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.

@WhereIsMyRefund - see my last, meant to quote reply or whatever its called

My experience with north Wales is racism. As a brown person I found the locals were rude, treat me like a second class citizen, it was disgusting behaviour from these people. This hardly happens here at London that is why I will never live anywhere else in the UK. By the way I have travel all over the UK. The only place so far people have been nice to me was in Yorkshire which include West and North, it was always welcoming when I visit.

This is why....

streamable.com/7w0yk4

THIS 👌

The thread title is ‘Why do people live in London?’

NOT ‘Why do people live outside London / hate London / take any opportunity to whinge about London’

And the beauty is, you don’t have to stay!

Precisely! Thank goodness 😅

Quite. It was a slightly goady post. Answered by londonders listing their reasons for staying. Then being mocked for being defensive about London. Then non-Londoners being defensive about Londoners’ reasons for living in London (even though they were answering the OP).

Then followed slightly aggressive and unpleasant and unnecessary insults by some Londoners and non-Londoners which do neither party any favours. A shame really but inevitable on threads like this. It’s crazy to think everybody would want to live in the same place.

One thing people need to understand is that there is a difference between fear of racism and not wanting to be the ‘only one’. My ex was from a lovely Derbyshire village. I am not white and was welcomed there by his family and experienced zero racism in pubs and restaurants. But I would not want to live there as a non-white woman or bring up my mixed race kids there as the only ones. That doesn’t mean I think the locals were racist. There is a difference.

My husband and I didn’t earn 100k when we lived in London and had a wonderful life. It is buzzing, full of culture, diverse. No end of things to do. There’s that old saying - if you’re bored of London, you’re bored of life.

We’re older and more boring now. Earn over 100k and have a mortgage of over 25k outside of London. Pay 12k childcare costs for one child. Life is expensive anywhere but you cut your cloth accordingly. Where we are now is our home and I wouldn’t go back to London but loved living there when I was younger.

People get comfortable where they are living. They get use to the neighbourhood and build relationships.

This is their experience and they can't understand why anyone else would want to live anywhere else as they have the 'best life.'

If they have had a bad experience somewhere they will argue why the hell would anyone want to live there.

People are rude, it is dirty, bla bla.

Ultimately as they say there is no place like home!
Home is where the heart ❤ is..

So for those living in LONDON that is their home and they love it likewise those who live anywhere else.

God some people are so defensive and obsessive about criticising London.

Just be happy with your own life and wherever you chose to live. Stop taking offence because someone else things there’s better theatre or restaurants in London.

Clearly many people enjoy living in London since it’s the largest city in the uk by quite a long way.

I live in London.

I work at an asset management firm.

I'm 23 years old - my pay package should be around £50,000 base + 10-30% bonus and it only goes up from there when I actually get some experience. The analysts at my firm make £150,000+ and the Portfolio Managers can be on multiples of that.

Find me an entry level job in any other city that pays £65,000 to 23-year-olds for essentially a 8am to 5pm job. I work great hours, the office is really nice and spacious with subsidized food and London has some pretty nice private clubs and restaurants that I can take women on dates too.

I think it really depends where you live in London. I took DD to central London for shopping last weekend and I was knackered when I got home. We live in Woodford Green and we’re at Liverpool St. in 30 mins. Very doable and not busy.

Well yes it does
London average is 23 inches and Birmingham 27.4 inches a year of rain.

I was born in london ans moved down to East kent, where I've been for most of my adult life. Most of mybwxtwnded family live in the north. The massive gap in ability to live for a reasonable amount has always been a surprise.
Why havent I moves up there? Hard to find the right job, moving my life up there is a wrench, and just like all my northern family would say in reverse, this is home. It's hard, even if logical!

I grew up here and we live near to my parents, who help out with childcare. We could maybe find our combination of professions in other major cities but then we would have higher childcare costs and I’m not sure the lower living costs in other aspects would make up for it. We probably don’t take advantage of the culture around us as much as we should, but my wife went to uni here and many of our friends are here, so although occasionally we talk about moving out for air quality as much as anything else, we have a life and wouldn’t want to have to start all over again. I also have a daughter that lives abroad so being near a major airport is also important and we’re close to Heathrow.

Aside from my well-paying job, we have a flat in London that I use because my parents choose to live in our country house.

So it makes perfect sense for me to stay in London.

Now you have all read about how great it is in London , with all the cheap, plentiful subsidised public transport and great social services, groundbreaking health services and better state education - how about giving such facilities to the rest of us in the UK who live elsewhere ???
We who supply your food etc
Levelling up is simply being fair don’t you agree? Especially as we seem to live in the grey havens ……

I am from the north originally and think that funding needs to go to other areas. Included the neglected south-west. Not sure what I can do about it though, as a relative nobody living in London.

Nobody is saying that we should all want to live in London. Especially the people raised outside of London, I can totally understand why your preferred normal is typically a quieter, greener environment. However, i do object to people claiming that they know all about racism in their area even though they haven't experienced in personally. Your area may work well for you because your face blends in perfectly and I can promise you that any person who looks different to the majority in your diverse area will not be sharing your experience. Diverse for you may mean a group with a couple of colour variations. Our need for diverse is more profound.
For example, in London, you would simply be "Lisa" but in a less diverse area it would be "Y'know, Lisa [hushed tones] the black/brown/oriental/Jewish/coloured girl" "Oh yeah!" and many would think it ok.
Also, the point I made previously about entering a waiting room or sitting down in a bus without going through that moment of questioning "why are they looking at me?" even if it is a really brief glace.
I cannot speak for recent immigrants and how they feel but for families established over generations, that sense of liberation from everyday judgment is priceless and immigrants often love London on a whole other level because of it.

I love London. It’s the accessibility to everything at not much cost if you know where to look. Two weeks ago I went to two concerts by the London philharmonic orchestra. I paid £5 per ticket. Full price was £35. I also went to the theatre, again, cost £6.50. Ticket price £45. I shop in the local market which is cheap as chips - 8 peppers for £1, three aubergines for £1. Massive box of mushrooms for £1. It’s also easy to get offers for a prix fixe menu at top restaurants for a fraction of the usual cost - £30 including a glass of wine isn’t unusual. It’s also the whole vibe of the place. I’m lucky, I know, I have a large mansion flat in Zone 1 and can easily walk to Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus or Oxford Street. If I go out in the evening, a taxi home takes me five minutes. The museums are all free. What’s not to love?

I'd love to live closer to London, I understand the appeal. We lived in zone 6 for a few years when we were younger. We earn about £100k between us (public sector wouldn't earn more, I already get London weighting as I commute -very hybrid!-) and live a somewhat middle class lifestyle I guess you could say, multiple holidays, good sized detached house etc etc. When I look at London prices and at what we could afford and what the mortgage would be, we would have a very, very different lifestyle, just a completely different life really that wouldn't be offset by being closer to museums etc.

Maybe one day when the kids are grown if we'd be willing to downsize we could consider it, but I think it's really hard to consider such a compromise on housing if you're used to a set standard at a much lower cost. I just couldn't imagine not being detached for starters (having spent years in flats, semis etc). We can get into London in an hour so I suppose we feel we have a good balance, but it's not the same I know.

Big cities really work for some people. Each to their own. I enjoy the anonymity and never ending options for culture, entertainment, events etc. You can eat food from almost anywhere on earth. You will get to know people from all over the world. Transport is incredible. Free world class museums and historical sites, which yep, I go to often. It's a wonderful city for a history nerd. My job here basically doesn't exist where I'm from, nor does my partner's. For a big city London also has some fabulous green spaces, particularly NE where we live. We talk to our neighbours a nice amount but I also love not not getting stuck in inane conversations with randoms as sometimes happens in my home town.

we’ve just moved away from London to the Home Counties (from zone 2 N London). I have moved away from an area categorised by ethnic diversity, poverty, ultra-wealth and student/twenty-something culture. I have moved into an area characterised by 50% (mostly white) nice, liberal well-off middle-class people and 50% (white, British) horrible seemingly well-off arseholes.

I was so dismayed on my first Saturday night out in my new city, where the ratio of horrible arseholes increased and I have ticked off at least 15 pubs that I would never go into again. It struck me that these pubs just don’t exist where I used to live because….those type of people don’t live there. Thankfully there are super-fast trains.

yes I am a massive snob. London is definitely special. Other big cities are great too though.