Costs of renting for a single person?

piggeh

Hi all,

Last week I took voluntary redundancy and as such I have a small amount of spare cash, but it's enough that will allow me to put down a deposit for a rental. I currently live in my mum's 3 bedroom house which she lets out to me and one other (the third person moved out a few months ago). I pay a peppercorn rent to live there currently. However, she is planning to sell up in June and I will need to either find somewhere to live, or be stuck in the spare bedroom at her partner's house.

As I used to live elsewhere I'm looking for jobs in the surrounding area, and also where I used to live, as I'd quite like to move back. Rental prices seem to vary between £80 per week for a houseshare and £600 per month for own one bedroom flat. Buying somewhere is not an option as I have a bankruptcy against me and in the current climate, a mortgage would be almost impossible or at a very high rate!

I am trying to figre out what the costs are/would be for a single person living by themselves. Taking for example a 1 bedroom flat I can fill in parts of the costs:

£600 rent
£120 food
£30 phone/internet
£30 clothes
£100 going out

optionally:
£40 car insurance
£50 fuel
£15 road tax (pro-rata'd)
£50 car maintenance

Obviously I am missing things like council tax, energy bills, etc, as I dont know how much they'd be!

I have a couple of jobs I've applied for which pay £20k per annum so trying to work out if this is enough to live on if I got my own place, or if I'd be looking at a house share. Any help with this would be appreciated as I dont know where to start.

~Beanie~

I live on my own and monthly I pay:

Council tax - £55 (inc. 25% discount and is over 12 months)
Gas - £40 (I'm on a prepayment meter so this is more expensive)
Electric - £25 (as above)
Water - £20
TV Licence - £12

Hope this helps.

LillyJ

We are two people but it may help you.

We pay £60 electricity and gas combined.
£38 water
£79 council tax (that is if you take the 25% discount off)
£20 telephone and broadband
£12 tv licence

It depends where you live and how much you go out, but we don't spend anything like £100 a month on that between the two of us! You may need to go out less if you have your own place, as you may find you sit in more with friends and have a drink or three.

Also be careful about the house you are moving to, ours has only an emmersion (sp?) and so it costs us a fortune for hot water. We also don't have double glazing and the house is a semi so it gets very cold. So I think we could save on electricity and gas if we lived somewhere else.

You also need to budget to buy things like cutlery and crockery, pans, utensils, nick nacks to make the place like home, even if you get a fully furnished place.

It is also rather expensive to buy food for one person - it works out only a little less than for 2 in my opinion!

piggeh

Is it normally a 25% discount if you live by yourself?

So ballpark figure, around £200 or so for council tax and utilities? If I were to take home £1290 per month do you think this would be enough to live on fairly comfortably? Thanks for the figures so far.

LillyJ

piggeh wrote: »

Is it normally a 25% discount if you live by yourself?

So ballpark figure, around £200 or so for council tax and utilities? If I were to take home £1290 per month do you think this would be enough to live on fairly comfortably? Thanks for the figures so far.

It is always a 25% discount for one person living by themselves.

I think £200 is reasonable to budget for council tax and utilities

LittleMissAspie

Our 1-bed house is band C for Council Tax and is £120 per month. Utilities are £26 for metered water, £25 for gas (heating and cooker) and £25 for electric (shower and lighting). You could take off 25% for the tax, water and electric, but I don't see why gas would be cheaper.

By the way we spend £120 on food for the two of us so you would be fine on £100 I reckon.

LillyJ

I personally think that rent of 50% of your salary is pretty high, and I don't think I would be comfortable with it, let alone the fact that I have a partner to share bills with! I am sure it can be done, and is by many people.

LillyJ

LittleMissAspie wrote: »

Our 1-bed house is band C for Council Tax and is £120 per month. Utilities are £26 for metered water, £25 for gas (heating and cooker) and £25 for electric (shower and lighting). You could take off 25% for the tax, water and electric, but I don't see why gas would be cheaper.

By the way we spend £120 on food for the two of us so you would be fine on £100 I reckon.

Yep we spend about £120 on food for two as well, and when I was cooking for just myself I spent between £90 and £110.

That is another point, I am sure for one person metered water would be cheaper. We haven't done this in our rented house but we will as soon as we get to the house we are buying.

Badger_Lady

If you're still happy to houseshare, I'd go down that road. Any spare cash you have at the end of the month can go into savings for your future, and for a time when you do want your own space / partner etc.

Your rental figures sound almost exactly the same as what I was looking at when I was single in England... I was earning £18k at the time, but a 1-bed flat (£575pcm) was a bit more of a struggle than necessary. I would have preferred to spend less on rent (which you never get back, after all), and more on living / saving.

There will come a time when you won't want to share a house any more, but it's so much more economical if you can keep it up for now!

piggeh

LillyJ wrote: »

I personally think that rent of 50% of your salary is pretty high, and I don't think I would be comfortable with it, let alone the fact that I have a partner to share bills with! I am sure it can be done, and is by many people.

It is high, granted, but if that's what the market is then that's what I'd have to budget for. Hopefully it would only be for a short while and then I could see what my mates are up to and maybe get somewhere with 2 beds that works out cheaper. Or better yet find a lovely lady to share a one bedroom house with

I may look at houseshares, especially as I may have to take whatever is available as I may only have a week's notice to move before starting a new job.

LillyJ

I would agree with Badger Lady, it is so much cheaper to house share, not just the rent but the bills too. I am not saying don't do it I just wouldn't be comfortable with it.