Cost of Living in UK

[hollyhobbie]

We've been living overseas for 6 years now, but DH has been made redundant, so unless he finds work again soon, we may have to move back to the UK this summer.
We've been living with Euros for a long time now and so don't really have a clue what would be a 'good' (enough) salary when being asked for salary expectations.
DH has been earning more or less ?60,000 which used to be about £35,000, but with the current exchange rates is worth a lot more!

Would £30,000 be enough to support a family of 4? From what I can find out so far, the average UK salary is about £22,000, so I guess that would put us at in a better position than a lot of people.

I'm obviously going to be researching cost of housing etc myself, but any opinions/thoughts that anyone had would be very welcome!

Oops Mumsnet doesn't like my Euro signs! For ? read Euro.

depends on what you are used to and where you plan to live. £30,000 will take home at about £2000 per month. I would find that pretty tight to live on, but I live in Surrey.

{another soon-to-be returnee watches with interest} Yes, what is it with the euro sign on here? I thought it was just me...

I think you'll find people will say it depends a lot on where you are planning to live.

But the UK is more or less based around a family having 1,5 or 2 salaries, isn't it?

My situation salary-wise is in the same kind of league, we would take a huge blow in living standard if we came back.

just see if my euro sign comes out better: ?

Damn, no its the german keyboard. oh well.

Ok, ok, I know that no one can answer this question for me really. It's just so hard to judge having been out of the loop for so long. We would hate to say 'yes' to a salary that sounded good but then left us unable to do very much.

Nighbynight - yes, I had a feeling that we might 'need' 2 salaries, but that's no bad thing. I'm itching to get back to work after a 4 year SAHM break.

At the moment the jobs we're looking at are all over the UK (but outside London) so quite a range and it makes it even harder to judge what a 'good' salary would be. I guess another indicator will be how loud the potential employers laugh at the figures we've asked for...

Food for thought from you all. Thanks!

It really depends on where you'll live. We are in the SE and try very hard not to think of how much better off we'd be if we lived near my ILs!