Would £150k support a family of four moving to London?

[Milliedxb]

Hi everyone,
We’re a family of four (2-year-old + newborn) thinking about moving to London from Dubai. My husband has been offered £150k a year before taxes. I’m a stay-at-home mum at the moment and plan to stay home for the next few years.
I know London is more expensive than Dubai, especially for rent and childcare, so I’m trying to get a sense of whether this salary would be enough for us to live comfortably.
A few things I’m wondering about:

• Where to live: We’d need a 2-bedroom apartment in a family-friendly area, ideally no more than 30 minutes by train to central London. Any recommendations?
• Nursery/childcare: What’s a typical price for part-time nursery? What’s considered reasonable?
• Groceries: We cook at home most of the time and eat healthy (lots of veggies, fruits, fish, and meat). Roughly how much would a family of four spend per month?

Any advice or tips would be really appreciated!

Where in Central London is your husband going to be working?

If you have a nanny, a flat in zone 2 or 3, transport and living costs you won’t have much left from the post tax salary
but it’s doable

That household income would put you in the top 7% of families in London (according to Copilot), it is definitely a very good salary even for London.

When you say "30 minutes to central London", do you mean the train journey itself? Or the total door to door commute? I live just outside London with a 15-20 minute train journey to London Euston, but my total commute to my London office is an hour door to door, what with the walk to the train station, a tube journey, the walk to the office the other end. And I live close to my local station and my office is close to a major London train station too.

If you literally mean the train taking 30 mins, you can look at all the commuter counties, eg Essex, Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire. Are you wanting to rent or buy? For renting I'd be pretty sure you can afford a house not a flat. I'm not sure many people on £150k live in a flat, unless they are living in really central London (eg Pimlico).

Nursery - is around £100 a day in London and the immediate surrounding areas.

Groceries: with two teenagers we spend about £150 a week (including non food items) in a mid range supermarket (Sainsbury's). Very little meat but decent quality other things.

Should be fine, assuming as a SAHM the kids won’t need full time childcare.

Why do you need nursery care if you are a SAHM? Childcare is expensive, especially in central London.

From aged 3, all kids get 15 hours a week, regardless of parental income.

150k is a massive salary.

Based on KSA prices, in the UK, rent is cheaper, groceries are cheaper (if you buy western brands in KSA, ie main stream brands in uk - if you buy local fruit and veg and meat only, prices will be higher).

When you said you want a commute "by train", do you mean you want to live outside London? Commutes within some parts of London will be by tube (not everywhere, eg parts of South London are often by train to the centre).

Where your DH works will make a big difference to how long the commute is - eg if you are on a train line going into London Victoria train station and the office is 5 mins away that will be much quicker than if you are still on that train line but the office is in, say, Canary Wharf. So as long as your DH office location is unlikely to change, you should start with the nearest station and work up the line from there, in terms of potential places to live. I'm sure we can all advise if you say roughly where your DH office is.

Be aware that UK tax is brutal! On £150k, there will be no personal tax allowance, so the 40% bracket kicks in lower and then 45% over £125k

If there are no childcare costs then yes will be fine.

if there are childcare costs then no not possible.

That's far more than the vast majority of people have to manage on. Depends on what you mean by comfortable.
Why would you need childcare if you are a SAHM ?

Go on a supermarket shopping site like tesco or ocado and cost up your shopping basket

You will be fine but will feel very far from rich on that income in London.

Unless you’re planning to send your kids to private school or buy all your food at Selfridges, it’s definitely doable!
Where exactly do you need to be within 30
minutes of? Because it makes a difference to what areas make more sense to live in - for example, you don’t want to be in East London if your dh needs to commute to Hammersmith, or South London if his offices are near Paddington

• 30 mins from where? 'central London' is too vague.
• groceries I would estimate at £6-700 pm
• childcare I would budget £100pd. Most SAHMs wouldn't use it unless for working

You'll be absolutely fine on £150k but not living luxuriously.

Yep this. Take home salary on £150k is about £7k per month depending on pension contributions, student loan payments etc. Rent on a 2BR flat somewhere like East Dulwich/Herne Hill will be about £2.5k pcm so easily do-able.

However a full time nursery place will also be £2.5k per child per month, so no you couldn’t afford that unless you also went back to work.

It’s not common at all to be a SAHM and also put your kids in childcare in London, unless you are literal millionaires. It just isn’t affordable on one salary, unless that salary is > £300k. Private school is also likely to be out of reach (assuming you would plan to send both).

I'm surprised so many on here think 150k before tax would be so comfortable in London.

I'd disagree tbh, £150k as a total family income isn't loads in London, and 1 person earning all 150k is very inefficient for tax purposes, 2 earners each taking home £75k would be much better off as would qualify for the 30 hrs childcare contribution and would each benefit from the full personal allowance.

I'm not saying it wouldn't be fine, but I think people are imagining 150k to be loads of money when actually after tax, NI, pension contributions (and you'd want to be making pension contributions for the non working spouse too) I don't think this would leave a family in London with loads of disposable income.

Would you be buying a flat or renting? Do you have existing equity?
Flats are comparatively cheap to buy right now, rents comparatively expensive.

Where in central London does he need to be near?

I'm a sahm in London and we sent our dcs to preschool nursery from age 2.5! But admittedly our HH income is about 3x OP's, and it was similar for the other sahms there. Generally the aim was to allow the dcs to socialise and for early years learning. You can get it for free after age 3 OP (and it's fairly usual for most families to make use of that, whether they're a sahm or working), before that you'd have to pay but it won't be too much if it's a p/t place (we only did mornings a few days a week).

We spend about £800 a month on groceries for a family of 5 although we eat meat most days so it could be done cheaper.

Cheaper areas of London are in the East or South/Southeast. Rightmove can give you typical rental prices. I preferred to live more centrally and was happy in a 2 bed flat so that we could easily get into central and DH could be home quicker, others will recommend living far out so you can have a house and garden. But a 30 min door to door commute is relatively short for London, and you'll need to factor in rail fares esp if living outside of the tube zones. We've always lived near a tube and prefer that convenience, but housing will be cheaper if it's further from the tube or near an Overground/national rail station..

You will be losing at least £10,000 a month on taxes national insurance pension etc so just take that into consideration.

Manageable but not a life of luxury.

Your net income will be ~£7000 pcm

Rent will be ~£3-4k pcm

A further £1.5k minimum on council tax, energy, food, travel in inner zone

There are state preschools term time only for high are free - but actually getting into one is a gamble. A lot of prep schools have quite flexible term time nurseries ie you can do two mornings a week or whatever.

I wouldn’t advise living in a less salubrious area to get a better flat - you’ll have a much nicer experience in a family focused area. Most families are in the suburbs but if you want an inner London experience with that may disappoint.

You sure about that? I know taxes are high but still...

It’s more like £5k per month on tax. As a pp says, depending on pension contributions that will leave take home of around £7k.

More than half of that will go on rent and council tax, utilities - I’d assume £4k. Food probably £600 if you avoid takeaways/eating out, but more realistically £800. So you’d have £2K left to cover emergencies, savings, holidays, clothes and activities for the kids, and childcare (which could swallow the whole thing and then some if you used full time, though assume you wouldn’t).

So yes you’d manage but would not feel flush in any way.

If your DH's work is in CW, the City, or central-central, I'd say look at South East. Otherwise, look at North West.

There’s outer and inner London suburbs.

No, that's not right. The tax is significant but it's not £10k on tax and NI per month at all.

Bromley borough - leafy, good schools and depending on where abouts, you can be on London Bridge, Cannon St, Blackfriars, Charing Cross or Waterloo East within 30 minutes. Zone 6 so not as expensive as zone 2/3.