Why do people live in London?

[Waahaawoowoo]

This thread is inspired by a thread where people where explaining how a £100k salary doesn't go far in London. Examples were given of mortgages costing £25k pa. (This is my salary). Childcare bills for 2 kids costing £40k. Our joint salary is £55k pa.

I live in NE Wales. Our house costs us £12k pa for a 3 bedroom semi. Wraparound Childcare used to cost a maximum of £12k pa. But we no longer pay due to age of kids and me WFH. I cannot get my head around DH and I being significantly better off than a couple who earn double what we do.

The logical answer to me would be to move from London. So why do people stay? Is it family? The type of work you do? I'm curious more than anything about what keeps people there when they could possibly have a better standard of living elsewhere.

Ah, in that case, we’re possibly all heading for rude awakenings. 🤣

@BlackLambAndGreyFalcon I know not everyone has a car but I genuinely don't understand how people fit everything in without one unless you are very central. Obviously it depends on what you have to fit in though.

@Comedycook we have the tube in my bit of z3 but still need it. It's the dc activities mainly. Clearly the amount of cars you see parked on London streets & drives indicate that driving is a big thing!

obviously without dc it's not an issue

we Live in London and both work full time I work in crime without being to revealing and DP is a junior doctor. We survive fine in London with 3 kids and a mortgage.

You can ask the same of anywhere really. Why do people live in the arse end of Wales? Presumably because they either like the lifestyle that comes with it or because they were born there.

Jobs that pay very good salaries. DH and I are both on 6 figure salaries - wouldn’t be the case elsewhere.

Social life. Good restaurants, bars, museums, shows. There’s always something to do.

Diversity, in a way that doesn’t exist in the rest of the UK.

Safety - don’t need to worry about going home alone to the middle of nowhere with limited public transport.

Can’t think of anything worse than living in a quiet part of North Wales.

Why the hate OP? Why is it a strange concept to you that people have different preferences to you?

I don't live in London at all and I've never owned a car! My DS didn't do any activities that weren't local, he wasn't into football or anything like that. I work in the town we live in, and the doctor, dentist, supermarkets etc are all within walking distance. We use our legs!

I don't get why people can't understand that we all live different lifestyles.

I adore London and still get a huge child-like thrill being in central London.

I have lived in Manchester and it is also a great place. And there are so many other interesting or beautiful places. We go on loads of UK mini-breaks and have a great time. Cornwall and Bath are favourites. But London will always be the best for me.

Whilst I don’t understand why people have to bash London quite so much (I see why it’s not for everyone), some of the comments from other London-philes about the rest of the UK are making me cringe a bit. Just because you (like me) prefer London, it doesn’t mean the whole of the rest of the country is shit!

@Beezknees i'm not sure what point you are making? I walk to & from work, also walk to the doctors, school & have a lot on my doorstep however if one dc has sports practice in the park at 9am & the other dc has a sports competition at 9:30 legs just won't get me there in time. As I said it depends on what you have to fit in.

We don’t have a car and never did when the DC were small. They did swimming, gymnastics, Brownies (all within five minutes’ walk). Dance lessons -ten mins on bus, and later within five minutes’ walk. DC did instrument lessons at school, and later a 15-minute bus trip to Saturday music school. I’ve probably forgotten some things. Big Supermarket is five minutes’ walk, little mini supermarkets within a couple of minutes. Library, doctors, opticians, parks, cinema, local theatre within five minutes’ walk. Restaurants, cafes one minute walk.

Also our wage is similar to your opening post
and so monthly we probably bring home just under 6k, our mortgage and council tax is 2000 a month.
we are left with around 4k for bills and food plus kids ( last one is about leave child care ) so going forward we are now I feel in a very good position.
Could we get a bigger house for our money elsewhere for the kids, absolutely.
for us though they get so much opportunities and experience for living in London that it doesn’t bother me !

Manchester is a bit like Croydon just a bit smaller and not as conveniently placed for getting into London

I live in London, I don’t know anyone who is struggling on a £100k salary, I know plenty who earn less and don’t struggle. Your wrap around care of £12k a year is more than I have ever paid for a years childcare, including when my son was in nursery.

I like living in London, we have a nice home, there is always something to do (often free), its easy to get around on public transport, a choice of schools that don’t require long journeys. I can walk to work, as can my husband, my son can walk to school as all roads have pavements. Transport links to other parts of the country are good. In my sector jobs are well paid and there are plenty of them. The schools in our area are fantastic, primary and secondary.

I personally wouldn’t want to live anywhere rural, or in a town or small city. As an ethnic minority they are the places I have experienced the most racism.

@Verylongtime I did say upthread that a car was less of an issue for those who live very close to everything. My leisure centre is a 20 min walk for example & the art course is the opposite end to Scouts. my dc also have quite different interests. I also tend to use the time they are at things to shop (don't love online shopping), do some exercise or visit a friend. Perhaps i'm dreadful at time management but I really struggle to fit everything in. I do the bulk of the kids stuff because i'm not f/t.

I really need my car. As an example, my ds football training is on a Saturday morning. Takes me seven minutes by car. On public transport it would take 45 minutes and two buses.

I think the thing you're missing is that if you don't have a car you just schedule accordingly - so, in the same way that you couldn't take two kids to activities at 9am because you can't be in two places at once, I don't schedule anything so close to something else that I can't get there on foot/bike/public transport.

There's so much choice of activities around us that it's not that difficult and we don't have to compromise much. My kids do plenty of activities in zone 3 without us needing to drive them.

I actually also find with London traffic that bike is often faster than driving anyway...

I do know lots of families in zone 3 with cars but I do also know lots who don't have cars. Car ownership stats bear this out - in Lambeth about 40% of households have a car

@Comedycook I said upthread my walk to work is much quicker than public transport & I often find it quicker to drive to friends in SE london.

The population of Manchester is 2.75 million.

Yeah that's a very misleading use of the figures. The population of Manchester (rather than the metro area) is 500k though.

But still 14.5m Vs 2.7m (which is both the metro areas) and Manchester sites have a higher crime rate.

@bibbybox I don't think anyone is saying that public transport is always quicker than driving. Just that it's perfectly possible to have a full family life with lots of activities etc without a car if you live in London.

You're basically trying to imagine not using a car for the life you have set up and organised around owning a car and saying it would be hard. But if you don't own one, you find ways around it quite easily in London. E.g. we could drive to a number of football classes but we chose the one walking distance from our house.

We may end up getting a car eventually but I really like and value that it's a genuine choice and not one you get in many other places in the UK.

Car ownership stats bear this out - in Lambeth about 40% of households have a car

That makes sense as not everyone would even have dc plus Lambeth is one of the lowest boroughs for car ownership. You would expect inner London to have lower usage.

According to TFL "54% of London households have at least one car" & "People in households with at least one child are nearly a third more likely to own a car than those without." which chimes with my experience

I think the thing you're missing is that if you don't have a car you just schedule accordingly

I'm not sure why you think I'm missing this? I'm
happy to facilitate what my dc want to do but equally I don't like it to encroach on the whole weekend & like afternoons free for family time & visiting friends.

Just that it's perfectly possible to have a full family life with lots of activities etc without a car if you live in London

But I never said this....

I'm a Londoner & didn't even learn to drive until after dc2 was born.

E.g. we could drive to a number of football classes but we chose the one walking distance from our house.

Of course, who wouldn't chose the closest but timings & what is actually available makes a difference.

I'm not sure why me saying that a car makes my life much easier & more efficient now I have dc & I wouldn't be able to do all I wanted to do without it has wound you up tbh 🤷🏻‍♀️

Jobs. transport links. property prices are awful, though.

I lived there for decades and loved it. I'm not a party animal, either. I just loved the fact that there's always something going on, something to see or do. You could visit a different park every day for a year and not see them all. It's very diverse, full of interesting people. I only moved out when I retired, so that I could buy a house.