To think on £30,000/year I should be able to afford to live on my own in London?

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I earn £30,000, which I know isn't high by any means but I think it's decent. But I still can't afford to rent my own place in London. Lots of my colleagues who must earn around the same amount somehow rent flats in London and I don't get how. The only ones I understand are those who live with partners as there's two incomes to pool together for rent and bills.

I really don't see myself ever getting into a relationship, and feel like because I'm single I'll never be able to give myself the kind of home and lifestyle I want. I never really realised before how much being single negatively impacts you financially.

I mean it's always expensive to live in a capital city, London is no exception. I do feel sorry for people who grow up there but are priced out and have to move elsewhere away from family and those they grew up with. I lived in a nice houseshare on £30k not too many years back, zone 2 but close to the tube.

Absolutely no way could you afford to live alone in a flat in London. The best you could do is a room in a shared house, and isn’t that going to be £700 pm?

Apologies, haven’t read the whole thread.

London is a big place, stating the obvious...

Where do you aspire to live? Rarely anyone lives on the doorstep of their workplace London. Of my colleagues 2 live in London proper but that's only because they are in a house share. Most others have an hour plus to the office

I'm loving your choice of adjective 😁

People have said that circa £70K is needed to live alone in London. There are lots of people who live in London who earn a fraction of that, but those people flatshare.

In 1996 you would have been able to buy a 2 bed house in Bermondsey on a £25k salary.

Whereabouts in London would you want to live?

I have friends earning £30k who did have 1beds in zone 3-5 but are not having to give them up as the landlord has increased the rents.

mumsnet is odd for this there are plenty of Facebook group is full of young professionals earning a lot less than £30k living good lives you don't need £60/70k imo

I earn slightly more and flat share, but the price of flat sharing is anything From £800-1.5k there was a viral Twitter thread of rooms to rent in london and the prices were crazy!

@clymene - on £50k in 1995, the op could have bought Bermondsey. Actually bits of Docklands were trendy even then. I do recall phoning an estate agent and asking what we could buy in Tooting for £250k circa 92 and he said "Tooting". I kid you not although it was Fuckstons I think. I meant the nice bit off Bellevue Road.

Those that can afford it are selling something else think only fans accounts

I had this exact problem before I met my partner. It’s not fair that you can’t be single and live in London (or the surrounding areas even) unless you are earning way above national average.

No dear: you must house/flat share

£30k isn't enough

Depends where you want to live.

1 bed Woodford Green £850 ocm
www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/122778401#/?channel=RES_LET

Norwood £875 pcm with some utilities included
www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/79265155#/?channel=RES_LET

Just got to scroll through all the shared properties

Have you looked on spare Rooms?
maybe a studio in the suburbs?

I would have thought that would be a paltry wage in London tbh.

You should try nursing as a career …….. sorry, I meant underground train driver.

Six years ago, I was a teacher of many years experience, at the top of the main payscale with SEN teaching addition, earning £34k.

First practical and accurate post on this thread. These are prospects OP if you want to live in london.

The only reasons for living in London that I can think of are fun, family or fortune. If it's not providing any of these, maybe time to look elsewhere.

I’ve never earned 70k and I’ve lived alone in London since 2019

In what area, what is your living situation and what are your costs?

I explained this in an earlier post but in a nutshell: 2019, earned 39k, rented a one bed in tooting Broadway for 950pm. I’d saved
for about 7 years previously and had 20k thanks to cheap house shares - never paid more than 600pm. Got a pay rise to 45k and bought a one bed flat in south Norwood in 2021 - no partner and no parental help, my parents are poor as church mice. My mortgage is 798. I got a mortgage for 180k and used the 20k savings as a deposit.

@PhilInt
In 1968 😖 I shared a flat and we shared the bedroom. I don't see anything wrong with that. Every so often the lounge door would be closed 😳.

No
It was in the day when you weren’t asked to as even Dh and his friends who were just qualified accountants and solicitors on not so great wages because they were just qualified. It was a given that companies wouldn’t keep you late as they knew a very good proportion of their employees had other jobs to go to in order to afford to live in London and I suppose rather than keep someone an extra 2 hours without paying overtime and risk ending up having to keep replacing staff it was probably cheaper for them to keep the staff they had.

It was definitely an era of people on the move. If people didn’t like. An area they would just pack up and move to another town or city.

My job though was strictly 9-5. Although someone did comment on me shoving my work into my desk drawers on the dot of 5pm and being in my trainers and running out the door at 5.01pm
I just said theirs wasn’t the only company I worked for. If they wanted to pay me more I would be slower putting my stuff away

did take on another role within the company that meant I was 7am-5pm then 5.30pm -11pm a few evenings during the week at another place and then worked nights on Friday, Saturday and Sunday finishing Monday morning at 6am and starting my day job at 7am.
I only think I managed it because I have ADHD (undiagnosed at the time) and insomnia.

It was madness for a year because despite being able to get a 100% mortgage the cheapest studio flat on the market was more than the 1.5 x dh’s salary and 1x mine by several thousands