How much do you need to live in London? (I think I have enough!)

[Ethicaldebacle]

I've asked before about moving to London and basically everyone agreed it was a good idea, but we didn't really touch the financial aspect.

I posted about my pension on Reddit (because I think I have a fairly solid plan all things considered) but everybody got fixated about not being able to afford to live in London

So housing and transport costs aside, (because I've done that calculation already), how much do you spend a month?

We shop at Lidl for the most part, and go out twice a month. I don't go to the salon or anything like that, and the gym is out peloton (so cheaper as it's for both). One car.

We're talking about Z3, one DC in secondary school.

For the sake of this conversation we have £7k every month to play around after housing and travel cards.

No, I totally didn't. They were just shocked by our income Vs our pension and maybe made assumptions based on that.

They also made the assumption that we live a standard lifestyle for our income (which we don't!)

I bet the Redditers are trolling you OP.
Of course its 'enough.'

Absolutely. You’re more than fine! We have half that (after housing & commuting costs) and manage to save a little. We still have a life but are careful. You’ll be in the comfortable category assuming you aren’t paying for private school or anything really pricey.

Definitely not private schools!

Perhaps they were having a laugh or have insanely expensive lifestyles. That is stacks of money to live on in London. People raise families there on 50k or less.

And that was the tone of the whole thread!

Reading the Reddit thread OP… the scepticism isn’t about living in London on £7k disposable, it’s about your plan to move there, rapidly increase earnings, and downsize with a £1m+ property.

• moving to London for an extra £50k given the much higher cost of living there / tax impact
• that given your high disposable income, you have such a small pension and should be maximising savings
• That acquiring the house you want will cost a huge amount.

And I think that’s true - if your objective is improving your financial position and quality of life / opportunity to retire earlier, moving to London probably doesn’t help.

But that's not what I'm looking for in London. I'm moving to London because I want to have the career I want which I can't have anywhere else (for better or for worse).

And the quality of life will come from living there, which is what I've wanted for the past 10/11 years.

And that was the tone of the whole thread!

But what was that thread about as the title says "is my retirement plan ok" not can I live on 150k in London? So as I said upthread was the focus on your pension plan?

I would say London is definitely cheaper for much stuff apart from housing. Transport is cheap ish and easy, you don’t need to run two cars (and lots of people don’t even run one), there are tons of free or cheap activities and opportunities for kids and teens, there’s lots of free museums/parks/community events to go and do. Lots of markets and stuff for cheap food (eg pound a bowl fruit and veg, Chinese supermarkets). You can of course spend a whole heap of money here but you can also live well on a budget - apart from housing!

Londoner here (born and bred).
I think people exaggerate how much you need to live in London.
We have a 2k mortgage a child in nursery and still manage to go on a few holidays every year. I go out with friends for dinners, buy clothes, have a decent car.
Our household income is about £120k. At times it feels tight and some months we worry more than others but I wouldn’t say we are struggling.

No, they didn't even focus on that. They went sideways saying I couldn't afford London.

Which to me was kind of by the by.... Yes I know we're fairly behind and the London house DOES play a part, but most people went sideways.

I've done the calculators and it looks like should be OK., because again we don't plan to retire early, and we don't plan to retire with the "lifestyle" of our income.

Reading the Reddit thread OP… the scepticism isn’t about living in London on £7k disposable, it’s about your plan to move there, rapidly increase earnings, and downsize with a £1m+ property.

So basically completely different things. I'm so confused by the OP!

I have no idea what you are even asking any more.

That’s a different question to the Reddit thread:

“Is my retirement plan ok or am I being naive?”

“ We have a joint pension pot of £50k, I'm 40 and my husband is 45. We plan to work until state pension kicks in.

Our mortgage is basically paid off, and we have a joint income of close to £100k.

We currently live fairly rurally, and does have an impact on my salary (as most roles are hybrid within London, but also pay substantially more). So the idea is that once the children finish school, we'll move to London, where our joint salary will be closer to £150k.
We also plan to get a more expensive house, hoping that it will sell for at least a million once we retire. Then we downsize, and live off the interest of the leftover money, plus the state pension, plus whatever we have in our private pensions.

There's also the possibility of retiring in Mexico as I'm a dual national and money will spread further.

For our retirement, we plan to be mortgage free, one car, and go abroad maybe once a year.”

If the £7k was enough to live in London. Because they swore I couldn't.

But not even once they asked about my mortgage size or anything.

Yes I know it was, but all I got was that I was delusional for wanting to move to London. They're separate things (some redditors did point that out).

7k is plenty. I’m in zone 6, take home around 4.2k, have money to save at the end of month.

Reddit is the worst. I think people need to get out more and broaden their horizons. There are so many working class families I know that are able to go on holidays, have cars, do things with their kids, do home renovations. I don’t know what bubbles they live in. Tradespeople (who are often regarded as working class) who’ve come and gone doing bits and bobs in our house have 2-3 kids and decent lifestyles. Don’t buy into that nonsense

We think that the cost of living in London is fairly reasonable APART FROM HOUSING. Housing is very expensive and if you are moving in from somewhere else you may be shocked about how little you get for your money. We have friends who visit and just laugh (nicely) about how small our expensive house is!
But other than housing, other things are reasonable. You could well be able to live without a car. Lots of free activities. Take a water bottle/packed lunch and you can have a great day out where your only cost is the bus/tube. I think teenagers still travel free on the bus and have reduced tube fare.
London is as cheap or as expensive as you want to make it.

Which we're aware of. That's why our close to beach five bedroom house will only get us a smallish 3 bed (and with a top up!)

I don’t think we’ve ever earned anywhere near £7,000 in a month between us, let alone had that much left after housing costs and transport, and we’ve always lived in Zone 3 and managed very comfortably. My husband is now retired and has only a very very small private pension to supplement is state pension, and I’ve reduced my hours to about half time and we can still live well. Many many people live on a fraction of what you are earning in London.

But it won’t be £7k for living if you’re paying £1,500 for a mortgage?

what work do you do and why do you think you will only receive a 50k before tax bump in income?
no chance you can do much better than this?
also intrigued to hear what you have in pension and what you feel you need to have in there. You’re 40, you still have 27 years

there are houses in zone 2 SElon around £700k - they do need work but livable.

Have you been to have a look at some houses, op? It may be good to just check that you could see yourselves living in the smaller space and the neighbourhood. And whether the houses are actually selling for the asking house or whether the sale price is greater. Otherwise your budget seems fine to live in London.
In my observation, some people move out of London because they become fed up with trying to cram into their small house.