Want to know how much to plan for living and working in London?
 

Stumbled upon this website today.

"Cost of living in the UK and London"

http://preview.tinyurl.com/2rbls

Seems to have all sorts of info for anyone contemplating living, working or attendingt school in London. According to the website it is current as of July 4, 2008. The date can be checked on the bottom left side.

It more or less corresponds with my own experience, I'd say.

Did you mean the stumbling, Paatrick?

Looks about right, although it only seems to have London prices for accomodation etc. You can live a lot more cheaply in other parts of the country.

Is it really that cheap? Some of the numbers seem a bit low to me. The housing numbers, especially, seem light.

The prices shown for 1 bed flat rental in London is low. In some areas of London it would be more like £900-£1000+ pcm.

GBP 900+ is more along the lines of what I was thinking.

Well I live in South London and we pay 1500 GBP a month for our 1 bedroom flat. Similar for our friends.

The costs given for "average" cost of meals and drinks in pubs and restaurants are far too low as well. We regularly pay £50-60 for a meal and bottle of wine for two in quite ordinary local curry houses or italian restaurants. Even a meal in our local pub would be at least £20 per person not including drinks. And we live 60 miles from central London where the prices tend to be even higher still.

I'd also challenge the claim that the average weekly supermarket bill for 2 people in the UK would be £60. If you're content to buy budget items from Asda or Mossisons then maybe, but this figure is no way indicative of average spending in SE England.

I spend roughly £30 a week in Waitrose, no less...

But maybe I'm out of touch on rents.

This is fascinating! I've been living in Athens, Greece for nearly four years, haven't been back to the UK for nearly three, so I can't really compare prices any more. The rents quoted DO seem low, however: the tenants in my simple two bedroom flat in Putney, South London pay £1300 per month. (I pay the managing agents 16%)

I don't have a proprietary interest in the website I provided but in view of the comments that the rents seemed too low I looked at this website of London flats for rent.

http://london.craigslist.co.uk/apa/

I believe the rents quoted on the site are per week but there are a goodly number below 200 pounds.

Here in central Mass my wife and I have averaged $60 per week for food this year, half the amount given for London on the site. We have a freezer so are able to take advantage of sales but we do eat well and have relatively few packaged foods.

i agree...rent is too low. £700-800 for a one bed in west london? that's about the bare minimum out in suburbs that are far from desirable. this is very misleading in that someone will think that £800/month would get them an upper end flat in the highest cost area of london!

on the other things i totally agree with gordon.

if they are talking about wine in a restaurant (seems to be the context) then £10 is not average. in london it is very hard to even find any bottle under £10 in a restaurant (except any special deals that some chain pubs do). most of the very cheapest restaurants charge about £12 for the cheapest wine on the menu. so there is no way that £10 is average.

FWIW:

Mrs F & I spend less than £60 a week at our supermarket. Like Patrick, we shop at Waitrose. I suspect it'd be half at the chavshops - though a great deal more if we bought the crap that chavs do. There's not the remotest risk either of us will die of malnutrition.

And I can't imagine spending £50 at a curry house, even out here in the Cotswold sticks where restaurants are pricier than in London.

The trouble with this kind of guide is that there just isn't any such thing as "typical" in London.

Something to keep in mind when looking at weekly rents is that the monthly doesn't equal weekly x 4 - I believe they use 4.3.

I'd be happy to find a decent one bed in a good neighboorhood in zones 1-3 for 1,000GBP. 1,300GBP for a two bed in Putney sounds great! (is it on the river? :o) )

No,it's on the South Circular!I suppose it might be more if it were on the river.