go there visit friends, I don't work there. Well, I did for a while last year, but the rate on offer was large enough to offset the cost. It wasn't large enough to offset the 3+ hours a day spent in a train though, so I don't do it any more.
  - Tenoke 11y ago
    Eh, all bus journeys in London cost exactly 1.50
    - billybofh 11y ago
      Outside of London we were gifted the 'marvels' of deregulation in the 80's though and the prices & service are now pretty bad. I remember watching the minister responsible at the time espousing how marvellous deregulation was going to be and how he'd been inspired after seeing two empty buses going over Tower Bridge - yet London largely escaped despite being the inspiration. Count yourselves lucky ;-) This Guardian piece has some numbers : http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/aug/26/bus-deregulation-outside-london-failure-thinktank http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/aug/26/bus-deregulat...
    - pcrh 11y ago
      The underground is £4.80 for a single fare in zones 1-3, £2.30 if you use the oyster; double for return ticket.
- leaveyou 11y ago
  I intend to leave Paris for the same reasons.. but I don't know where to go :). All the reasonable dev jobs seem to be in expensive, crowded and polluted places these days..
  - Nursie 11y ago
    Well, when I left, I went to Australia. Perth is expensive, not crowded and extremely clean :) But after a few years I ended up back in the UK, on the south coast. It's nice here, and I have friends (unlike there!)
neotrinity 11y ago
omg... i am close to making this decision myself ! just sick and tired of the soaring house prices in london.
- zimpenfish 11y ago
  I'm not bothered about the house prices but the incessant apartmentisation of every bit of land (e.g. Thames Path, east of Greenwich) and general shitness of the city (e.g. Greenwich, weekend) has brought me to the same decision. Depending on job and other situations, I'm hoping to be out of London this time next year - probably somewhere like Milton Keynes.
  - neotrinity 11y ago
    tbh the prices in Milton Keynes have gone up as well. (P.S i am looking for houses there too !)
    - zimpenfish 11y ago
      Yeah but I can get a one bed flat there for less or the same as I'm paying for a studio now. Plus the environment is just a lot nicer (I was there last weekend walking down the canal and it was LOVELY.)
      - neotrinity 11y ago
        True... you get a lot for the price of a studio in London really. lol. I was there too ! although it was rainy in MK when i reached there. I liked the place too. Its not rich in heritage so to speak. But for a decent middle class living with family and kids I think its a nice place. Also not to mention you could commute to Birmingham should you get a good offer from there.
        zimpenfish 11y ago
        I enjoyed* the Saturday afternoon rain as I walked back from the centre to Caldecotte Lake. Took my shoes a day to dry out. Most damp. (But still a lot nicer than London canal walks.)
doc_holliday 11y ago
I can see London begining to hollow out at some point like it has before. Slums will begin to rise again (if some areas aren't already close to being that already). Vast wealth will be left in pockets and as all the mid earners leave to try have a better life in the countryside and elsewhere the reason London was successful in the first place, the culture and those that create it will be in deficit. Then the rich will see they've paid over the top for property and they too will leave. Then London will begin again. Like it has multiple times.
- branchless 11y ago
  Are you sure? Looks like the last stage of failure post-empire to me. I guess China did come back, but it took a while...
gadders 11y ago
I think this is the housing bubble correcting itself. Good.
- branchless 11y ago
  Nope the UK establishment will double down on it again as the UK is using land to print money. Without this reality catches up with UK living standards. It will crash but they won't just let it happen.
  - junto 11y ago
    They can't let it happen. They are propping up the house of cards with more cards. If the bubble pops, then Thatcher's children and children's children will be proper screwed.
- jmngomes 11y ago
  No, it's a capital being emptied from its center and people moving away from their birthplace/families so they can have a decent life, due to real estate speculation and money laundering through mass property acquisition.
  - branchless 11y ago
    Good point. The amount of money laundered through London is unbelievable. The UK's unique selling point: nobody gets charged for finance crime* * unless it's defrauding a bank
    - gadders 11y ago
      Several traders have been prosecuted for libor-rigging.
vermooten 11y ago
It's why I left too, pretty much. On the + side, London and its surroundings has a zillion jobs, some of them interesting. Out in the provinces, the job market for devs tends to be for plodders.
- Nursie 11y ago
  I was going to be very sarcastic here but decided to improve my tone. While a lot of the non-London jobs are of the plodding type, there are many that aren't, and there are areas of concentrated, cutting edge tech work outside of London. Cambridge, for example.
  - column 11y ago
    I was going to be very sarcastic here and decided not to change my tone. That introduction was pointless.
  - geden 11y ago
    Property in Cambridge is also very expensive.
- gadders 11y ago
  The other option is commuting.
- batou 11y ago
  I'm trading an interesting job for plodding as you put it. The positive thing about plodding when you're experienced is that it doesn't kill you so you can do more interesting things.
k-mcgrady 11y ago
Where to start? >> "as someone whose salary is only five figured" That's a pretty huge range from very poor to quite well off, without being more specific it's hard to judge any of the claims the author makes. >> "I don't think I'm asking for much, I only want a secure family home with a garden, enough money saved for a good pension, access to fresh air, and some peace and quiet." That's actually asking quite a lot from a city especially a huge capital city. Pretty hard to find peace and quiet in capital city - there's usually a lot going on. But to be fair in London you actually can find it in one of the many parks. Also, there aren't enough apartments/houses (hence high rents) yet you think asking for one with a garden isn't asking a lot. >> "zone 4 paying out a minimum of £1200 pcm for a 1 bed flat" Doesn't sound accurate to me. I've been looking at 1 bed flats recently in zone 2 and there are decent places going for £1300 so I'd expect zone 4 to be a lot less expensive.
- Nursie 11y ago
  >> That's a pretty huge range from very poor to quite well off, without being more specific it's hard to judge any of the claims the author makes. Not really, unless you're very high earning then getting what he wanted, a three+ bed house with a garden, and not so far away as to make life difficult for commuting, is very very expensive. >> That's actually asking quite a lot from a city especially a huge capital city. Pretty hard to find peace and quiet in capital city - there's usually a lot going on. But to be fair in London you actually can find it in one of the many parks. Also, there aren't enough apartments/houses (hence high rents) yet you think asking for one with a garden isn't asking a lot. That's exactly the point, in most of the country and most of the world it's not asking that much. He's reached a state where the benefits of 'city' do not outweigh the compromises one has to make to live there. If that balance is not something that's tipped for you (yet?) then cool. For many, many of us it has.
  - k-mcgrady 11y ago
    >> "He's reached a state where the benefits of 'city' do not outweigh the compromises one has to make to live there." But it's like complaining water is wet. That's just the way it is. There are things cities have that smaller towns don't a vice versa.
s_dev 11y ago
Average Monthly Rent in Europe http://i.imgur.com/RKfucgp.gif http://i.imgur.com/RKfucgp.gif Average % Income Spent on Rent in Europe http://i.imgur.com/himm8Ur.gif http://i.imgur.com/himm8Ur.gif The reason the UK is so high is because London literally drags the whole country up to the top of the ranking (not necessarily good) - Ireland would have vaguely similar rents to the UK discounting London and these two images help show that London is a bit rent mad.
- doc_holliday 11y ago
  Whilst London is quite apart from the rest of the UK. It isn't the only place in the UK with disproprtionately high rents. Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, anywhere with a bouyant jobs market you pay over the odds for compared to Europe. Granted not as high as London, but as a % of income not dissimilar at the end of the month.
  - s_dev 11y ago
    Ireland has large variances in its rent as well. Dublin is substantially higher than the rest of the country. London is just beyond this normal deviation though. The rent between Oxford and Dublin for instance would be very comparable.
  - rmk2 11y ago
    If you compare local earnings to house prices, London is, in fact is only #2, behind Oxford.[1] The problem with Oxford and Cambridge (as well as a place like Reading) is that they are still within commutable distance from London (Oxford and Reading slightly more so than Cambridge), which means you get people who earn well even for London standards who live in those cities and commute, in turn making those places more expensive. Some of the other cities, like Edinburgh, Manchester (in parts) and Aberdeen (oil) are certainly pricey as well, but they are not nearly as expensive as the South of England. [1]: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/property/house-prices/11436459/Welcome-to-Britains-most-unaffordable-spot-its-not-London.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/property/house-prices/114...
    - 11y ago
therealidiot 11y ago
Spent 3 days in London a while back and at one point I felt as though I was inhaling airborne bits of glass.
- junto 11y ago
  Also that feeling when you blow your nose after having traveled around on the tube for the day. Black snot. Nice.
- pix64 11y ago
  Kept getting stuff in my eyes there.
- DanBC 11y ago
  Air pollution in some parts of London is severe. Life-limiting -- people die because of it. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-20664807 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-20664807 > The paper, Air Pollution in London, produced by the Assembly's Health and Environment Committee, reports 8.3% of deaths in Westminster are attributable to man-made airborne particles. > In Kensington and Chelsea it is 8.3% and in Tower Hamlets 8.1%. > Bromley and Havering have the lowest proportion of pollution-related deaths in London, both 6.3%, but are still above the England average of 5.6%.
branchless 11y ago
I've left London. I went to Canada, Quebec. If I come back I'll go up North. I'll never work in a "world city" again. It's a waste of time. Over time I grew to hate London and I have zero regrets about leaving. My biggest fear is having to go back.
- ido 11y ago
  It's not as much of a world city as London or New York but we quite like Berlin (moved there from cities smaller, more expensive and with worse career prospect). It's not for everyone but if you're in tech or media it can be quite attractive.
  - branchless 11y ago
    Germany is different because of the way they make land available for people to build. The UK is all about only letting big builders put up housing and taking a huge cut. This keeps prices nice and high so people have to borrow their lifetime income. This way the maximum economic rent is extracted from workers. The UK is totally anti-worker. It's a rentier paradise run for the benefit of The City. Click on Germany and the UK on this and see: http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/11/global-house-prices http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/11/global-hou... Ask yourself with 3/4 of new money created via domestic mortgage lending where would UK "growth" be without pulling forward "earnings" through debt?
    - MrBuddyCasino 11y ago
      Wow. This looks a lot like a political issue, why do people put up with this?
      - branchless 11y ago
        No idea. I honestly think we will get to the stage where boomers are riding the young around and shouting "giddy up!". And the kids will just shrug. There is just something about Brits that makes them so exploitable. Like domesticated animals they just line up.
batou 11y ago
Apt timing. I'm in the process of bailing out of London and heading about 200 miles west. Honestly I earn a shit ton of cash but I can't actually find anywhere that I can actually face putting the cash down on. I looked at a new development 3 bedroom flat last week for £419k that was made of the cheapest possible construction and you could hear your neighbours farting through the walls. The view was another new development block, some office buildings, the M4 flyover and a ton of haze in the atmosphere. So I'm bailing out west a long way. Half the salary but there is less disparity in quality of life and property prices.
- branchless 11y ago
  You are not paying for the building it's the land cost. Good for you, get out. Even better if you can leave the UK and starve out the UK treasury. Also the quality of life is better. Shorter hours as less wage slaves terrified of loosing their job as they live hand to mouth. Less busy. Easier to get out into nature.
- JPKab 11y ago
  Yep. Particularly notable for me in the article: " Because of this, London is becoming like Washington DC in the USA, where I used to live. DC is dived with poverty at one end serving the wealth at the other, and the wealth doesn't hang around. DC is a place where people go to further their careers before moving on to settle down because it's too expensive to stay." I bailed out of Washington, DC 11 months ago. Got so sick of trying to grind out a basic quality of life. I ended up moving to "flyover country", and I love it. Trees, fresh air, good jobs, and a house in a great neighborhood. The people are nice, and I have this crazy thing that some people refer to as liquid assets, others call it disposable income. It's nice. My brother, who remained behind in DC with his family, has a house that is less than half the square footage of my modestly sized country house. It's cramped, even by urban standards, and majorly in need of repairs. It is also a duplex, and the neighbors sharing the structure are rather snooty and unfriendly. He paid over $500K US for it. Did I mention the schools are so bad he'll have to send his son to private school? Yeah, I'll take the affordable cities any day over that crap. Unlike my brother, my house isn't making decisions for me, like "can one of us stay home with the new baby instead of putting her in daycare?" (His mortgage had a firm answer of no to their bank account.)
tempodox 11y ago
What on earth is “pcm”? Do you apply pulse code modulation to money in the UK?
- swombat 11y ago
  Per calendar month.
- njs12345 11y ago
  'per calendar month' - in the UK there's a bit of a tradition of quoting rental prices (and footballers' wages) per week, so it's best to specify which you mean.
- doc_holliday 11y ago
  Per calendar month. It is used very often in rental adverts.
coldcode 11y ago
I recently visited London from the US and stayed at my aunt and uncles house on the south coast. Their old little house in is worth £600,000 which is insane (12X what they paid for it), simply because it's a hour or so by train to London! The price inflation of real estate anywhere near London is worse than SF. Compared to that in D/FW area my modern 2000sf house is $180,000.
- JPKab 11y ago
  The Brits won't know what you mean by D/FW. (Dallas/Fort Worth metro area in Texas) To be fair, Texas real-estate is super cheap because there's tons of land that doesn't have many trees on it. It makes building new housing stock super quick, easy, and cheap. But to your point, D/FW is an awesome part of the country. Plenty of culture, plenty to do, plenty of jobs. (I'd be lying if I said I like it better than Austin though)
rwmj 11y ago
Strange article. I moved out of London to a house with a garden that would be affordable to a couple on the average salary [edit: to a couple both earning the average UK salary]. I am 20 miles as the crow flies from the centre of London.
- shocks 11y ago
  Where do you live? Currently live in Wimbledon, and I want to move.
  - rwmj 11y ago
    About 5 miles north west of Watford. There are dozens of small villages round here. If you look hard you'll find cheap old ex-council houses built in the 1920s which were well made and come with loads of land (ours has 2800 sq ft of land). The catch is you won't have any public transport and will have to cycle or drive everywhere (I recommend an e-bike). And yes really I am 20 miles as the crow flies from Charing Cross station. All I need now is a flying car :-)
    - zimpenfish 11y ago
      > 2800 sq ft I'm hoping you mean sq.m there since unless I'm mistaken, 2800 sq.ft isn't that much (unless that's distinct from the house but still...)
      - rwmj 11y ago
        I meant 2800 sq ft of grounds. In the UK that's a generous but not enormous garden. If the garden was any bigger it would take too much time to do the gardening - as it is I have to devote a day or more per month just keeping it under control. The garden is big enough that I built an office in the garden which didn't appreciably make the garden feel any smaller: https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2013/07/10/garden-office-most-mostly-done/#content https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2013/07/10/garden-office-most-mos...
        11y ago
Fede_V 11y ago
It's hard to convey how bad the housing situation is in London to people that have not lived there. Starting income is much lower than Silicon Valley (a very, very good pay for your first job is around ~40,000 pounds/year), housing costs are insanely high, and public transport is crazy expensive. It's possible to live there as a young person with multiple room-mates, living far away from the city center, but as you get older and want things like privacy or, god forbid, enough space to live with a family, it becomes completely unaffordable. The city center has gotten so expensive that even bankers and russian millionaires cannot live there - it basically exists now to cater to Middle Eastern billionaires: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-12-17/russians-quit-london-luxury-homes-as-only-super-rich-stay http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-12-17/russians-q... London is an awesome city, I'm glad I lived there during my undergrad, but there's no way I could go back there as a 30 year old. The city will constantly be appealing to the young, who don't mind squeezing with three other people into a small apartment in zone 4, or the extremely rich, but for everyone else, move far, far away and you'll be a lot happier, even with everything (and, it's really a lot) that London has to offer.
- branchless 11y ago
  The UK is just getting worse and worse. It's a rear-guard action. They are printing (desperately) via land prices. Without this there is no "growth". Given that the young have no savings, no security (job or home) and no hope, what will the UK be like in 15 years time? My guess is it's going to be worse than now. London really is soul-crushing. I doubled my salary then doubled it again starting out working from 1998 and all the time housing costs stayed ahead of me. The UK is not for workers. You are always working for the landed classes, not for yourself. It's the new serfdom.
  - iolothebard 11y ago
    The US is going down this same path. It's why every apartment complex in my town sells for 50-100% more than it did 5-7 years ago. We don't tax the wealthy so they're finding ways to park it in real estate. The problem is the poor (working or not) keep voting for this trickle up policy. It's like Americans never learned from the history of the UK.
swombat 11y ago
Good god, what a bitchy article - and quite sad to see that most of the response here is equally whiny. London is one of the world's top cities. That presents some substantial upsides, in terms of things like night-life, art, business activity, employment, diversity of the population, and, least tangible but most important, the general vibe of frenetic activity and constant renewal and change that a place like this has. It also presents substantial downsides, in terms of things like cost of living, noise, pollution, transport congestion, and of course, the general vibe of frenetic activity and constant stress and change. If you choose to move away from London, fine, go forth and be happy in New Whatevershire in the county of Who Cares... but don't write epic rants about how London's no longer to your taste and therefore it's somehow London's fault. This irks me even more than anti-gentrification obsessives, who seem to believe that because a family has lived somewhere for a couple generations they should be somehow insulated from the consequences of rapid change and economic growth impacting a whole country. Life is change. Change impacts everything, including your environment. If a place changes in such a way that you don't like it anymore, you're free to move somewhere else. Do so, and even write a blog post explaining why you moved, if you feel so inclined, but please bottle up the "my viewpoint is the only important viewpoint, and all change I don't like is bad" crap and keep it to yourself.
- doc_holliday 11y ago
  Yes places change and become world cities. However the problem is the people that made it interesting gave the culture, night-life and art can no longer live there or have a reasonable existance. You kind of at that point end up with really coorporate art and culture as everything has to be high value and you notice the quality really starts to suffer. Also the people who attend these things find they cannot live there either and it all dies.
  - branchless 11y ago
    The difference is the cost of land. If you are in London and given a big deposit from parents to keep your mortgage payments down they you benefit from appreciating asset prices and have disposable income. Life is good (for you). However the cost of appreciating land (in real terms) is that younger people have to pledge more and more of their life to live in the same pile of bricks. It's clearly now reached the point where it's untenable, it's simply a speculative bubble now. All the UK banks are tied up in it, the UK itself is overly reliant on the financial sector, which lends heavily into housing which shows up as "growth" in GDP stats. They will fight hard to prop it up as long as possible. So far we've seen the UK artificially suppressing interest rates and also directly underwriting mortgage risk because even the crazy UK banks won't do it.
ninjaroar 11y ago
And San Francisco is even more expensive... This is just supply and demand - there are a lot of people who want to live in world cities like London, but a limited supply of housing.
- branchless 11y ago
  Do you really know about this or is this just middle-school economics? Do you know about the London mkt? Lots of the more expensive parts of London are empty at night. London is open season for money laundering through housing. Also do you know how money is created? How is it that people can suddenly pay $600k on a modest salary?
justinhj 11y ago
I went to University in London and lived there for 10 years. I loved the city to death. Back then in the mid-90s we thought property was over valued, but in truth a 2 bedroom flat at around 80k in zone 2/3 was affordable on a modest income. I liked the culture, the people and walking around the city which was always so alive. Despite all that when I decided to get married and have a family I looked elsewhere. Perhaps ironically I settled in Vancouver which is suffering a lot of the same issues as London as so many others had the same idea. Good article but it's really just a fact of life that if you live somewhere that many people want to live, you must compete with them for rental and real estate.
vilmosi 11y ago
As someone who lives in London, this is fake. >> small flat in zone 4 paying out a minimum of £1200 pcm for a 1 bed flat, Mate, I pay 1600 for a two bedroom big flat with an awesome view (zone 2). Prices didn't get that ridiculous yet. >>> I was recently charged nine quid for two pints of ale and I took offence. Fuck you, that's bullshit. If you actually paid that, you've been robbed. >>>It is effectively out of service on weekends and bank holidays Yeah, they need to do maintenance regularly, idiot. There's more than one way to get somewhere, you know? It's not like they close the city down. TLDR this guy may have valid reasons to leave London and the article is well written, but a lot of "facts" are just plain made up or exaggerated. EDIT I misread as 9 quid for one pint. 9 for two pints is most definitely correct.
- r0bbbo 11y ago
  I don't agree with his negative attitude, but I don't think he's far off in terms of his facts: - I think nine pounds for two pints of ale is about right anywhere in London. Go somewhere a bit cool and it's easily over ten - I pay £1400 for a two bed in zone 2 which is cheap, I think the average is around £1600. I recently started looking at one beds in the same area and they are around £1200
  - vilmosi 11y ago
    - nine pounds a pint is excessive. Even at Hawksmoor it's half that. Wetherspoons a third that. Simply not true. - yes, zone 2. He talks about zone 4.
    - timje1 11y ago
      He says 9 pounds for two pints. £4.50 a pint sounds about right for London.
      - vilmosi 11y ago
        Oh ouch, that was my incredibly dumb mistake. Thanks for pointing that out.
suttree 11y ago
I got bored of London, worked in SF for a while and enjoyed it there, but had no chance getting a visa. I got back to London (could never really afford to live in the city centre) and then moved to Berlin and loved it. But, you can get too comfortable in some places, so I'm back in London again, but I miss Berlin. Never go back though, if I had the chance I'd move on to somewhere new in Europe for sure. London's great though, more diversity than many, many places, and that's a huge reason to stay.
deleted 11y ago
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yeureka 11y ago
I'm from Portugal and have lived as a working adult in Lisbon, Barcelona and London. Even though I was earning more than the average salary in both Lisbon and Barcelona it would impossible to be able to buy decent property in the nice parts of these cities as they are as out of reach as the nice areas of London for normal people. I just bought a garden flat with a garage in zone 4 and my commute is so relaxed I can even code on the train. And, I don't need to worry about the lack of interesting and well paid jobs as I used to in Portugal and Spain. Personally I have done well by moving to London, and I know a lot of others with similar stories coming from countries with "low rent".
icu 11y ago
Completely echo this article except I'm working on moving from 5 figure to 6 figures in order to get the life I want. I doubt the article writer can get 6 figures in Cupar.
- zimpenfish 11y ago
  I get 6 figures (contracting, and this one is only just) and London is still too expensive for me.
  - icu 11y ago
    IMHO find an IFA and work out a holistic financial plan. With 6 figures you should be getting ahead. If you do take this advice make sure: 1) They are regulated (obvious) and check the FCA register to see if they have any complaints 2) You like them and think you can get along, don't just settle for a 'cheap' proposition 3) Make sure they use lifetime cash flow modelling 4) Make sure they use scholastic modelling, and 5) Be prepared to pay for the advice and implement it. TBH right from the outset it sounds like you might have to make lifestyle choices around spending habits. Also just guessing here but if you are in that tax bracket you should have several tax mitigation options that will help you.
    - zimpenfish 11y ago
      I guess when I say that "London is too expensive", I don't mean "within the scope of my financial reach" as much as "based on what I'm willing to sacrifice for living here". I could be getting 50-75% more than I'm getting now if I went into Rails consultancy or moved to a bank doing sysadmin work but for me those would be a net negative on my quality of life. Or I could move into a shared house and save a couple of hundred a month on rent but again quality of life concerns prevent that. > you should have several tax mitigation options I have a moral / ethical stance about tax optimisation - I won't do it, however legal it may currently be.
    - foldr 11y ago
      >Make sure they use scholastic modelling Yes, and more specifically, make sure that they're a Thomist. You don't want to be taking finical advice from Averroists or Ockhamists!
lordnacho 11y ago
He's got some good points. I lived in London for a long time, but never bought because it just seemed so insane. When you're young it just about works, though: you want to have friends around, so why not share a house with them? That way it's still expensive, but you have someone to hang out with. And your expenses as a single guy are not exactly high. You don't need a car as it's just you and your bag on the tube. You're drinking anyway, so it's either tube or cab. What you care about is seeing loads of other young people, and London is great for that. When you get a family, everything turns against living there. You can barely stand on most tube trains, so good luck getting the pram on board (and god help you if you need a wheelchair). You want to take the kid out of town? There's a traffic jam in every direction. Want to find a school for the kids? Good luck getting in the catchment. Some of them are actually less than a literal stone's throw. Private school? Sure, but school's have to pay rent too. It's not the teachers taking home all those fees. IMO the best compromise is one of the commuter towns. Some of them have fast trains. They are still expensive, and the train itself isn't cheap either. But you get a little more space, a decent selection of things parents want, and the schools are not bad. Even better, live in a commuter town but work remotely. Then you can network, see people now and again, but not have to get in the sardine can each morning.
- dreamfactory2 11y ago
  You've clearly never experienced the traffic in Mumbai, Bangkok, or Moscow. London isn't exceptional.
  - lordnacho 11y ago
    Totally irrelevant. London traffic is bad. Who cares that it may be worse elsewhere?
    - dreamfactory2 11y ago
      Point being that it is a normal expectation for a large populous city anywhere and says nothing whatsoever about London (other than London may actually be doing quite well as far as traffic goes).

81 points by SandB0x 11y ago

This is what happened with me a few years back. Was there nearly ten years. Five years in I would have laughed in your face at the idea of leaving, but the expense, the cramped conditions and crowded feel, the bad air... all eventually got to me. I now live an hour and a half away by train. It's nice here. And I can still come to visit some of my friends in London quicker than they can visit each other.

zimpenfish 11y ago
Yeah - it's about the same amount of time from my local station (east Greenwich) to Euston as from e.g. Milton Keynes to Euston.
- neotrinity 11y ago
  the issue with the travel from milton keynes to euston is that the peak hours virgin trains are completely packed and will struggle to find space in there.
  - zimpenfish 11y ago
    A fair point. Although I'd be happy with the Midland Mainline trains that take ~50m (IIRC) since I can work on the train. Plus my plan is no more than two days a week actually commuting since there's zero requirement for me to be in the office as a developer.
    - neotrinity 11y ago
      niicee ! Yeah apparently midland trains are quite empty. Maybe I l do that as well !
- gadders 11y ago
  I live about 40 miles from London in the middle of kent. It takes me only 10 mins or so longer to get in than people in Richmond on the District line.
  - DrBazza 11y ago
    HS1 with the £6600 per annum travel card? :)
xamuel 11y ago
This would be great, except if the rent doesn't get you, the train fare will. Coming from the U.S., I had to pick my jaw off the floor when I saw what they charge, it's obscene. Say what you will about U.S. public transportation, at least it's cheap. Here in the UK if you so much as glance sideways at a city bus, it'll be five-pounds-change.
- Alphasite_ 11y ago
  That's a london thing, it's (approximately) only a pound or two in a lot of other places.
- Nursie 11y ago
  >>if the rent doesn't get you, the train fare will. Hence why I only go there visit friends, I don't work there. Well, I did for a while last year, but the rate on offer was large enough to offset the cost. It wasn't large enough to offset the 3+ hours a day spent in a train though, so I don't do it any more.
- Tenoke 11y ago
  Eh, all bus journeys in London cost exactly 1.50
  - billybofh 11y ago
    Outside of London we were gifted the 'marvels' of deregulation in the 80's though and the prices & service are now pretty bad. I remember watching the minister responsible at the time espousing how marvellous deregulation was going to be and how he'd been inspired after seeing two empty buses going over Tower Bridge - yet London largely escaped despite being the inspiration. Count yourselves lucky ;-) This Guardian piece has some numbers : http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/aug/26/bus-deregulation-outside-london-failure-thinktank http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2014/aug/26/bus-deregulat...
  - pcrh 11y ago
    The underground is £4.80 for a single fare in zones 1-3, £2.30 if you use the oyster; double for return ticket.
leaveyou 11y ago
I intend to leave Paris for the same reasons.. but I don't know where to go :). All the reasonable dev jobs seem to be in expensive, crowded and polluted places these days..
- Nursie 11y ago
  Well, when I left, I went to Australia. Perth is expensive, not crowded and extremely clean :) But after a few years I ended up back in the UK, on the south coast. It's nice here, and I have friends (unlike there!)

neotrinity 11y ago

omg... i am close to making this decision myself ! just sick and tired of the soaring house prices in london.

zimpenfish 11y ago
I'm not bothered about the house prices but the incessant apartmentisation of every bit of land (e.g. Thames Path, east of Greenwich) and general shitness of the city (e.g. Greenwich, weekend) has brought me to the same decision. Depending on job and other situations, I'm hoping to be out of London this time next year - probably somewhere like Milton Keynes.
- neotrinity 11y ago
  tbh the prices in Milton Keynes have gone up as well. (P.S i am looking for houses there too !)
  - zimpenfish 11y ago
    Yeah but I can get a one bed flat there for less or the same as I'm paying for a studio now. Plus the environment is just a lot nicer (I was there last weekend walking down the canal and it was LOVELY.)
    - neotrinity 11y ago
      True... you get a lot for the price of a studio in London really. lol. I was there too ! although it was rainy in MK when i reached there. I liked the place too. Its not rich in heritage so to speak. But for a decent middle class living with family and kids I think its a nice place. Also not to mention you could commute to Birmingham should you get a good offer from there.
      - zimpenfish 11y ago
        I enjoyed* the Saturday afternoon rain as I walked back from the centre to Caldecotte Lake. Took my shoes a day to dry out. Most damp. (But still a lot nicer than London canal walks.)

doc_holliday 11y ago

I can see London begining to hollow out at some point like it has before. Slums will begin to rise again (if some areas aren't already close to being that already). Vast wealth will be left in pockets and as all the mid earners leave to try have a better life in the countryside and elsewhere the reason London was successful in the first place, the culture and those that create it will be in deficit. Then the rich will see they've paid over the top for property and they too will leave. Then London will begin again. Like it has multiple times.

branchless 11y ago
Are you sure? Looks like the last stage of failure post-empire to me. I guess China did come back, but it took a while...

gadders 11y ago

I think this is the housing bubble correcting itself. Good.

branchless 11y ago
Nope the UK establishment will double down on it again as the UK is using land to print money. Without this reality catches up with UK living standards. It will crash but they won't just let it happen.
- junto 11y ago
  They can't let it happen. They are propping up the house of cards with more cards. If the bubble pops, then Thatcher's children and children's children will be proper screwed.
jmngomes 11y ago
No, it's a capital being emptied from its center and people moving away from their birthplace/families so they can have a decent life, due to real estate speculation and money laundering through mass property acquisition.
- branchless 11y ago
  Good point. The amount of money laundered through London is unbelievable. The UK's unique selling point: nobody gets charged for finance crime* * unless it's defrauding a bank
  - gadders 11y ago
    Several traders have been prosecuted for libor-rigging.

vermooten 11y ago

It's why I left too, pretty much. On the + side, London and its surroundings has a zillion jobs, some of them interesting. Out in the provinces, the job market for devs tends to be for plodders.

Nursie 11y ago
I was going to be very sarcastic here but decided to improve my tone. While a lot of the non-London jobs are of the plodding type, there are many that aren't, and there are areas of concentrated, cutting edge tech work outside of London. Cambridge, for example.
- column 11y ago
  I was going to be very sarcastic here and decided not to change my tone. That introduction was pointless.
- geden 11y ago
  Property in Cambridge is also very expensive.
gadders 11y ago
The other option is commuting.
batou 11y ago
I'm trading an interesting job for plodding as you put it. The positive thing about plodding when you're experienced is that it doesn't kill you so you can do more interesting things.

k-mcgrady 11y ago

Where to start? >> "as someone whose salary is only five figured" That's a pretty huge range from very poor to quite well off, without being more specific it's hard to judge any of the claims the author makes. >> "I don't think I'm asking for much, I only want a secure family home with a garden, enough money saved for a good pension, access to fresh air, and some peace and quiet." That's actually asking quite a lot from a city especially a huge capital city. Pretty hard to find peace and quiet in capital city - there's usually a lot going on. But to be fair in London you actually can find it in one of the many parks. Also, there aren't enough apartments/houses (hence high rents) yet you think asking for one with a garden isn't asking a lot. >> "zone 4 paying out a minimum of £1200 pcm for a 1 bed flat" Doesn't sound accurate to me. I've been looking at 1 bed flats recently in zone 2 and there are decent places going for £1300 so I'd expect zone 4 to be a lot less expensive.

Nursie 11y ago
>> That's a pretty huge range from very poor to quite well off, without being more specific it's hard to judge any of the claims the author makes. Not really, unless you're very high earning then getting what he wanted, a three+ bed house with a garden, and not so far away as to make life difficult for commuting, is very very expensive. >> That's actually asking quite a lot from a city especially a huge capital city. Pretty hard to find peace and quiet in capital city - there's usually a lot going on. But to be fair in London you actually can find it in one of the many parks. Also, there aren't enough apartments/houses (hence high rents) yet you think asking for one with a garden isn't asking a lot. That's exactly the point, in most of the country and most of the world it's not asking that much. He's reached a state where the benefits of 'city' do not outweigh the compromises one has to make to live there. If that balance is not something that's tipped for you (yet?) then cool. For many, many of us it has.
- k-mcgrady 11y ago
  >> "He's reached a state where the benefits of 'city' do not outweigh the compromises one has to make to live there." But it's like complaining water is wet. That's just the way it is. There are things cities have that smaller towns don't a vice versa.

s_dev 11y ago

Average Monthly Rent in Europe http://i.imgur.com/RKfucgp.gif http://i.imgur.com/RKfucgp.gif Average % Income Spent on Rent in Europe http://i.imgur.com/himm8Ur.gif http://i.imgur.com/himm8Ur.gif The reason the UK is so high is because London literally drags the whole country up to the top of the ranking (not necessarily good) - Ireland would have vaguely similar rents to the UK discounting London and these two images help show that London is a bit rent mad.

doc_holliday 11y ago
Whilst London is quite apart from the rest of the UK. It isn't the only place in the UK with disproprtionately high rents. Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, anywhere with a bouyant jobs market you pay over the odds for compared to Europe. Granted not as high as London, but as a % of income not dissimilar at the end of the month.
- s_dev 11y ago
  Ireland has large variances in its rent as well. Dublin is substantially higher than the rest of the country. London is just beyond this normal deviation though. The rent between Oxford and Dublin for instance would be very comparable.
- rmk2 11y ago
  If you compare local earnings to house prices, London is, in fact is only #2, behind Oxford.[1] The problem with Oxford and Cambridge (as well as a place like Reading) is that they are still within commutable distance from London (Oxford and Reading slightly more so than Cambridge), which means you get people who earn well even for London standards who live in those cities and commute, in turn making those places more expensive. Some of the other cities, like Edinburgh, Manchester (in parts) and Aberdeen (oil) are certainly pricey as well, but they are not nearly as expensive as the South of England. [1]: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/property/house-prices/11436459/Welcome-to-Britains-most-unaffordable-spot-its-not-London.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/property/house-prices/114...
  - 11y ago

therealidiot 11y ago

Spent 3 days in London a while back and at one point I felt as though I was inhaling airborne bits of glass.

junto 11y ago
Also that feeling when you blow your nose after having traveled around on the tube for the day. Black snot. Nice.
pix64 11y ago
Kept getting stuff in my eyes there.
DanBC 11y ago
Air pollution in some parts of London is severe. Life-limiting -- people die because of it. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-20664807 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-20664807 > The paper, Air Pollution in London, produced by the Assembly's Health and Environment Committee, reports 8.3% of deaths in Westminster are attributable to man-made airborne particles. > In Kensington and Chelsea it is 8.3% and in Tower Hamlets 8.1%. > Bromley and Havering have the lowest proportion of pollution-related deaths in London, both 6.3%, but are still above the England average of 5.6%.

branchless 11y ago

I've left London. I went to Canada, Quebec. If I come back I'll go up North. I'll never work in a "world city" again. It's a waste of time. Over time I grew to hate London and I have zero regrets about leaving. My biggest fear is having to go back.

ido 11y ago
It's not as much of a world city as London or New York but we quite like Berlin (moved there from cities smaller, more expensive and with worse career prospect). It's not for everyone but if you're in tech or media it can be quite attractive.
- branchless 11y ago
  Germany is different because of the way they make land available for people to build. The UK is all about only letting big builders put up housing and taking a huge cut. This keeps prices nice and high so people have to borrow their lifetime income. This way the maximum economic rent is extracted from workers. The UK is totally anti-worker. It's a rentier paradise run for the benefit of The City. Click on Germany and the UK on this and see: http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/11/global-house-prices http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/11/global-hou... Ask yourself with 3/4 of new money created via domestic mortgage lending where would UK "growth" be without pulling forward "earnings" through debt?
  - MrBuddyCasino 11y ago
    Wow. This looks a lot like a political issue, why do people put up with this?
    - branchless 11y ago
      No idea. I honestly think we will get to the stage where boomers are riding the young around and shouting "giddy up!". And the kids will just shrug. There is just something about Brits that makes them so exploitable. Like domesticated animals they just line up.

batou 11y ago

Apt timing. I'm in the process of bailing out of London and heading about 200 miles west. Honestly I earn a shit ton of cash but I can't actually find anywhere that I can actually face putting the cash down on. I looked at a new development 3 bedroom flat last week for £419k that was made of the cheapest possible construction and you could hear your neighbours farting through the walls. The view was another new development block, some office buildings, the M4 flyover and a ton of haze in the atmosphere. So I'm bailing out west a long way. Half the salary but there is less disparity in quality of life and property prices.

branchless 11y ago
You are not paying for the building it's the land cost. Good for you, get out. Even better if you can leave the UK and starve out the UK treasury. Also the quality of life is better. Shorter hours as less wage slaves terrified of loosing their job as they live hand to mouth. Less busy. Easier to get out into nature.
JPKab 11y ago
Yep. Particularly notable for me in the article: " Because of this, London is becoming like Washington DC in the USA, where I used to live. DC is dived with poverty at one end serving the wealth at the other, and the wealth doesn't hang around. DC is a place where people go to further their careers before moving on to settle down because it's too expensive to stay." I bailed out of Washington, DC 11 months ago. Got so sick of trying to grind out a basic quality of life. I ended up moving to "flyover country", and I love it. Trees, fresh air, good jobs, and a house in a great neighborhood. The people are nice, and I have this crazy thing that some people refer to as liquid assets, others call it disposable income. It's nice. My brother, who remained behind in DC with his family, has a house that is less than half the square footage of my modestly sized country house. It's cramped, even by urban standards, and majorly in need of repairs. It is also a duplex, and the neighbors sharing the structure are rather snooty and unfriendly. He paid over $500K US for it. Did I mention the schools are so bad he'll have to send his son to private school? Yeah, I'll take the affordable cities any day over that crap. Unlike my brother, my house isn't making decisions for me, like "can one of us stay home with the new baby instead of putting her in daycare?" (His mortgage had a firm answer of no to their bank account.)

tempodox 11y ago

What on earth is “pcm”? Do you apply pulse code modulation to money in the UK?

swombat 11y ago
Per calendar month.
njs12345 11y ago
'per calendar month' - in the UK there's a bit of a tradition of quoting rental prices (and footballers' wages) per week, so it's best to specify which you mean.
doc_holliday 11y ago
Per calendar month. It is used very often in rental adverts.

coldcode 11y ago

I recently visited London from the US and stayed at my aunt and uncles house on the south coast. Their old little house in is worth £600,000 which is insane (12X what they paid for it), simply because it's a hour or so by train to London! The price inflation of real estate anywhere near London is worse than SF. Compared to that in D/FW area my modern 2000sf house is $180,000.

JPKab 11y ago
The Brits won't know what you mean by D/FW. (Dallas/Fort Worth metro area in Texas) To be fair, Texas real-estate is super cheap because there's tons of land that doesn't have many trees on it. It makes building new housing stock super quick, easy, and cheap. But to your point, D/FW is an awesome part of the country. Plenty of culture, plenty to do, plenty of jobs. (I'd be lying if I said I like it better than Austin though)

rwmj 11y ago

Strange article. I moved out of London to a house with a garden that would be affordable to a couple on the average salary [edit: to a couple both earning the average UK salary]. I am 20 miles as the crow flies from the centre of London.

shocks 11y ago
Where do you live? Currently live in Wimbledon, and I want to move.
- rwmj 11y ago
  About 5 miles north west of Watford. There are dozens of small villages round here. If you look hard you'll find cheap old ex-council houses built in the 1920s which were well made and come with loads of land (ours has 2800 sq ft of land). The catch is you won't have any public transport and will have to cycle or drive everywhere (I recommend an e-bike). And yes really I am 20 miles as the crow flies from Charing Cross station. All I need now is a flying car :-)
  - zimpenfish 11y ago
    > 2800 sq ft I'm hoping you mean sq.m there since unless I'm mistaken, 2800 sq.ft isn't that much (unless that's distinct from the house but still...)
    - rwmj 11y ago
      I meant 2800 sq ft of grounds. In the UK that's a generous but not enormous garden. If the garden was any bigger it would take too much time to do the gardening - as it is I have to devote a day or more per month just keeping it under control. The garden is big enough that I built an office in the garden which didn't appreciably make the garden feel any smaller: https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2013/07/10/garden-office-most-mostly-done/#content https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2013/07/10/garden-office-most-mos...
      - 11y ago

Fede_V 11y ago

It's hard to convey how bad the housing situation is in London to people that have not lived there. Starting income is much lower than Silicon Valley (a very, very good pay for your first job is around ~40,000 pounds/year), housing costs are insanely high, and public transport is crazy expensive. It's possible to live there as a young person with multiple room-mates, living far away from the city center, but as you get older and want things like privacy or, god forbid, enough space to live with a family, it becomes completely unaffordable. The city center has gotten so expensive that even bankers and russian millionaires cannot live there - it basically exists now to cater to Middle Eastern billionaires: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-12-17/russians-quit-london-luxury-homes-as-only-super-rich-stay http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-12-17/russians-q... London is an awesome city, I'm glad I lived there during my undergrad, but there's no way I could go back there as a 30 year old. The city will constantly be appealing to the young, who don't mind squeezing with three other people into a small apartment in zone 4, or the extremely rich, but for everyone else, move far, far away and you'll be a lot happier, even with everything (and, it's really a lot) that London has to offer.

branchless 11y ago
The UK is just getting worse and worse. It's a rear-guard action. They are printing (desperately) via land prices. Without this there is no "growth". Given that the young have no savings, no security (job or home) and no hope, what will the UK be like in 15 years time? My guess is it's going to be worse than now. London really is soul-crushing. I doubled my salary then doubled it again starting out working from 1998 and all the time housing costs stayed ahead of me. The UK is not for workers. You are always working for the landed classes, not for yourself. It's the new serfdom.
- iolothebard 11y ago
  The US is going down this same path. It's why every apartment complex in my town sells for 50-100% more than it did 5-7 years ago. We don't tax the wealthy so they're finding ways to park it in real estate. The problem is the poor (working or not) keep voting for this trickle up policy. It's like Americans never learned from the history of the UK.

swombat 11y ago

Good god, what a bitchy article - and quite sad to see that most of the response here is equally whiny. London is one of the world's top cities. That presents some substantial upsides, in terms of things like night-life, art, business activity, employment, diversity of the population, and, least tangible but most important, the general vibe of frenetic activity and constant renewal and change that a place like this has. It also presents substantial downsides, in terms of things like cost of living, noise, pollution, transport congestion, and of course, the general vibe of frenetic activity and constant stress and change. If you choose to move away from London, fine, go forth and be happy in New Whatevershire in the county of Who Cares... but don't write epic rants about how London's no longer to your taste and therefore it's somehow London's fault. This irks me even more than anti-gentrification obsessives, who seem to believe that because a family has lived somewhere for a couple generations they should be somehow insulated from the consequences of rapid change and economic growth impacting a whole country. Life is change. Change impacts everything, including your environment. If a place changes in such a way that you don't like it anymore, you're free to move somewhere else. Do so, and even write a blog post explaining why you moved, if you feel so inclined, but please bottle up the "my viewpoint is the only important viewpoint, and all change I don't like is bad" crap and keep it to yourself.

doc_holliday 11y ago
Yes places change and become world cities. However the problem is the people that made it interesting gave the culture, night-life and art can no longer live there or have a reasonable existance. You kind of at that point end up with really coorporate art and culture as everything has to be high value and you notice the quality really starts to suffer. Also the people who attend these things find they cannot live there either and it all dies.
- branchless 11y ago
  The difference is the cost of land. If you are in London and given a big deposit from parents to keep your mortgage payments down they you benefit from appreciating asset prices and have disposable income. Life is good (for you). However the cost of appreciating land (in real terms) is that younger people have to pledge more and more of their life to live in the same pile of bricks. It's clearly now reached the point where it's untenable, it's simply a speculative bubble now. All the UK banks are tied up in it, the UK itself is overly reliant on the financial sector, which lends heavily into housing which shows up as "growth" in GDP stats. They will fight hard to prop it up as long as possible. So far we've seen the UK artificially suppressing interest rates and also directly underwriting mortgage risk because even the crazy UK banks won't do it.

ninjaroar 11y ago

And San Francisco is even more expensive... This is just supply and demand - there are a lot of people who want to live in world cities like London, but a limited supply of housing.

branchless 11y ago
Do you really know about this or is this just middle-school economics? Do you know about the London mkt? Lots of the more expensive parts of London are empty at night. London is open season for money laundering through housing. Also do you know how money is created? How is it that people can suddenly pay $600k on a modest salary?

justinhj 11y ago

I went to University in London and lived there for 10 years. I loved the city to death. Back then in the mid-90s we thought property was over valued, but in truth a 2 bedroom flat at around 80k in zone 2/3 was affordable on a modest income. I liked the culture, the people and walking around the city which was always so alive. Despite all that when I decided to get married and have a family I looked elsewhere. Perhaps ironically I settled in Vancouver which is suffering a lot of the same issues as London as so many others had the same idea. Good article but it's really just a fact of life that if you live somewhere that many people want to live, you must compete with them for rental and real estate.

vilmosi 11y ago

As someone who lives in London, this is fake. >> small flat in zone 4 paying out a minimum of £1200 pcm for a 1 bed flat, Mate, I pay 1600 for a two bedroom big flat with an awesome view (zone 2). Prices didn't get that ridiculous yet. >>> I was recently charged nine quid for two pints of ale and I took offence. Fuck you, that's bullshit. If you actually paid that, you've been robbed. >>>It is effectively out of service on weekends and bank holidays Yeah, they need to do maintenance regularly, idiot. There's more than one way to get somewhere, you know? It's not like they close the city down. TLDR this guy may have valid reasons to leave London and the article is well written, but a lot of "facts" are just plain made up or exaggerated. EDIT I misread as 9 quid for one pint. 9 for two pints is most definitely correct.

r0bbbo 11y ago
I don't agree with his negative attitude, but I don't think he's far off in terms of his facts: - I think nine pounds for two pints of ale is about right anywhere in London. Go somewhere a bit cool and it's easily over ten - I pay £1400 for a two bed in zone 2 which is cheap, I think the average is around £1600. I recently started looking at one beds in the same area and they are around £1200
- vilmosi 11y ago
  - nine pounds a pint is excessive. Even at Hawksmoor it's half that. Wetherspoons a third that. Simply not true. - yes, zone 2. He talks about zone 4.
  - timje1 11y ago
    He says 9 pounds for two pints. £4.50 a pint sounds about right for London.
    - vilmosi 11y ago
      Oh ouch, that was my incredibly dumb mistake. Thanks for pointing that out.

suttree 11y ago

I got bored of London, worked in SF for a while and enjoyed it there, but had no chance getting a visa. I got back to London (could never really afford to live in the city centre) and then moved to Berlin and loved it. But, you can get too comfortable in some places, so I'm back in London again, but I miss Berlin. Never go back though, if I had the chance I'd move on to somewhere new in Europe for sure. London's great though, more diversity than many, many places, and that's a huge reason to stay.

deleted 11y ago

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yeureka 11y ago

I'm from Portugal and have lived as a working adult in Lisbon, Barcelona and London. Even though I was earning more than the average salary in both Lisbon and Barcelona it would impossible to be able to buy decent property in the nice parts of these cities as they are as out of reach as the nice areas of London for normal people. I just bought a garden flat with a garage in zone 4 and my commute is so relaxed I can even code on the train. And, I don't need to worry about the lack of interesting and well paid jobs as I used to in Portugal and Spain. Personally I have done well by moving to London, and I know a lot of others with similar stories coming from countries with "low rent".

icu 11y ago

Completely echo this article except I'm working on moving from 5 figure to 6 figures in order to get the life I want. I doubt the article writer can get 6 figures in Cupar.

zimpenfish 11y ago
I get 6 figures (contracting, and this one is only just) and London is still too expensive for me.
- icu 11y ago
  IMHO find an IFA and work out a holistic financial plan. With 6 figures you should be getting ahead. If you do take this advice make sure: 1) They are regulated (obvious) and check the FCA register to see if they have any complaints 2) You like them and think you can get along, don't just settle for a 'cheap' proposition 3) Make sure they use lifetime cash flow modelling 4) Make sure they use scholastic modelling, and 5) Be prepared to pay for the advice and implement it. TBH right from the outset it sounds like you might have to make lifestyle choices around spending habits. Also just guessing here but if you are in that tax bracket you should have several tax mitigation options that will help you.
  - zimpenfish 11y ago
    I guess when I say that "London is too expensive", I don't mean "within the scope of my financial reach" as much as "based on what I'm willing to sacrifice for living here". I could be getting 50-75% more than I'm getting now if I went into Rails consultancy or moved to a bank doing sysadmin work but for me those would be a net negative on my quality of life. Or I could move into a shared house and save a couple of hundred a month on rent but again quality of life concerns prevent that. > you should have several tax mitigation options I have a moral / ethical stance about tax optimisation - I won't do it, however legal it may currently be.
  - foldr 11y ago
    >Make sure they use scholastic modelling Yes, and more specifically, make sure that they're a Thomist. You don't want to be taking finical advice from Averroists or Ockhamists!

lordnacho 11y ago

He's got some good points. I lived in London for a long time, but never bought because it just seemed so insane. When you're young it just about works, though: you want to have friends around, so why not share a house with them? That way it's still expensive, but you have someone to hang out with. And your expenses as a single guy are not exactly high. You don't need a car as it's just you and your bag on the tube. You're drinking anyway, so it's either tube or cab. What you care about is seeing loads of other young people, and London is great for that. When you get a family, everything turns against living there. You can barely stand on most tube trains, so good luck getting the pram on board (and god help you if you need a wheelchair). You want to take the kid out of town? There's a traffic jam in every direction. Want to find a school for the kids? Good luck getting in the catchment. Some of them are actually less than a literal stone's throw. Private school? Sure, but school's have to pay rent too. It's not the teachers taking home all those fees. IMO the best compromise is one of the commuter towns. Some of them have fast trains. They are still expensive, and the train itself isn't cheap either. But you get a little more space, a decent selection of things parents want, and the schools are not bad. Even better, live in a commuter town but work remotely. Then you can network, see people now and again, but not have to get in the sardine can each morning.

dreamfactory2 11y ago
You've clearly never experienced the traffic in Mumbai, Bangkok, or Moscow. London isn't exceptional.
- lordnacho 11y ago
  Totally irrelevant. London traffic is bad. Who cares that it may be worse elsewhere?
  - dreamfactory2 11y ago
    Point being that it is a normal expectation for a large populous city anywhere and says nothing whatsoever about London (other than London may actually be doing quite well as far as traffic goes).