Is London living cost affordable?

ruggedtoast

silvercar wrote: »

Agree entirely. Though one potential solution is to live far enough out that rents are cheaper and commute on mainline rail services into London. The speed of the transport can mean that, for no longer a commuting time, you can live somewhere more affordable where there are decent schools.

Once the little ones arrived we moved from zone 4 out towards the M25. The commute time was reduced due to fast trains but the houses became affordable.

Current monthly season ticket, including zone 1-6 travelcard from:

Maidenhead - £267
Reading - £386
Wokingham - £338
Horsham - £347
East Grinstead - £248.50
Bedford (Bedford!) - £407.10

Cleaver

DervProf wrote: »

Any of those 7million in debt, by any chance ?

I can afford anything, if I can borrow the money.

How many people, at any point, are technically insolvent? I.e. how many of them couldn't afford to pay off their debts if asked? It's a pretty small percentage of people, and I imagine that this percentage is even lower in London.

Hamish is correct, millions of people live in London which suggests that they can afford to do so. You have to presume that those in debt, which most people up and down the country are in one form or another, have debts that are manageable and not excessive.

josievg

movilogo wrote: »

Am I correct assuming that London population now mostly contains either rich people or poor living on dole.

No you are not correct. Most people I know here in London are neither rich nor on the dole.

silvercar

ruggedtoast wrote: »

Current monthly season ticket, including zone 1-6 travelcard from:

Maidenhead - £267
Reading - £386
Wokingham - £338
Horsham - £347
East Grinstead - £248.50
Bedford (Bedford!) - £407.10

Can still be cheaper then living in the centre, particularly if you want to be near decent state schools or need a home big enough for a family.

BTW, if you don't need zone 1-6 it is cheaper, Bedford is £344. The clever way is to drive to zone 6 and take the train from there. eg drive from Bedford to Elstree and the fare is only £139.

Cleaver

Just as an aside, it makes me wonder why more people who enjoy city lives don't live in Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Bristol etc.

I should firstly say that I love London, I think it's one of the world's best cities and I'd love to live there. But when we looked in to it we just couldn't justify the cost and the drop in living standards we'd have to have. I know Manchester fairly well, and I think that over the past decade or so the city has moved on a lot (like a lot of other cities) and feels a lot like a mini-London nowadays. The difference is that if you want a city lifestyle you can still rent a very nice, 2-bed city centre flat as central as you want for £600 a month.

I'm sure this will bring the usual 'I couldn't live in Manchester, it's a sh*thole' response, but if I had the choice of a city centre lifestyle in Manchester or London and earned £30k a year I know which I'd prefer.

DervProf

Cleaver wrote: »

You have to presume that those in debt, which most people up and down the country are in one form or another, have debts that are manageable and not excessive.

I don`t have to presume anything, and in a lot of cases I don`t.

I didn`t presume that the banks in the UK could continue lending like they did, and they didn`t.

I did presume that if I spent less than I earned, I wouldn`t be in financial trouble. Guess what ?


That`s right.

kabayiri

Cleaver wrote: »

Just as an aside, it makes me wonder why more people who enjoy city lives don't live in Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Bristol etc.

I'd say the same for the so called 'burbs.

Round most major cities you can find nice areas to live within a decent commute distance. I can think of areas I know just outside London I could happily live in, but would be out of my price range.

Here in Manchester, you can be on the end of a 25 minute train journey commute into the city, yet live on the edge of the Peak district (if hills appeal of course).

ukcarper

A lot of people commute from where I live 45min to waterloo £2860 a year, £3444 a year to zone1-6.
3 bed Semi less than £250k £1000 per month rent.

FATBALLZ

movilogo wrote: »

Am I correct assuming that London population now mostly contains either rich people or poor living on dole.

I'd imagine there's quite a lot of people living there who bought before prices went silly.

ukcarper

FATBALLZ wrote: »

I'd imagine there's quite a lot of people living there who bought before prices went silly.

Prices went silly a long time ago I had to move out in 1972.