To ask about London and money

[Maisy313]

How much do you think you need to earn as a working couple to support a family of four (one year old and reception aged child) in London and have a reasonable standard of living? Would just be really interested in your thoughts... Someone told me it was impossibly to survive on less than a joint income of 100k in London which seems exceptionally high to me...

I'm also an accountant and leaving the house a 3.30am to travel to a client isn't unusual...

I'm on an 80% schedule so only work those hours 5 days a week. My peer group do it 6 days a week. I do it because in another 2-3 years, work 45-50 hours a week and double my current salary.

Dh finds it hillarious that his family find his job glamorous. It's so far from glamorous it isn't funny. They just look at the salary and think he is working just as hard as they did. He reality is that his father who was a janitor worked school hours 8am-3:30pm and his mother worked 32hrs a week as a community nurse. They gave me the hardest time for getting help for bedtime. DH was exhausted and I wasn't home. It costs us $200-$450 a week depending on the hours we need her for. While his parents see this as an extravagance we see it as a necessity.

Live in one of the areas mentioned. Our 2 bed flat would rent for 1600 pounds a month. A 3 bed terraced house is around 800K minimum. Childcare is 1100 a month. So yes at least budget for 2.5K for accommodation and childcare. Richmond Borough schools are hugely oversubscribed (and pretty good) so consider a mid year admission very carefully. Isleworth is fine. As is Whitton which somebody mentioned. I would look to live West somewhere on the CrossRail route like Hanwell or something. Not the easiest commute but would be a great investment. They might have to buy a 2 bed house and then do the loft later or something.

London is what you want to make of it. Yes, housing and childcare costs are going to take up the bulk of everyone's income, but once those are paid, it doesn't need to be a expensive city.
You can see the opera for free. You can eat out at great restaurants for £15 for 3 courses if you go before 7pm. You can go the best museums and galleries for free.
Hell, you can even commute for free if you get a Boris bike and take under half an hour (which will cover around 4 miles at gentle pedalling speed)

Housing costs are a millstone around the necks of nearly everyone who moved here or bought in the last 10 years. But that means that a lot of socialising takes place in people's houses.
The world of expensive kid's birthday parties is alien to me - we have picnics and football parties in parks in the summer, and pizza parties in houses in the winter.
Adults birthday parties are at houses with prosecco from Majestic.

So if you can sort housing, and have a sensible amount left over, London is do-able, even enjoyable.

Oh bugger off, Richmond has been off normal people's price range for a long time. Its like saying I want to live in Belgravia but can't afford it

Lenibose you can buy plenty of properties in London for under £640,000. Yes in Richmond your not going to get it, but Golders Green, bits of Dollis Hill, Hendon, some in Kensal Rise and Kensal Green.

The problem a lot of people have in London is they sit there and think "people like us" well here's news for you honey, unless you have a cool million plus you are going to priced out of the more desriable areas, but you do what everyone else did 20 years ago, move to one that you regard slightly less desirable.

We moved to Kilburn in the 1990's, and guess what on paper we're now millionaires and we're mortgage free . But in the 1990's Kilburn/Queens Park wasn't that desirable, it certainly is now. When we bought in Maida Vale in the 80s that wasn't desirable either.

A 540k mortgage will cost more than 3300 per month. A big chunk if you add 1500 childcare too.

Which is £39,600 , ok add the childcare in and your total bill for the year is around 60 k.

Ok so half of your Gross Salary in childcare and mortgage, you can still live on the rest quite comfortably, it just means you have to cut your cloth, and a lot of people aren't willing to do that.

If you think you are living frugally on £120 k child free in London, then you obviously won't be able to live on it and buy a house. Its totally do able.

Even by MN standards, this thread has some crazy on it. 100k a pauper's salary??
Central London is getting crazily expensive which is why we moved t to zone 4 but there are plenty of pockets of London which are not yet desirable, as lurker said. No, not Richmond but East Ham, Forest Gate, Barking (about to be regenerated), Woolwich, Plumstead.... some of those areas will shoot up once Crossrail is done but not too pricey last time I looked.

I think prince, people have "nice" areas in their heads and have no idea about London really, the number of times suburbanites look at me in horror when I say I live in Kilburn/QP as if its a ghetto (yeah right, bloody media types ghetto yeah).

3 bed terrace for under 300k, added in the last 7 days www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-36878850.html

And another....
www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-36878850.html

I'll fess up lurker. When I first moved to London, I visited Richmond and thought how much I'd like to live there. Ended up just off the old Kent rd :D. Bit different (but actually pretty good connections! Just as well...)

But prince this is MN, where people want to live in the nice areas of zones 1-3 but at the prices their parents paid, with the salaries they are on now.

Don't you see they can't compromise on standards, its just so unfair, all immigrants and benefit scroungers fault.

Prince part of the reason Thamesmead has always been relatively "cheap" and continues to be is that it has no rail or tube links.
I would struggle to be able to get to work from there.

Also bare in mind a lot of couples will work in different areas ie when we first moved here Dh worked East of the city of London around Moorgate area, and I worked west London. So to keep both commutes under an hour you end up living central. Living in say woolwich would have taken Dh 45 mins to work but me almost 2 hrs

Cactus - we live in zone 1.

These are only examples! And obviously yes, places further out are going to be more difficult commutes. But if you work in the city, the commute from Woolwich would not be bad (DLR). If you worked in West London I imagine it wouldn't be ideal but then there are similarly priced pockets out west, I just don't know them so well.

Cactus - really? I've got plenty of colleagues who do just that. We moved to zone 2, one tube stop from DH's work and 2 tube stops from mine. It wasn't that we minded the commute, but we've got no family in London and we wanted to be close to the kids' nursery/school so that we actually get to see the kids in the morning and in the evening and be within easy distance in case of emergencies. Yes, the rent pretty much broke us and now we've got a very large mortgage, but to us it was definitely worth it.

"Wealthy people from elsewhere" - what a small minded village mentality! We moved from 30 miles down the road, hardly the oil rich Middle East. We also earn decent but not massive salaries. But obviously we can't track our family history to 5 generations of Londoners so we don't qualify as Londoners.

I completely agree that 100k is not a pauper salary - what a ridiculous notion. As ridiculous as 120k gives you a basic lifestyle. But really, even on a perfectly normal salary people may choose to live more centrally, and many, like us, do. I wouldn't move to Kilburn to save a few hundred a month, I would rather cut down somewhere else. Some zone 1/2 areas are not actually that massively expensive (probably because they are such dumps).