Liverpool Street is a good place for transport. I would suggest looking east, wanstead or Woodford. Good state secondary schools and good , very academic private also. Lovely Edwardian/Victorian houses, access to open green space for sports etc.

Not sure girls soccer is given much space in uk schools, she might need to join a club. Most girls field team sports would be netball ,hockey, lacrosse.

£108k is an odd amount as you lose nil rated tax over £100k

Look at listen to the taxman
listentotaxman.com/108000?

You would take home £5754 a month. I think a decent central flat would be C£3000 so tight to live.

I tried to reply on your thread in Local but there seem to be technical issues.

Did you post similar recently?

Girls' elite football is on the rise but not always readily available and rarely played competitively between schools. The FA runs a programme www.premierleague.com/communities/programmes/community-programmes/girls-football but you would need to check whether she would be eligible. Your dd would be to start secondary school the September after turning 11, so could be joining an established year and as such you may not have a wide choice of state schools as places are already allocated and popular ones at capacity. Would you be prepared to look at private schools including American or International schools, although these would set you back 20k+ from your net earnings?

Bear in mind higher rate tax is 40% and more over 100k. Property( and school fees) would be cheaper outside of London, perhaps Essex is worth a look as that offers an easy commute into Liverpool Street, if less cosmopolitan than areas of London itself . Rightmove website would give you a view of what is currently available although the London rental market moves quickly.

You also need to look at US taxation rules for overseas income as they are complex.

We have done a move the other way. One reason salaries are much lower is that many costs are lower, food is amount twice the price in Chicago that it is in London, utilities are much higher, mobile (cell) phone plans are much more expensive, home and car insurance costs a lot more, medicines are often many times more expensive.
You need to remember that if you are going to put dd in a state,(public) school it doesn't work the same way as the US and moving into an area with a good state school won't automatically give you a place. You may be allocated a place at a much worse school further away.
Football isn't such a big thing for girls in the UK, but there are clubs which are likely to run at the weekends, they are not likely to be linked to schools, but I suppose they could be.

Houses are much smaller, there are unlikely to be built in closets. Although flats (apartments) often don't have gardens there are many more houses with gardens than Chicago has. There will be lots of history, culture and the winters while grey will not freeze to oblivion in the same way.

I don't understand why salaries are so much lower in London when the cost of living is so much higher.

Because it's a desirable place to live. Tbh, I don't think your wish list is going to be easy to fulfill on that salary after taxes, especially the house with garden in great neighbourhood part. You'll also need to factor council tax on top of your rent and water rates, the more the home you rent is worth, the higher the council tax.

The reasons London salaries are so much lower are due to it being a more desirable place to live but also because they haven't caught up with changes in the exchange rate (£108,000 would have been around $162,000 only 3 years ago but is now nearer to $140,000).

Would you be willing to commute? You could get a 4 bed detached house with a garden and drive for £350k - £450k or rent this for around £1600pm in places such as Milton Keynes, which is about a 35 minute train journey outside of London. I have no experience of living in London as my parents moved us out as children, but we now live in one of the many commutable areas

You are probably going to need to provide for private school fees because (1) there are very few good state schools in London and (2) the ones that exist, will almost certainly all be full so you won't get a place straight away (or perhaps not at all).

Private school fees for day school in London could be anywhere between £20k-30k+ depending on where you go. That's money you need to have AFTER tax. Also you need to look into the timescales and requirements for entrance exams.

If you want to find out what your net income will be on certain different salary levels, there is a good website called Listen To Taxman, which has a calculator you can use to work out net income.

If you earn £100k, your take home is around £5k.

I wouldn't imagine you can rent a 2 bed house with garden anywhere in London for less than about £2,500 a month. Probably more. You'd need about £2k a month for school fees. Travel, bills, etc. on top. To live comfortably as a single parent paying school fees, you are probably going to need about £150k.

That's if you want to live IN London of course. If you live in a commuter town, property will be cheaper (but not that much cheaper if within less than 45 minutes of London)

Just want to throw something out there. If your daughter is 11 then you're entering the stage where the differences between US and UK education system start to matter.

If you're moving to the UK permanently then that's not a problem but if not then it could become a problem in a couple of years.

Perhaps it's worth looking at American schools when thinking about areas to live?

As for the question about living in Chicago vs London, I think there is a lot to be gained from living abroad, even if temporarily. I would make the move (and that's speaking as someone who loves Chicago).

You could try Stratford. It's where the Olympics were and has had alot of investment. A nice 2 bed would be around 2k and a 3 bed more like 2.5k. bills are likely to be around 1k on top and then food, travel etc. Based on this I would say an income of 130k (approx 6.5k monthly take home ) or ideally 140k( take home approx 7k) would give you a comfortable life style. There are several good schools in the area and soccer clubs will be around especially with some of the bigger clubs around.
This is the kind of property you could get
www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/property-67559245.html
www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/property-55369983.html

I didnt move straight from London although we still have family there. I am loving Chicago but don't see the US as my forever home. I'm in no rush to return to UK either, I was surprised at how dirty and run down in some parts London seemed over the summer. I did faint with joy when standing in a Waitrose supermarket at the cost/quality ratio of the food however.

I would ask where your potential future colleagues live, we have moved quite a bit and always do this. It will give you some idea what kind of areas are affordable and practical in terms of transport. I am guessing that you are planning on using public transport rather than driving. (If you are planning on driving then you need to know the driving test in the UK is much, much harder and a world away from the one I took in Chicago)

DEFINITELY move to Milton Keynes. It will not disappoint.

Also, I would think about compromising on the house-with-garden, and look at mansion flats. There are lots of beautiful flats that are easily accessible to Tubes. But you're still probably looking at £2,500 per month.

www.newsnow.co.uk/classifieds/houses-flats-for-rent/mansion-block-london.html

I would suggest north of London, about 40 minutes from Liverpool Street station, in Bishops Stortford. If you make over £70k you will pay tax in the U.S. as well as the U.K. But you can get a three bedroom house in BS for £1500 pcm , I think? You can live very well on £108k in that neck of the woods. Also close to Stansted Airport.

You'll want to look at private school and get that included in your package.

There are loads of great towns out of Liverpool Street. What sort of commute would you fancy and what sort could you live with?

I'd look at towns like St Albans, Guildford, Woking. Then go on the Rightmove website to look up rental properties with 2 bedrooms and garden to see what you'd have to pay for the standard of property you want (obviously this is subjective).

But really, you do need to decide whether you are going to go private or state for schooling, as that will dictate your choice of location.

I have moved area with secondary school age children I had to get into a state school. Each time, I put them on the waiting list in about March and did not get an offer of a place for September entry until July. You can't go on the list for a place until you have signed a rental agreement. Personally I can't see how you will be able to move with a secondary school age child unless you educate them privately, as otherwise you are taking such a gamble on whether or not you get a state school place and if so, whether you can get into the school you want. Even going private, the entrance exams are in Nov-Jan for entry the following September, so you would have to decide on a school pretty quickly and start preparing your child for the exams.

Would you be dependant on public transport , how far outside London are the clients? Agree if you plan to return to US before your dd is out of education you may prefer an American school, most of which are in West London or Surrey (towards Heathrow), with associated expat community nearby.

I'd ask for an extension because in addition to cost of living what you really need to look at is the tax ramifications, which can be complicated and expensive on that salary. Then there's Brexit, and no one really knows what the outcome of that will be for non-EU nationals on work visas or employers in the UK. I'd honestly not chance it now.

Okay. Missed update

Ask where potential work colleagues live
Check schooling in those areas, check schools have space.
Check transport links and transport costs from those areas to your work
Check housing costs including council tax in those areas.
Be clear if you want to live in London, or travel in, either is possible from Liverpool Street station.

Hi everyone,

I appreciate the activity but it's losing focus. I'm requesting towns we might want to live and estimated salary needed to live in those towns.

You might get a better response if you remembered people are giving you free advice out of the goodness of their hearts, rather than addressing them like underlings who are behind schedule on a project.