to be exhausted and demotivated after only 4 months?

[RoonilWaslib]

DP and I moved to London in August for me to start a new job, he was finishing his PhD.
My job is "well paid" at £38k a year and after DP finished his PhD he would find a job in his specialism.

I've calculated that the rent/bills we pay for a ROOM in our area is more than a mortgage/bills on a 2 bed flat, with the help to buy scheme.

We don't have a deposit yet, but obviously could afford a mortgage on a 2 bed flat, as we already pay that much each month in rent.

Problem is - we can't possibly save for a deposit, as the rent is so high.

I vastly underestimated how incredibly demotivating this would be, it feels like we are just treading water and will continue to do so for years and years and years.

Even scrimping and saving wherever we can is pennies compared to the money we need for a mortgage. (We need to find at least £30k for a 5% mortgage).

If we moved back to where my parents live, we could both get bog standard jobs, rent and save enough to buy in about a year. We would then be paying off a house, and probably still have more disposable income.

We stay in London because its the best bet for DPs career (I'm already at the top of mine, can't go any further) and in the long run, will probably mean we're better off, but not for another 5-6 years.

I'm feeling really downtrodden by the whole thing and I know IABU but I'm sick of throwing thousands a month into living in a houseshare and feeling like we never have quite enough money.

(before anyone gives me a bashing, I'm well aware that we are far better off than the majority of the world's population, please don't flame me too much)

I don't know why people keep talking about moving out of London when you have said you want to stay there. Just move somewhere cheaper! £1400 for a room is extortionate!

I can't imagine ANY nanny being able to buy a 600k flat. 600k flats for first time buyers with 5% deposits are for people on 6 figure salaries! Sorry, you are totally unrealistic. The whole reason people on 'normal' salaries (for that is what 38k pa is) don't live long in London is because of this.
Why do your employers say you need to be 15 mins away?? I have not heard of that before - is it a nanny thing??!

Why assume that you need to be in London and anywhere else would only be a 'bog standard' job. £38k you're on now seems a very low wage for London compared to the house prices. Do more research about jobs in different city's. I would avoid London like the plague!

There are studio flats for less than £1000pcm in the West Kensington / Barons Court area so perhaps look at moving to that area. £1400pcm for a room is crazy. You'd still be within 15 mins of South Ken or High St Ken stations.

OP....you don't have to be an hour away to be outside London. I live on the Surrey/Hampshire border where you can rent a two bedroom house with garage and garden for £1k and it's 2mins walk to the station and 39 mins to Waterloo....

And surely as a Nanny you could get a role closer to home if you lived in Surrey?

Actually...having read the whole thread YABU in your expectations.

You want to work and live in one of the most expensive areas of the most expensive cities in the world (when you could work elsewhere as a Nanny), you don't want to commute but you want an affordable rent and mortgage.

That's not real life I'm afraid.

I work in London, I commute nearly four hours a day to live somewhere affordable. You can avoid the commute but expect to pay high costs for not much space. No-one can have everything.

You can avoid the commute but expect to pay high costs for not much space. No-one can have everything

Well said.

Even with the scheme you've mentioned you won't be able to get the mortgage you are talking about. Salary of 38K is not high if more than 1/3-rd of it has to be spent on accommodation 15 min form your workplace (let's assume you were single). I think your employers are seriously taking a piss here.

I'm not going to suggest moving out of London or changing job or telling your employers that they are batshit and need to provide you with a much higher salary as none of those are helpful!

But depending on where in K&C you need to be, there are definitely places you could rent that are self contained for much less than you're renting now. Even a 3 minute search on Rightmove showed me that.

Also- you might want to look at the 'terms' of your employment. It sounds like you're working a lot of hours and either you're working or you are not; they shouldn't be making you be the sort of on call that would require you to be available in your own time so you can get there in 15 minutes. All sounds very dodgy to me. As long as you turn up on time then why does it matter if you are 15 mins away or an hour away? Your working time is your working time and if they're calling you with that little notice they need to pay you more as a retainer!

Depending on where in Kensington you need to commute to, £1400 could rent a 2 bed flat if you head further west. Look towards Acton or Harlsden - 15 mins in train to Olympia

As long as you turn up on time then why does it matter if you are 15 mins away or an hour away?

The difficulty is that many families don't want to hire nannies that have a long commute as commutes introduce an unreliability factor that many working families can't work around.

We always hired locally because when we hired nannies with a long commute it inevitably meant they were late from time to time out of their control and also it meant that they were much more likely to quit working for us and tke a job closer to where they lived when / if an opportunity arose.

We always hired locally because when we hired nannies with a long commute it inevitably meant they were late from time to time out of their control and also it meant that they were much more likely to quit working for us and tke a job closer to where they lived when / if an opportunity arose.

Yet, on the flip side-if you hire someone that must live in central London, they may be likely to quit working for you and take a job where they can afford to live and buy a house.

rollonthesummer True, but that never happened to us, might happen to others.

What did happen was hiring an employee who thought they wouldn't mind the commute only to have them realise that they did mind quite a bit.

Also, the nanny who stayed with us the longest already owned her own house within 20 minutes commute of ours. Another one did move to buy a home with her partner but she was still within a reasonable commute.

OP, ex nanny here. I worked in London for a while, and now live in Herts. Most employers I had in Herts commuted to London (20 mins to Kings Cross potentially) and I earned pretty much similar to London rates. Could this be an option? You could work locally to Herts (or another county surrounding London, similar sort of thing everywhere) and DP can commute?

There are also lots of good nanny jobs in the Wandsworth/Battersea/Clapham area where housing is cheaper than Kensington. Might be worth changing jobs? Could you do a nannyshare to boost your income?

£600k will just about scrape to a 2 bed flat here. come come now... you are being silly

Its like saying "I can't afford shoes" because I only like to wear prada...

what?!

£1400 for a room?

I live in Zone 5/6, you can rent one room for way less than that. Yes it will take you an hour to get to work and you work long hours but that is how everyone bought property even before it became insanely expensive.

38k is not well paid, not by any stretch of the imagination. We bring in a high 6 figure salary but moved out of London because we felt we could have a better quality of life elsewhere, we were only staying in London because we felt it was the be all and end all, it isn't......we have two children, we wanted them to have a bedroom each and a garden etc etc, you need to be thinking long term, at the moment, in simple terms, you can't afford to live in London, I think realising that will open your eyes a little.

sorry I just saw - no more than 15 minutes from Kensington? Bloody hell. Talk about unrealistic. I worked in that area for a bit and it was 1.5 hours commute each way.

I'm not trying to do a Yorkshireman sketch, I just really do not know anyone who isn't a merchant banker and can afford to live that close to things. I bought 12 years ago and was doing 2 jobs.

Maybe buying isn't for you? Also I don't even understand how you qualify for help to buy on that salary?

My job requires me to be no more than 15 minutes from Kensington

You need to get a different job.

We are in Wandsworth (billions of nannies here), our nanny lives a 20 min commute away in Raynes Park. A lovely 2 bed flat near her costs £300-400k. Similar prices in Tooting or Streatham which are even closer. I imagine rents are also lower than what you're paying.

So look for a job further out. Or accept a longer commute. I know your hours are long but plenty of people in London do 10-12 hour days and then a 45 min+ commute.

Where do your fellow Kensington nannies live? Are they mostly live in I wonder?

Oh I just thought - some corporates won't provide cabs home if you are working late and live a certain distance away so that might account for your 15 mins thing, but even if you are one of those, you would still save a bunch of money if you had to pay for the odd 11pm cab yourself to Zone 5/6.

Alternatively you could be a live in Monday to Friday nanny and then go back to home, in a more affordable area at weekend.

That way your employer has you there and you get to buy a home.

And agree even trust fund buyers have been priced out of k&c. No one normal can afford to buy there

We pay almost 2000 in rent which could be going in mortgage payments, we also have got a reasonable deposit saved (although we are not saving any more, in fact the opposite so the longer we rent the less deposit we will have). We can't afford to buy in London. It is out of control. I would not stick around on the off chance that your DP will get a London dependent job in a few years OP. Get out now, before it is too late.

Why does DP have to be in London for his career? Is he going to work in a university? There are others around...!

You don't seem to want to change your situation despite being fed up and miserable.