costs of commuting into London

[hjloioiu]

DH and I were considering moving out of London for cheaper as everyone keeps mentioning it. But just seen the rail tickets prices/increases - https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13345909/The-Great-British-Train-Robbery-Commuters-soon-save-moving-London-annual-season-tickets-costing-10k-expert-warns.html. With both of us going in, it would be about 10-12k per year on tickets alone. If you commute in - how does it work? Do you feel like you've saved money on moving out?

It's not just the financial cost but also the mental and emotional cost of commuting. If you have to be in more than 2 days a week then personally I wouldn't do it

We both have to go in three times per week, have one kid in primary school. We never thought about moving out but everyone has been suggesting it to us as a way of getting something a bit nicer and supposedly cheaper. But the figures just dont seem to add up.

I never moved in but DH and I both commute. But we work flexibly so generally we go in once a week each. If we go in more we can get a Flexi ticket which covers 8 journeys a month. It's far far cheaper for us to live out of London even if we both went in every day though, and I love my commute, not so much the small tube journey when I get to London but I love the train in and out to London, I tend to use it for extra work time and it's nice to just sit and not be hassled by work colleagues or children!

I’ve done the maths on this several times and it doesn’t make sense.

I agree the tickets are a scam - they know you have you over a barrel. Shouldn’t we be encouraging the use of public transport?

Also… to have a house a sensible distance to a train station that you can into London in a sensible time.. the prices are as bad!

We really didn’t see that we would get much more property for our money. Plus - your travel cost is several hundred more a month.

It would cost us 1k per month plus we'd have to have a car so another 300 per month. We'd still be taking the tub as our offices are not right next to the mainline station. No sure whether am missing something obvious here.

I go in to London one day a week from Basingstoke. It costs £62.50 per day, plus the cost of driving to Basingstoke.

My boss wanted me to go in two days so I told him I'd need an extra £5k per year. He was horrified but then I pointed out that two fares a week would cost me £1 in every £5 I earn. He gave in

It cost £62.50 to travel 50 miles, yet tomorrow I am going to Glasgow for £100. So the extra 350 miles will cost £38. It's all a scam.

Commuting by train is no longer viable.

It would cost me about £900 a month to do 2 days a month, that's with a railcard that allows 1/3 price reduction on peak tickets and very cheap parking too. Thankfully it's only me doing it. Our 4 bed detached house is worth about £400,000 and would easily be £600,000 even somewhere like Milton Keynes (not tried to compare closer in), so I'm assuming it's still more cost effective to live out.

@hjloioiu how much would you save by moving out of London? You need to compare like with like though. Is the same type of property you now live in cheaper outside London? If so how much cheaper?

When DH worked in London, he used to drive. He rented someone’s drive monthly in one of those park-on-my-drive websites, about 15 minutes walk from the office. I suppose he was lucky that the congestion charge zone started 100 metres up the road, so he didn’t have that cost. Before settling on driving, he tried the coach and the train. Coach was too early, train was too pricey. He did have core hours though, which means he would do 10 - 6.30 rather than 9 - 5.30, and he would avoid the bulk of rush hour, but didn’t help with off peak train prices. This was about 10 years ago now, but driving in used to cost 1/3 of what taking the train would.

If you are happy living in London, are making ends meet atm and don’t feel the need for somewhere ‘nicer’ then don’t move. What if you moved out of London and then got a new / better job but it was in the least convenient bit of London from your station? And by then your child would be settled in school etc.

People often like to validate their own decisions by trying to persuade others to do the same thing.

We moved from zone 2 to Herts in 1999 when it was affordable to do so, although it was affordable to move somewhere else in London which was less convenient. The trick, if there is one, is to think, where do I need to commute into/where are our families? We stuck to due North of London and the commute is 1 hour door to door which before covid I was doing 5 days a week (now 2 and rising to 3 days). When we looked to upgrade in 2006 we looked at Peterborough and Milton Keynes but decided to 'invest' in the property versus the commute (and the devil we knew regarding schools and areas).

Also in that 60 mins only 20 are actually on a train, the rest is walking on way in and includes a 10 minute bus ride on the way back.
The ULEZ and resident parking will stymie any thoughts of parking in most areas now within the North Circular and London borders.

The cost of train travel and the unreliability of them is why I don’t apply for many of the excellent jobs available in my industry. I’d need a whopping pay rise just to remain on the equivalent salary without taking the extra time commuting into account. That it is so poor plus an absolute racket is a national disgrace.

Like a pp when I do travel in for work or pleasure I now drive and park at a tube station.

We live within walking distance of our offices in zone 1 and people are often shocked that we've chosen to raise our dcs in a central location and settling for a terraced house with an overlooked garden. For many families it's not just about the cost, it's about having a nice suburban lifestyle and a house they can show off, schools with a narrower middle class intake, and getting away from the noise and diversity in the inner city. Personally I like having everything on my doorstep and feeling like I'm in the midst of everything, but many people would hate it. I agree that the problems with a commute are not just about the cost but there's a mental cost to sitting in a train carriage with lots of stressed people, it's like there's a tension in the air.

You don't have to move out of course, but my dp has recently slashed his commuting costs by buying Super Advanced tickets three months ahead. You do have to commit to particular trains but the drop in costs is enormous - from £80 a day (not kidding) to £12 a day.

Are you pricing up based on travel cards? A travel card from our station is £96 a week. But the journey DH does is cheaper with a return to Victoria + single tube fare on oyster/bank card which ends up ~£75 a week. That's 5 days a week, just outside zone 6. Asduming 4 weeks hol so no travel costs, it works out about £3600pa

As we don't know where we'd move to pricing it exactly is difficult. I think it's because both of us have to travel to London during the week that makes it sound especially expensive. In families who move out, do both people commute in or just one?

Yes that must be painful, for us it is just me, if it was both of us we'd have to move in closer.

It's ridiculous isn't it? We're also Basingstoke and DH has to travel to London a few times a month, and the occasional trip up to Leeds. Far better value to do the longer trip!

I commute in and my ticket costs me £5k a year. I come into London 3/4 days a week and one weekend day ( I like the social life and enjoying walking here) anyway I commute from a little village in Kent and I kept a sheet last year that showed if I'd bought a ticket daily I'd have spent £600 more than my annual gold card so if you come in lots that's a good way to do it and buy up front

Can you get your ticket through work as salary sacrifice? My husband goes everyday but gets a season ticket loan ( it’s about £4.5k) and then it’s paid back before he is taxed. We definitely have a better house and quality of life and the school here is amazing; it’s still only takes him an hour door to door ( bus, train , short walk) max .

We moved to Brighton but I work locally and DH only goes into London 1 day (sometimes 2). No way we would have done it if both of us were commuting. And bear in mind most places you can commute from are not much cheaper than some London areas. I wouldn’t do it if were you. Purely financially it makes much more sense to spend more money paying a London mortgage as you’ll end up with more equity, than wasting money on travel

That's how I pay for mine, by salary sacrifice

Ooh I wonder whether that's an option. How does salary sacrifice work?

My work pay upfront for my ticket and every month an amount is deducted from my salary. Works well for me, I don't see the money and I have unlimited travel into London