A salary that sounds respectable anywhere else in Britain becomes a monthly exercise in subtraction once the rent has gone
Living in London on 35,000 Pounds: A Realistic Monthly Budget
Thirty-five thousand pounds a year is a good salary. I want to say that at the start, because in most of this country it is. It is roughly what a teacher with a few years’ experience earns, or a nurse, or a decent junior job in an office. My parents, in the town where I grew up, would consider it comfortable.
In London it is something else. It is the salary of a person who knows the price of everything.
The Starting Figure
A guide to the capital’s living costs does the first calculation. On 35,000 pounds, take-home pay is approximately 2,360 pounds per month after income tax and National Insurance. If you are paying into a pension or repaying a student loan, it is less.
The guide’s verdict is that living on that salary in London is sustainable for many people, particularly those flat-sharing with good transport connections, but leaves little financial buffer.
Then Comes the Rent
The average private rent in London, on official figures quoted in several guides, is around 2,290 to 2,300 pounds a month. That is across all property types. Clearly a person taking home 2,360 cannot pay 2,300 in rent.
So the first rule is that on this salary you do not live alone. You share. A room in Zones 2 or 3 costs something like 950 to 1,200 pounds. Further out, less.
Take a room at 1,000 pounds. That leaves 1,360.
The Rest
Another guide offers a model budget. It suggests a single person needs around 2,807 pounds a month for a moderate lifestyle renting their own place, with a more budget-conscious life costing around 1,780 and a low-spender’s rent put at 1,250. It quotes one London resident earning 33,000 pounds who described a rent of 1,250 as leaving roughly 594 pounds after planned basic costs.
Let me do my own version, using round numbers that will be familiar to anyone living it.
Room: 1,000.
Share of council tax, energy, water, broadband: perhaps 150.
Travel: a monthly pass for Zones 1 to 3 or pay-as-you-go to the cap, call it 190.
Food: 250 if you cook.
Phone: 20.
That is 1,610. From 2,360 it leaves 750.
Seven Hundred and Fifty Pounds
That sounds all right until you list what it must cover. Clothes. Toiletries. A haircut. The dentist. Any socialising whatsoever. Birthdays. A trip home to see family. Christmas. Replacing a phone that dies. A deposit if you have to move. Anything you might call savings.
At London prices for a meal out or a few drinks, a single evening is thirty or forty pounds. Do that once a week and it is 150 a month gone.
It can be done. Millions do it. But there is no slack. A broken laptop or a month between flats is a crisis.
What Is Missing
Notice what the budget does not include. A car. A holiday abroad. A gym. Childcare, which in London can cost more than rent. Saving for a deposit on a home, which at these prices would take decades.
On this salary the idea of buying somewhere in London is not a plan. It is a daydream.
How People Manage
I asked myself how the people I know on this kind of money cope, and the honest answers are these.
They live far out and commute a long way.
They share with partners, which halves the rent, and is one reason people move in together sooner than they might.
They get help from family, if family has it to give.
They take second jobs or freelance work.
They go without.
And some of them have landlords who have not raised the rent in years, and guard that tenancy like treasure.
Tips, For What They Are Worth
Check you are on the right tax code. Mistakes are common.
If you are a key worker, look into discounted housing schemes.
Use the weekly cap on public transport fares, and the bus where you can. It is slower and much cheaper.
Cook. It is the single biggest thing you control.
Claim what you are entitled to. Some people in work qualify for help with housing costs and do not know it.
The Wider Point
The London Living Wage, which is set by a foundation to reflect the real cost of living here, works out at well under 35,000 a year for full-time work. So a great many Londoners are doing this on less. The cleaners, the care workers, the people who made your coffee this morning.
A city needs them. It is hard to see how it keeps them if a salary that counts as good elsewhere is here a matter of constant arithmetic.
Why Stay?
People ask me this, usually relatives. The answer is that London gives you things that do not appear on a spreadsheet. Work you could not find elsewhere. People from everywhere. Free museums. The top deck of a bus on a clear evening.
Whether that is worth 750 pounds of breathing room a month is a question each person answers for themselves, and answers again every time the rent goes up.
To Finish, Lightly
The art of making ends meet has always had its comedians. The London Prat keeps company with them in its UK satirical news on salaries and British satirical news about making ends meet. You will find my running tally of what London costs there. Bohiney Magazine covers the American paycheck.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
