To wander how is cost of living cheaper outside of London

[where2now]

So I get rent/Mortage and childcare will be cheaper out of London especially further north. But what else is cheaper?? Everyone keeps saying cost of living is much cheaper up north. AIBU not to understand this? I mean supermarkets surely have the same price food all over the country right? And even retails stores ie clothes shopping??
I'm really wondering as we are considering moving out of London due to this but I just can't get my head around it.
Can anyone help and give examples I'll be very grateful? Thanks all

Supply and demand?

Rent and mortgage are high so companies need to pay workers more to work there to cover these costs. Edging up the price.

Company overheads are high so need to charge more.

Cost of living becomes expensive so workers demand pay rises to cover increased cost of living.Costs increase to companies. A cycle carries on.

Personally, I am not sure how London works given how expensive rent and housing is.

Oliversmummy sorry, my post about driving into Manchester was rush hour during the week. It would be quicker on a Saturday morning, but I'm not sure there's anywhere to park for free (or very few places) that are walkable into the city centre.

Walkit says it takes 18 minutes to walk from Baker Street to Oxford Street. And parkopedia says there is no free parking at Baker Street.

Parking in London is very expensive which is why so many people do not have cars. I suspect the poster who posted about parking for free at Baker Street parks in a mates private parking spot.

I suppose if rent and rates are much higher in London, businesses paying them will have to charge customers more to cover it. Idk whether a London Aldi would charge more than a Leeds Aldi, but I'd expect a haircut to cost far more in London, for example.

Walkit says it takes 18 minutes to walk from Baker Street to Oxford Street. And parkopedia says there is no free parking at Baker Street

Rubbish.

The paid parking around Baker street finishes at 6.30pm on a Friday and you can park on single yellows for free outside the congestion zone from the same time. Same as in the congestion zone from 6.30pm Saturday till 8.30am Monday.

Maybe I walk like a Londoner. 10mins from parking to Marble Arch.
I have done that journey and parked in the same area for the past 10 years.

I am going in this afternoon.

Yes this says you can park for free in certain places at Baker Street after 6.30pm.
www.findfreeparking.co.uk/london-parking-zone-map

I had thought you meant during the day. Most cities outside London you can park in the evening for free. But during the day pay way less than in London to park.

I find walkit pretty accurate with timings. And I do not walk very slow. You obviously walk pretty fast.

From 6.30pm on a Friday night to 8.30am on a Monday morning.

Certainly never paid for weekend parking

If walkit is anything like the Google maps walking speed, they are quite slow. I usually beat the times by a good few minutes for a 10-20 minute walk without feeling like I'm rushing.

Cheaper outside London:
Parking
Drinking
Hairdressing
Gyms
Tradesmen
Lawyers/ dentists
Private schools

Cheaper in London:
Busses and international flights

Walkit gives times for medium, fast and slow walking. It is pretty accurate. 18 minutes is for medium pace walking. It is much more accurate than google.

There's a huge amount more flights from even one London airport than there are from regional airports too, even Manchester.

I went to an event in a European capital city where I flew from Manchester and a friend flew from a London airport. I had a choice of 2 flights a day, one of which I didn't want because it arrived at midnight. She had a choice of 5 flights a day on one airline alone, and probably up to 10 when looking at the destination country's flag carrier and Ryanair/Easyjet etc too.

Cities in Northern England can offer an excellent quality of life that is much more affordable even on average salaries but the lack of investment in transport is far less per head than it is in the south, which leads to much poorer services, even when there is the demand - eg no mass transit in Leeds, the largest city in Europe not to have a tram system or similar, and the dreadful rail service across the Pennines. London is getting Crossrail. Why aren't we getting something similar between Liverpool and Hull or Newcastle and serving Leeds and Manchester too? The proposed cost is in the same ballpark and it would help move traffic off the carpark that is the M62.

Just put in my route and it came up as 11 minutes

It costs London shops more to get stocks in - not many food shops in London will be within 5 miles of a farm

Yeah, because most food shops outside London buy direct from their local farm...

It costs more in Scotland to buy Scottish lamb than in some places in England. Prices are set by much more than costs.

Such a dumb, dumb thread: “We pay £14 for a Chinese takeaway in the North, but when we had the EXACT, SAME DISHES in Soho, it cost us £95 quid, including £7 for a pint of lager!”

London is a big place with plenty of bargains to be had. You won’t find most of them in tourist areas or, if you do, you’ll have to search them out.

But then, the rest of the country is a big place too. You can find massive price differentials everywhere.

If I want to watch the latest Star Wars film tonight in the Midlands, I can pay £17.90 to watch it at the city centre IMAX or £6.70 to watch it at the local independent a mile away. I can pay £6 or more for a pint in town, but under £3 in a local pub.

Living in London is generally more expensive than living elsewhere but you don’t have to live expensively in London and you can choose to live expensively anywhere.

Dc (one adult and one teen) saw the latest Star Wars film for £5.95 in total. We could travel to the local IMax or Vue and it would be nor expensive.
How do you equate a Chinese takeaway in some random town to a Chinese meal with alcohol in the centre of Soho.

If you had gone Italian we had a lovely pizza just nearby for £5 each.

£17.90!! Blimey. That is expensive. We can pay £4.50 at the old cinema favoured by students that shows the big releases weeks after other cinemas, or £9.50 at the flash cinema with surround sound and reclining seats.

It is rent and house prices that is the really big difference. Although I do feel jealous that kids get free travel in London.

£17.90!! Blimey. That is expensive. We can pay £4.50 at the old cinema favoured by students that shows the big releases weeks after other cinemas, or £9.50 at the flash cinema with surround sound and reclining seats.

Yes, it is expensive. It’s also 3D IMAX. My point is that people are hardly comparing like with like.

(I bet Solo isn’t on at your post-release cinema yet, for example, so your £4.50 price point is not really comparable.)

Okay 3D IMAX is always expensive. My £9.50 cinema is a high quality cinema, so that is really the comparison. It costs £17.90 for 3D IMAX where I live, but I don't see that as ordinary cinema.

I’ve gone both
My house in midlands is an hour in the train from London,
Good housing good transport links low crime excellent schools and nurseries for about a third of year London price
Salary comparable didn’t change much down
Plenty going on and diverse enough too
I feel I’ve got best of both worlds- lifestyle with price and close enough to pop down whenever we want for an event etc
Pm me if you want any location suggestions

Most people's expenses are the big stuff so the fact your beer might be a bit cheaper in Newcastle than Holborn is neither here nor there. So your full time nursery in a good nursery in central London may well be £22k per baby in inner London near work and is probably a fair bit cheaper in Newcaslte (I am from Newcastle and live in London). So that might be say £15k a year less on childcare in the NE.

Then my grandparent's house costs about £60k in the NE today whereas my son's house in Chesham (end of a tube line and very far out) costs £330k. So your mortgage ore rent might be double in London.

My sibling pays about £10k a year school fees x 2 and around here it's more like £18k x 2. So that alone is £16k a year cheaper.

I also see a difference between inner London and where I live in the suburbs for most things but it's m inor compared with those big ones.

Also if you give up your full time job when babies come and were on say £40k a year in London you are losing a lot more money than if you give up your £15k a year job in Newcastle particularly in terms of how you could build that career over the next 30 years and increas pay a lot in the SE which my not be so easy in Newcastle.