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.

My DD is on 40k and still hpuseshares, so yeah I think yabu

Most people don’t have £20K saved. Well done, but we’ll put that to one side.

So, on £39k, you’d have £2,488 net monthly salary (assuming no pension). Let’s do a little 2022 thought exercise.

This is how much it currently costs to rent a one bed in Tooting Broadway: www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/find.html?locationIdentifier=REGION%5E85419&maxBedrooms=1&minBedrooms=1&propertyTypes=flat&mustHave=&dontShow=&furnishTypes=&keywords=

The cheapest is £1,225. Average is about £1,500.

• Council tax (the most common Council Tax band in Wandsworth is C, so using that): £67
• Zone 1-3 Oyster: £174
• Utilities: £200
• Broadband: £44 (average according to OfCom)
• Mobile: £38 (OfCom)
• Groceries: £240 (roughly £60 a week)
• Netflix: £6.99 (not a necessity, but this person isn’t going out very often, so let’s find joy somewhere)
• Going out: £100

Total outgoings: £2,370

So, if you had no pension, had no buffer, never went on holiday, kept socialising to a minimum, didn’t do anything so frivolous as joining a gym/buying clothes/getting a haircut/seeing a dentist, and saved nothing (so no £20K in the bank), you could just barely manage to do that today. I don’t consider that to be ‘affording’. That’s surviving with no plan for the future. Which is why people live in flatshares and houseshares that they can actually afford.

Also, please note that at today’s interest rates, your monthly mortgage payment on a £200K 25 year mortgage with a £20K deposit would be £1,156.

This is going to get worse. Rent is getting hiked and the cost of living crisis is already crippling people. The whole ‘I did it a few years ago, so it’s doable’ vibe from some people on this thread seems to have just completely blanked the realities of the times in which we live.

I lived in London many years ago, in Bromley, during the 1990’s and could afford a 3 bed house but my wage was £3000 per month, working 5 12 hour night shifts per week. I had a lovely house but no life due to the tiredness. I was a lot younger then and DH lived up in the NW of England (for work) so I was also essentially a single parent. It was nuts and only for a few years before I had enough and moved up to DH. Then of course, we left the UK and came to the country where we live now!

I’m shocked that the wages are still so low. Especially for London! My (grown up with children) kids still live in UK. Outside of London. One is on ~£30,000, one on ~£25,000 - 30,000 and one on >£60,000 (single with no kids, doesn’t want kids and lives in 2 bed/2 bath penthouse apartment with underground garage, 24 hour concierge, gym and spa facilities).

How in all that’s holy, does the government expect anyone to afford to live in the Southeast if they are only on a single income of £30,000?

Moving here, immediately trebled my income when the exchange rate is factored in, same for DH, and the 2 kids that came with us as they were still in primary school, went to private school and we both have cars, a 3 bed/2 bath home, 45 minutes from the centre of the capital city (which admittedly isn’t much of a centre like London, because there’s only a small population that equates to roughly 2 people per square kilometre! So not much traffic, everything outside of the “nightclub” district closes by 9 and you make your own entertainment 😉).

Unreasonable, no
Unrealistic, yes

You have other options.

1. Get a flat share
2. Relocate to working in a place where you can actually afford to live. If there are no jobs then retrain in something that has more options
3. Continue as you are and hope you do get into a relationship or just settle for a commute
4. In case I’m wrong, ask the people who are doing it, how they’re doing it!

You don’t have to work or live in London. I personally don’t know why anyone would want to. But if that’s really where you have to be, your options are limited; it’s the most expensive place in the UK and what with the cost of living crisis as well, pretty impossible to thrive there unless you are on a really massive salary.

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

a mortgage 2.5 x your salaries is madness???!

I explained this in an earlier post but in a nutshell: 2019, earned 39k, rented a one bed in tooting Broadway for 950pm

Key thing is 2019, you wouldn't rent for that in Tooting now.

It's like no one buying today no one would get the mortgage rate I have.

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

@Redebs in London?

My baby has terrible reflux possibly due to tongue tie which was clipped last week. We have to keep her upright for a long time before putting her to sleep and even then it’s touch and go as to how long she will go without refluxing which can be bad even 2 hours later. This has meat she had been more comfortable sleeping in a sling. The trouble is after 2 months of this my husband and I are exhausted and desperately need her to spend more time sleeping in her cot. Currently she spends around 4 - 5 hours in there across a 24 hour period. Has anyone else had this problem and can help?

In 1990 I started work in London in £12k as a trainee accountant with (what is now( PwC). It was perfectly ok money to house share at the time in some reasonable places.

Now, my 24 year old DD on £34k in London is finding it impossible to find a similar house share, with three friends on similar salaries, as rents seem to be on a sealed bid basis and landlords can select the highest bid. Definitely much more challenging now and no idea how people get on the property ladder without assistance.

I agree - I never actually said it was doable to live alone on 30k. I was disputing that you need a 70k minimum to live in London at all. It is getting worse and I wish the government would stop artificially trying to prop up house prices because that has an effect on renting too. But the fact is people on 30k and less need (and want) to live in London - they’re the service industry, the cleaners, the carers, the taxi drivers, the shop workers etc. society would grind to a halt without them.

You can get a studio for £1000 and if you're further out £1000 will get you a one bed.

I lived alone on 33k and could do that again, but not on 30k. That extra £200 a month makes all the difference. Even though I earn a lot more now, my monthly outgoings are broadly the same as when I was on 33k (just under £2000) and I don't feel like I'm depriving myself of anything. I sometimes spend less (£1800 a month) but I couldn't do that every month and feel like I had a good quality of life. I think it's easier to do fun stuff for free/cheap in London (£1 comedy, museum lates, talks, cheap gig tickets on some apps etc). I can afford a cheap holiday once a year on my self-imposed £2000 a month budget.

It obviously isn't, but I think it should be possible to rent a self contained flat on any full time salary in the place you work.

Is it that easy

Yeah I'm on £5k more than you in London and I couldn't flat by myself, especially not with bills. Maybe a grubby studio somewhere in zone 4 or 5 that is miserable to live in - I think the only way would be a flatmate.

My partner and I are on £100k together, live in SE but very close to central and live paycheck to paycheck 🙃

while I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect to be able to live in the UK on 30k, it’s just not plausible in london!

Then you're terrible with money....

You obviously don't claim it as you will not get anything on that salary.

A good friend of mine who's on a low income rents a 1-bed flat in a housing co-operative owned block in zone 1. There's a large communal garden and a nice atmosphere, and he pays I think around £600-£800 a month. He's got it for life.

All he had to do was be the right sort of person to get past the committee, and then be on the waiting list for 11 years :).

£30k is too low to live comfortably in London as a single person.

I'd say £55-65k is where single life becomes comfortable in London.

£100k for two people? Given you'll be able to share certain costs, that should be doable unless there are children involved or you have very expensive tastes. Do you have any kids?

Doing the maths is the only way you will see if you can do it.
If you have no debts, ever, then I’d say yes BUT it will be a very frugal life without much partying or many luxuries like holidays, posh clothes etc.
What area of London you decide to settle in will also make a big difference as to how much disposable income you will have as your monthly rent will be higher or lower depending on that choice. You can save money there but you’ll definitely be paying out more than half your wage every year in rent 😬

My comment, which you quoted and responded to - starting this exchange, did not claim people needed £70k to live in London at all. It was pretty explicitly not saying that. So what were you disputing, please?

The big issue is that you are likely to be refused even for £1100 rent on the income multiples that most referencing agencies use for sole responsibility on flats . With shared housing it doesn't usually work the same way. So it's not always a problem just in London- it's a problem in lots of nicer areas for people on their own unless they can get social housing- which is one reason why I think far too many people rush into live in relationships in the UK .

???

Why madness?

It’s probably 4 times someone’s salary now

I have a 1 bed in Westmintser
Costs are nothing like that
Utilities about £70 a month (actually in credit after government subsidy)
Bus is £1.65 a day each way (if changes in journey made within an hour) but often I walk.
No broadband- tether off unlimited phone sim- which is £20 a month for phone and BB
Don't have Netflix or a tv
Council tax- single person was about £500 for year

The 1 bed flats in my block for rent for £2200 a month though but lots of people live in the living room- so about £1100 each

And?

• The council tax given is the council tax for the borough we were discussing. The fact that your council tax is lower means…what, exactly?
• Tooting is in zone 3. I gave the actual cost of a monthly 1-3 travel card. The fact that you, in Westminster, ‘often walk’, doesn’t impact on the fact that most people need to commute to work and that involves public transport.
• The broadband and utility costs quoted are the averages given by OfCom.
• 96% of the country has broadband and 81% have a streaming service (or multiple). So, again, this is something for which most people would be paying.
• Conversely, is the one beds in your block are FAR outside the price range of the OP or the poster I was talking to.

So, what point are you making, exactly? The example based on averages and actual costs in a different borough aren’t applicable to every single person in London? Fancy that. And?

£200 is a ridiculous figure to give for an average gas/electricity bill for a 2-bed London flat.

I'm one of two occupants of a leaky Victorian conversion flat with single glazing and very little loft insultation, yet still my variable bills are between £75 in Autumn and (at in the depths of winter) £150. And yes that's adusted for the October increases.