To wander what's cheaper up north apart from house prices

[chocolover12]

Hi everyone,

You may remember my previous threads a few weeks ago, regarding moving from London to Manchester and asking advice on schools and areas ?

Well we visited Manchester and looked at all the areas, we loved davyhulme, urmston and flixton.
Now before we make the move I have a few questions, we are moving in order to afford a larger property but also for a better lifestyle, I don't want to get there and think it's not what we expected in terms of being more affordable as dh will have a pay cut too.

Apart from housing what else is cheaper up north?
Supermarkets, petrol and clothes shopping seen the same prices. And I know public transport is more As is council tax?
What things do cost less as everyone says life is cheaper life is better up north?
I know this is a tricky question but what kind of salary is a minimum to live well? I'm a sahm at the moment. I'm just wandering so we make the right choice, as we really liked the area and want to move but the areas we liked we won't be reducing our mortgage it will be the same but a bigger house but also a pay cut.
Thanks

I don't live 'up north' but did move out of London to another city. All our quality of life comes from lower house prices. Everything else is more or less the same, or more expensive if you look at transport for children, free museums etc. But we were paying £1500a month for a 3 bedroom terraced house that we wouldn't have paid off until our children had left home. Now we are mortgage free. £1500 pays for an awful lot of bus trips! Our pay has dropped too but that's partly because we're mortgage free so we can afford to work less.

Manchester is one of the more expensive northern areas, if not the most.
Liverpool is noticeably cheaper than Manchester I think?

Not sure as I don’t really know London prices.

I live in Flixton though and to be honest it’s pretty expensive, as is most of Trafford.

Not much actually! Drinks are sometimes cheaper but not in the cities

I was staggered at recent house prices in Flixton. Prices are starting to creep higher than some traditionally 'more desirable' places in the south Manchester belt.

They've crept up hugely and are much closer to SE prices than they were just a few years ago.

Taxis are cheaper if you use local taxi companies. A friend was just charged nearly £20 for 2 drinks in central London so drinks out are cheaper. Other than that not much really.

Thank you everyone, I k ow the areas we liked are quite 'affluent ' areas in Manchester but I liked being near thee Trafford centre and good schools etc. Also as all estate agents in London and Manchester keep telling me house prices are dropping in London and getting more expensive towards the north especially Manchester.

The other area my husband liked for the new builds may I add is Warrington, we looked at Great Sankey. But unfortunately due to time we weren't able to explore Warrington much but from what I saw it looked very quiet ?

Slickstar10 thank you for that it's a good indicator

Drinks out are not cheaper in central manchester.... suburbs maybe

The window cleaner

I pay £10 for my whole house in South East. My Nan pays £1.50 for her whole house in Hull