Relocating to London?

[cupofteaandacrumpet]

Hi everyone. Myself and DP currently live in the US, and are planning to move back to the UK soon. I haven't lived in the UK as an adult (past university anyway), so I'm finding this site useful for figuring out how things are over there!

We weren't planning on living in London originally, but now that we've started looking for jobs there seem to be a lot of options there. I'm just a bit worried about the cost of living, specifically because we are planning to have a baby in about 2 years time. I imagine that when the baby comes, our combined salary would be about 75-80k. Does anyone have any experience of living in London on this kind of money while paying for full time childcare? Is it doable? To make things even more complicated, we definitely want to keep the commute to an hour or less.

Also we have a house deposit of about 25k. That won't get us anything really, right? Originally we had planned to buy something in a couple of years time, but with London on the horizon, that seems increasingly unlikely. I wonder if we'll ever be able to afford to buy :(

Looking into the future, I think our salaries will increase and we'll be ok. It's just these first few years that are concerning me. And I don't really want to put off having a baby too much longer.

A combined salary of £75,000 to £80,000 is good in the UK, certainly over the average, but to be honest you may struggle to pay rent or a mortgage and full time childcare on that in London.

However, there are lots of places to live within an hour commute which will be cheaper than somewhere with a London postcode (although you will then need to factor in the commuting costs, which are not small). Its terribly difficult to advise unless you know which mainline station you are going to be working near - as you know, London is absolutely vast.

Actually I can! It would be about a mile from King's Cross, and close to Farringdon. This is a company I just had a phone interview and sound really great (and the whole reason I'm thinking of changing our plans to move there).

I certainly appreciate direct honesty as far as the money side of things go. No need to sugar coat it - I need to know the honest facts about what our life would be like.

Have a look at Bedford for housing - you can get a direct train to Farringdon which takes about an hour or can get the fast train (40 mins) into Kings Cross. House prices are much cheaper than London (roughly £165k for a 3 bed house in an OK area within walking distance of the station).

What most couples do in your situation is rent somewhere central initially, save up and then move out to the sticks and buy somewhere when/if they start a family. London's a fantastic place and you shouldn't miss the opportunity to enjoy the restaurants, theatres and all the other exciting stuff that goes with living there. When you're ready to settle for your pipe and cardigan, then buy a place somewhere up the railway line..... St Albans is beautiful, if a bit pricey, Bedford's not bad at all but you'd kick yourself if you passed up a chance to do the 'big smoke' for a few years.

Thank you! Sounds like it could be doable if we can handle the commute. I'll admit I'm definitely tempted to spend a couple of years living centrally :-)

Definitely live in the centre for a while. You're only young once. If nothing else, it'll give you chance to get your bearings, visit a few commuter towns, judge prices, think about future child-care arrangements and (v important because of the catchment area system) how good the local school is ... all of which is far easier to do in situ than any amount of online research.

Another one saying rent and live centrally. Make the most of it. That's what we did, then moved further out with each subsequent child...

I agree with FiveHours - live centrally then move out when you want to buy.