To wonder why people struggle to live in London.

[m1nniedriver]

Just honestly wondering what it is about London that makes people on, as I see it, huge salaries want to live in tiny flats just because it's london? The cost of living there seems riduculous. Some of the posts on here about the cost of housing just beggars belief! A tiny 1 bedroom flat for 300k?? If that's what you want then power to you but I do see posts with people say they are struggling and stressing every day to get by. Why would you not move to another part of the country that would enable a much better quality of life?

I'm not great at putting things across on posts so I hope this doesn't offend anyone its is meant as a genuine question, not having a go.

There are other places I could do my job, but neither Bermuda nor Zurich, are any cheaper than London. Qatar might be an option but has other disadvantages. Singapore is lovely and Anglophone-friendly for the DC but too far from ageing grandparents.

But if you're happy there then you wouldn't want to move surely? I can't imagine someone on a 'normal' salary cooped up in a tiny 1.5k PM 2 bedroom flat struggling day to day to keep roof over their and DCs head could be happy. Perhaps I'm wrong but that's more who my post was aimed at.

People also talk a lot of bollocks about how much it costs to live here.. it is expensive, but if you choose to live here you make compromises (or at least when your young you do) so that you can enjoy the city too.

MN is full of people who claim you need £100 k to live like a pauper in London and its utter bollocks.

I see a stray cow, I think dinner

Yes I agree lurker- our household income is around 42k. I have one DC and we live comfortably. Things can be expensive but there are ways to make things cheaper, cycling is a big one, we have saved hundreds of pounds per month by cycling! Ultimately if you are happy here you understand the costs and the reasons why. Sometimes us Brits are so moany, the grass is rarely greener!

Thanks for that buttonmoon loved buttonmoon I had started to think that no one living in London was doing so comfortably on anythig less the 100K a year!

Lol I have the same question about Sydney.

People working 80 hour weeks, commuting for an hour a day, to earn a high salary....which only buys them a tiny unit to live in with 400 neighbours.

I live an hour away in a mortgage free home, work part time and visit the city whenever I want. It just doesn't make sense to earn twice as much and work twice as many hours in a city, when it costs 5 times as much to buy the same house that I have here.

Apart from housing cost which we are lucky not to be buying / renting at today's stupid high prices, l find it relatively cheap in London

Although dd2 haa just arrived so that might change things.

Because it's London and everything is here. I would hate to live outside of zone 2

Dp and me combined is about 70k, mid 20s no kids yet. London doesn't feel expensive but then we share the rent of a room
In a shared flat to save for deposit

I have to say I agree with you OP. There are a small selection of people for whom it's probably necessary due to a job or something but otherwise I don't get it either.
Dh and I both have professional jobs that would probably be better paid in London. Instead we live in a different city - I drive half an hour into the country for work and dh cycles to the city centre- it makes him very depressed to commute- we've tried. We have less money but a better quality of life- we have a garden for the kids, our house is big enough for our family, dh is home by 5.30/6pm most evenings to see them and can help in the morning as he doesn't need to leave until 8.

We moved out of London to get more space, cheaper travel, easier living. We have all that and undoubtedly our quality of life as a family is higher but
I miss London. There's just
something about dear old dirty
London :)

I loved living in London too, but can't work outside it (Investment banking) so am now scratting about trying to find a freelance work etc although because we now live 200 miles away, we can afford a decent house and me not working is not a massive issue, thank god. You get feck all for your cash in London, and having been on both sides of it, I don't actually think that the bigger salaries in any way compensate for quality of life issues.

I think affording to live in central London is very different to affording to live in suburban areas of London. We live in an outer London borough that my friends who are central don't even consider to be 'real' London However, we own our terraced 3 bed house (bought cheaply as it needed total renovation) my family are nearby and we don't feel we struggle financially.

That said, I often daydream about moving out of London. Property prices have gone bonkers in our area and if we wanted a bigger home I'm not sure we'd manage (despite our own property increasing in value) By moving further out we'd be better off financially but I wonder if we'd struggle with the lack of job choice and limited support networks.

I know there are other great cities in the uk (I lived in Bristol for years which I also love) but there is something unique about London and I adore it, the history, the culture, the bloody vastness of it!
We're trying to buy at the moment but it's a bit mad, places get snapped up within a day, so we'll probably keep renting.
Also my husband's family live here and my family are nearby in Kent so it works for us in that regard.

How the hell do you live on £42000 a year in London with a child? Your rent/mortgage must be extremely low. Equally, your referring to that salary as if it's pittance- it isn't in most other parts of the country. Where or how do people live in London on 'low' incomes? It is becoming increasingly homogenised as a result of the vast wealth buying it all up. How does that make it an 'interesting', 'diverse' city that 'is like nowhere else'- it 'is' like other extremely wealthy cities that have also been sanitised.

Ive always lived in SE London which is much cheaper than most other parts, our rent is £1000 (split between two) in zone 2.

The Op is right that it probably doesn't make sense to struggle (though living a 2 bed flat isn't imo the automatic hell some people make it out to be) and her question was a reasonable one but the thread moved on to just generally slagging off London and saying it offers nothing more than any other city that's easier to live in. That isn't true. Of course there is a bigger variety of stuff happening. The sheer number of people means that this is going to be the case. All the bands I want to see live will include a London date, for example, whereas they will often play eg Liverpool or Manchester but not both. The density of population can have advantages as well as disadvantages. For example in the school holidays there were three pages of listings for holiday clubs (full day childcare) within walking distance of my house (zone 2/3) ranging from drama, forest school, sailing, gymnastics, or just the council one that does trips to the free museums etc), this is in addition to the reams of holiday activities that fall short of full childcare. Of course there are downsides and it's perfectly understandable to find that somewhere else offers a better balance for your family but to say that it's offensive and narrow minded to say that the biggest city in the country offers the biggest variety of cultural stuff smacks of protesting too much.

To the poster who prefers to spend weekends in the garden with occasional trips to legoland, good for you. It's not for me but I'll try not to sneer quite so openly as you sneer at other people's way of life just because it doesn't include a massive house and garden.

Goldenbear, I do agree. This is my biggest fear. My area is still diverse because of the people who bought before it was fashionable or are in social housing but increasingly the new people who move in are less diverse. It worries me that everything I love about London could come to an end. If that happens I'm on the first train to Edinburgh (which I also love and is the one city in the country where I could have a similar job) but it's darned pricey too and I don't know anyone there

I have a garden. I live in central London. I don't struggle.

Goldenbear- we work really hard for our money 42k isn't pittance to us at all, and neither is our rent. But we work for ourselves at home so have little or no childcare costs. Travel costs are minimum. We aren't frivolous but we have a good life, we go out every weekend and can easily afford takeaways if we want them. We wouldn't want to live anywhere else, and if we did we wouldn't be earning 42k that's for sure!

limited a bit more info is needed! Are you earning £200k for example - that would explain why you're not struggling in central London with a garden (we have one in z3 but couldn't afford it in z2)

Because I'm from here, all my friends are here, all my stuff's here, my job is here... I live here.

And because it is amazing

Have not rtft but there are career opportunities in London which are simply not available in the rest of the UK. If you are ambitious in many professions you simply don't have any alternatives.

limited a bit more info is needed!

I earn far less than £200,000 a year OffMyAyersRocker. But a detailed breakdown of my income and outgoings is not relevant to the OP's question. I've lived here for 23 years and I have never struggled. That's what she asked.

As another poster said, you never see threads from Londoners asking why people live in Cardiff or wherever. I take it for granted that people live where they live because it suits them.

Yet there are always threads like this. Even on threads where people ask for advice on where to live in London, you get people tediously popping up to say you could get a mansion where they live for the price. So what? That's not where the person needs or wants to live.

I read an article yesterday on a street in a district of Liverpool full of empty houses that the council is selling for £1 each. That's no good to me. I don't want to live in Liverpool, fine though it is. And I don't have the money to develop the street for people who do.