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

[kjhgfdfhj]

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.

Well you win charmer of the month

I walk to Wandsworth (ie Tooting), I am sure someone could walk the other way! The bus is certainly only £1.65 to central London

Council tax is more of less the same for the 2 boroughs-they compete to be cheapest (or did when Tory until earlier this year- lets see what happened next year )

The rest of the costs would be the same in Tooting- I believe that they do have a mobile phone signal there!

Your costs are too high- you could do much cheaper.That was my point.

What was yours again?

You tagged and quoted me with your nonsense, and I responded. I don’t try to charm the vapid.

People who live in Tooting will not be walking 6 miles/two hours in each direction (so four hours a day) to get to and from work. They will be using public transport and getting the Tube in 30 minutes.

The council tax quoted is the relevant council tax. I’m not approximating, it’s on the council website.

Again, the utility averages are from OfCom, as are the stats with regards to the number of people who have broadband and streaming services. The fact that ‘they have mobile reception in Tooting’ is neither here nor there. The overwhelming majority of people have and pay for broadband.

My costs aren’t too high. They are the average costs of living in London (with some specifics re Tooting). The fact that they are not applicable to you as an individual is irrelevant. It’s not a particularly difficult concept to grasp.

My point was that living in London is expensive. Also, not a difficult point to grasp.

Sooooo, your point is ‘you’re wrong because my bills are lower, my rent is way higher, I don’t take the tube (so nobody does), I don’t have broadband/Netflix, (so nobody does), I disagree that some people pay more council tax than me, don’t understand stats and laugh in the face of averages’? 🤣🤣🤣

Most likely the Ofcom figures of £200m average energy bill that IMissVino swears by are referring to an average household, in other words a detached 4-bedroom house with two adults and two children. Not a poky London 2-bed flatshare which will cost much less!

Nope. Everything I quoted was for a one bed or a single person.

And I’m not ‘swearing by them’, I quoted a range of stats and averages provided by verifiable sources.

No

i was saying that 1 person doesn’t pay £200 in utilities in a 1 bed flat (and another poster agreed)
you don’t need broadband or Netflix
you can get much cheaper mobile deals
you don’t need to spend £174 on an Oyster card

The costings in the post as essential were too high.

It looks like the figure you are using is the one for 2 or 3 people in a medium-sized property, rather than the more appropriate 1/2:

www.edfenergy.com/for-home/energywise/what-is-the-average-energy-bill-in-the-uk

And of course you also need to remember to divide this figure in 2 or 3!

So.... £70 to £100 per month per person for utility costs.

Yes, that is what you’re saying. I pay more than £200 on utilities for a one bed flat. As of October, costs for gas and electricity alone are £142.69. That’s before water, tv license, any building fees. Here’s British Gad to confirm: www.britishgas.co.uk/energy/guides/average-bill.html

If the majority of the population (and 96% is a stonking great majority) have broadband and - on average - pay X amount for it, then it’s not relevant that you don’t or don’t think people need it. Cost of living isn’t based on your sensibilities. Ditto streaming services, average mobile costs and oyster costs. If they’re the average, they’re the average. It’s not really a matter of opinion.

This thread is about renting in London. So there won't be any "building fees" because tenants are never responsible for service charges or anything like that!

£142.69 for energy in a one bed. £35 for water. £13.25 for tv license. So, £190.94. So, I rounded up by £9 - I can take that off, if you’d like?

And, no dividing. If you read my comment, you'll see I was referring to people who live alone, not flatshares.

What are you talking about? Lots of tenants in London pay building fees/maintenance fees/service charges.

I earned £30k in London 17 years ago and had to live with flat mates.

Lived in London all my life, know many people living alone and that figure seems fine to me, conservative if anything as most of my friends live in flats with shit insulation.

I know no-one currently spending £100 a month on fuel bills who lives alone in a 1 bed flat, even friends in studios pay more than that now.

I can't see how one can tether off laptop or TV from your phones internet on some shitty unlimited data £12 Sim deal from a patchy mobile service in deep zone 4 for any decent internet speed. It might work in Westminster I suppose, but out here in outer London I couldn't live like that, and I've tried, forget trying to binge watch on iplayer on hotspot feeds. If you just look at static webpages, then maybe, forget trying to pay bills online or buy things.

And contray to what other OP's have said, all Landlords build any ground rent, service charges for the flat into the rent.

Exactly this. Thank you.

I don’t know what these people are trying to achieve with their claims. Most people have broadband and would consider it a necessity, nobody is paying peanuts for energy bills (which aren’t the only utility) and people who live in Zone 3 aren’t walking to work, they’re getting the Tube.

A certain sort of person always does this when budgeting living costs. Instead of creating a realistic budget, based on averages and how a human being actually lives, they cut all fat and all joy, create a model that only works for a life of asceticism (walk everywhere, no Netflix binges, you don’t need wifi) and then go ‘aha! You only need £X to live! If you can’t survive on that, you’re wasteful and indulgent!’

What they hope to achieve by this, I don’t know. Particularly the pp who spends £2,200 a month on rent alone, but is telling me my projected costs are too high.

Looking at Indeed this morning at the jobs in London and wondering where all the £150K pa jobs that MNs are on are advertised?

Plenty of jobs below £30K though....

Not many of them and plenty on benefits!

I'm asking the op again, whereabouts in London would you choose to live? On the outskirts but with good transport links to central London there are reasonable places to buy and rent and the areas are not bad.