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.

Clearly. Apparently in London they have something called Why Fie. I’ve checked our yellow pages but I can’t find anywhere local called Why Fie.

This is a really interesting thread. I can definitely see the appeal of living in London if it weren't so expensive. Home ownership has always been a priority for me but if it wasn't then I would have moved to London in a heartbeat.

I grew up in Kent and now live in Suffolk. I would never move further away from London as I think it is a fantastic place! I can see why it would be hard to move away from the city if you've lived there for years. I've had colleagues that really miss living in London for all the reasons stated here.

I see. I mean no offence I just didn't know it was as common. I've lived only in a flat before and so have many of my friends. They all brought a house before having kids. Some had to move to Leeds to do so as they couldn't afford London.

How awful for you. How dare Welsh people speak Welsh in their own country!!! Do you actually realise how ignorant you sound?

You're not lying. Honestly if not for the cost of living in London, I'd move there in a heartbeat. I live in the NE and to say it's boring is an understatement 😒

Job opportunities yes. The others yes on a fairly regular basis. If I meet with a group of friends for eg dinner etc we often do a Groupon deal or used to. Lots of art galleries and museums are free but you pay if you want to see certain exhibitions. Even theatre trips etc - can be more expensive but you pick and choose.

I love going to theatre, I saw some amazing actors on stage that I would nto be able to see elsewhere, there are loads of things to do, I would be depressed if I could not get the variety of food we get here... Also, Id be getting 1/3 of my salary here.

Roots . It's surprising how deep they go .

Lots of reasons, it isn’t difficult to understand why people are different to you and enjoy living somewhere else. I live in North Yorkshire and we have a 5 bed house which costs less PA than a 1 bed flat would in London. Money obviously goes much further here and I don’t mind living here, the air is cleaner and such so great. I love London though, much more to see and do than there is here or in most places in the UK! Can completely understand London’s pull and obviously lots of people work there so it makes sense to actually live there.

If all generations of your family lived in London then why would you want to move out all of a sudden? The choice is probably between those who want enough versus those who want it all!!

There is lots in London to do that's free (museums, street food stalls in a lot of areas for example, amazing parks ) and we have great, cheap transport so even those on lower incomes are able to access culture, eating out.

I love it - we travel around the Uk a lot and have family in another major city which is diverse but ghettoised. In London, everyone rubs up closely together so there's a greater mix. Also I've noticed that house prices in nice areas (and not even nice areas) around the Uk are not dissimilar to the outer zones of London (house in London may have two beds rather than three though). If you had that choice then there would be no contest in my eyes - London would win hands down.

@GonnaGetGoingReturns Oh god, welsh people speaking welsh! Whatever else?? We’re off to Spain in a few weeks, I hope they don’t all start speaking Spanish.

There is more going on in London - it's logical given population density. How much that matters to you is personal taste. And it doesn't mean nothing happens anywhere else.

If I said "but London has green space too" to someone who liked living in the Peak District, it would be laughable. It's the same thing.

Yes we have a city pad because my husband sometimes works really long hours and we can't spare the two hours of commuting. Also this allows us more time with the kids during the working week. We can't afford a bigger family home in zone 1 so we have a proper family home in Wimbledon which is also near the grandparents and a secondary school that we want our daughter to eventually go to.

this made me lol, you have people in z5/6 saying they can get to restaurant in central London in 30 mins which i often eye roll at because we all know the door to door journey is longer. But this is the other extreme, the journey from the city to Wimbledon is too long so you need 2 houses! 😆

Also, I have a few LGBT friends who came to London as they felt ostracised and isilated in their hometowns, easier to blend in a big city.

To be fair the whole of the UK is usually wet and grey.

Free or cheap that was meant to say.

the rest of the UK outside of London are clearly living in the slums. No museums/art galleries, no public transport or airports, no restaurants, no playgroups, no swimming classes, no cultural diversity. We all travel on horseback and work in the mines or the fields.

Other cities definitely do. Suburbs won't be as accessible and there are places that are wholly car dependent (bar the bus that comes every leap year).

And places with little cultural diversity - actually cultural diversity, not just one child in the local school. If you're white british, it's probably difficult to get why this wild matter so much but for children especially, you want them to see people who look like them.

The biggest museums and galleries will be in London but of course there's others elsewhere.

There are other airports but London has several so you never need to travel far at all

I did say that the Welsh then were speaking English and when she went into the pub they switched to Welsh to alienate her. Also ignored her if she tried to ask a question. Not uncommon for the Welsh to hate the English.

also, I’m actually a quarter Welsh as DGM on DF’s side was from Abergavenny.

@muddlingthrou you can get that in many many places in the UK.
My medium size Midlands 'market' town that I am from originally has excellent train links to loads of UK places including a train as up as far as Scotland. Plenty of 'diversity', places to eat, easy to reach theatres etc.

🤣🤣🤣

I would imagine it's a great place to live if you are young with no ties . Loads going on . Buying a home and raising a family would be tough unless you were on a fantastic salary .

I don’t think you read that post properly. They started speaking Welsh despite speaking English before. They’re entitled to speak Welsh, but they made a move that was deliberately exclusionary. Not uncommon. I was assaulted in Wales by a man for being English, after Wales took a drubbing by England in the SixNations. Lovely.

My husband has come home from work at 4 am before (and this happens at least twice a month) so it will eat into his sleep time.

East Midlander here and if I had the ££ I'd move to London tomorrow for all the reasons listed.

I'm also ex army brat so I miss the travelling we did then and three trips to London helps give me that multi culture mad buzz back a bit (in addition to holidays obv).

Bloody ❤️ London