London: how much is your household income if you live a comfortable life in zone 2?

[Palexpo]

If you are a family with 2-3 children who owns a property (with approx £1200 mortgage) and does not privately educate - what are you earning to live a comfortable life in London zone 1 or 2?

We lived in London pre kids and still own a house there we could return to. We are thinking of moving back but I don’t want to reduce our quality of life too much. We still want holidays and occasional meals out and after school activities for the kids. They are not too young so child care isn’t an issue.

I can't remember the last time I got a black cab though! That's just for tourists surely.

Under 16s get free bus travel via a zip card.
Some councils have very low council tax. Wandsworth and Westminster used to be the cheapest in the country (might still be!)

Insurance, especially car insurance is higher. Trades and services like cleaners and babysitters are more expensive.

On your income and mortgage you'll be more than fine. Unless you have kids in nursery at a typical £2.2k a month each. But even that is temporary until school. Primary school children even get a free lunch.

We are in zone 3, £1,600 mortgage, 2 kids including nursery fees for one, combined income of £130,000. I commute to zone 1 regularly. I think life is expensive everywhere and you make it work. I'm very comfortable but make balanced choices. Not sure I've ever gotten a black cab in London and I grew up here. Do get an Uber every now and then but maybe having grown up here I know how to get around. Also so many free things to do do mix it up cost wise. And we go on holiday which is stupidly expensive over half term!

Our household income is about 250k, but our mortgage is much higher - 3.5k - and we feel pretty comfortable.

We don't run a car which saves us some money - we do take the odd black cab tho

I have an £800 mortgage and bought this year! People have all sorts of different circumstances…

@Lifejigsaw who claimed otherwise? Logically anyone who bought recently in z1/2 is likely to have a much bigger mortgage than the OP & housing costs are usually the biggest expense.
Of course some people exist who will have put down huge deposits & some will have paid outright because they have a ton of money etc. They are unlucky to be starting threads about affordability though....

For a family-sized property in Z1/2 London?

You must have had a seven figure deposit…!

£1200 mortgage and no school fees, I'd have thought would be fine.

We were in zone 2 until our dc were late teens but whilst we had no mortgage, we had school fees of about £3k per month.

It depends how you want to live @Palexpo but whilst there are expensive things available to do in London, in many ways it's cheaper than elsewhere. Public transport runs late and is usually busy nowadays.

London's a fabulous place for teenagers.

Westminster, RBKC, they have the cheapest council tax in the country. I think that bill will come down

Why on earth do you think you won’t be able to afford it when you’ve got a very average mortgage but five times the average household salary? You say council tax will be more expensive but it’s generally a lot cheaper in London than the rest of the UK. You will live like kings with no child care costs.

Is this for real? 180k a year and a mortgage of £14400 a year leaves you a shit ton of money. You can only eat out so many times a month.

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I don’t think people who have owned a house for eg 22 years, realise what housing costs look like nowadays…!

You can be looking at £1200 for a house share now. All of my junior renting colleagues are spending £2k+ for their flats. A mortgage on an ordinary house could be £4k a month.

I earn 50k and have one child and a small ish mortgage and I have a great time!

Blimey!

On £180k you will have a great lifestyle!

We did fine in less than half that.

I found London a cheap place to bring up kids: so much to do that is free, including top quality regular music projects, kids travel free on TfL and then have their Zip cards, the big supermarkets were much cheaper than Budgens in my family’s regional market town…

Restaurants, not much different and there is such a huge range it is always possible to find something affordable and very good!

If you run two cars now you could almost certainly downsize, no sense in owning 2 big high performance cars to navigate London traffic when there is such good transport plus easy cycling. One car for getting out of town long distance.

Living in London it is easy to take advantage of last minute and discount deals on theatre and other tickets.