where do i even start with london it's one of those places that completely draw you in people
from all over the world myself very much included come here hoping to soak up all the culture
the history and the beauty but all of it comes with a hefty price tag and today i want to tell
you all about how much the privilege of living in london really costs whether you've come here
hoping to move to the british capital or you're just curious no shame in that you have come to the
right place i'm gonna start breaking it down by talking about my rent which is the biggest expense
that you're going to have when i moved back to london one and a half years ago i did what most
people my age tend to do i went onto a website called spare room where you can find flatmates
and different houses and flats and i did just that i found three housemates and together we rented a
place in the london bar of southwark which is in southeast london and we rented a four bed house
we are in zone 2 which means we're quite close to central london we have the overground nearby and
loads of space now we're no longer straight out of uni so we were happy to splash out a little
bit more than we might have been in the past so my rent comes to 800 pounds a month to give you
a bit of an idea what different kind of money brackets can get you i've pulled a few examples
this first flat is in zone two so relatively central and you can get this room for 475 pounds
a month with bills included next up is this more spacious two bed house in stratford for 750. it's
a bit further out but it's an up-and-coming area very well connected it has the olympic park nearby
and the westfield shopping center this third one is a studio in pekum it's in zone 2 and close to
an overground station but you can see that living alone is expensive at 1 000 pounds per month and
the place is really quite tiny final example here's what paying 1841 pounds per month could
get you it's a really beautiful modern house but considering how much you're paying you don't get
a huge amount of space so that's it 800 pounds on rent bearing in mind that you can pay a lot less
and definitely definitely a lot more next up let's move on to bills and utilities number one you've
got water which comes to about 10 pounds a month then you've got gas on electricity that's about 10
yeah 10 pounds a month as well and then finally you've got internet for us we pay 44 pounds a
month for fiber optic virgin internet this next expense is very uk and london specific and that
is council tax council tax is money you pay to your local council i know right in order
to provide vital services like taking out the bins and funding libraries keeping the streets nice and
tidy on the government website if you type in your address you will be able to see how much you pay
and also how much other people on your street pay and this depends on the value of the property
another very british custom is paying for a tv license anyone that owns a tv in the entire land
has to pay this fee and the fee comes 259 pounds a year which i think is pretty steep and finally
the one thing that we pay for here at home that is a bit of a luxury we have a cleaner that comes in
every fortnight although that sounds like a really indulgent thing it comes to 25 pounds per person
per month so to me that is totally worth it but there are financial benefits to living in the uk
as well chief among them the nhs you don't have to pay for private health care on a monthly basis
the state takes care of it for you now there are things that are taken things being money here that
are taken out of your paycheck every month but once that is taken care of you don't even get the
money so you don't feel like you're partying with it that's it you do have to pay extra for dentist
appointments and stuff like that but on the whole it is very affordable very well managed and we
love the nhs here all those expenses come to 95 pounds a month and don't worry we are just getting
started because our next category is subscriptions none of these are directly related to living in
london but they are the kinds of expenses that people with a lifestyle that's similar to mine
tend to have number one i paid 10 pounds to voxy they're my phone provider i get i don't even know
six gigabytes of internet or something like that it's a it's a pretty sweet deal next up
we've got lightroom now this is quite a lot of money i paid 10 pounds for it on a monthly basis
but i use it to edit my photos from my instagram which by the way you should totally follow
epidemic sound again this is very me specific it is a big library of royalty-free music which i use
on my video you probably beautiful isn't it worth every penny next up we've got email hosting again
very specific to me i pay four pounds 60 for this it's called the google suite next up we've got two
wildly unnecessary ones but a lot of us probably have them and that is a a netflix subscription
which in the uk costs nine pounds 99 and then a spotify subscription which costs 8.99 these prices
by the way vary based on where you are so for example my parents in the czech republic pay a lot
less money than me um what i'm saying here is if you have a card and an address in another country
maybe think about it okay i'm not saying i'm just saying three more left i've got website hosting
which costs me seven pounds 20 every month again a very me expense then we've got icloud which um i
just paid to boost my storage to 200 gigabytes and that cost me two pounds 49 and finally something
that for me is like a really nice to have that i could drop if i had to is online language classes
i take classes on a website called italki it is super useful i've mentioned it in basically all my
language videos i have left a discount link in the description below if you want to check it out one
more that i should mention that i'm not paying for currently but i hopefully will once we're out of
lockdown is the gym so i used to go to a local gym that is actually extremely affordable and it costs
22.99 which is kind of wild especially in london my subscriptions come to 85 and 27 pence
every month which frankly isn't great so maybe doing this video is going to be really good for
me maybe it's going to force me to reevaluate my budget in fact i already am and i feel terrible
our next category is travel and this has obviously been deeply impacted by all the lockdowns we've
had over the past year but on a regular basis and the life i hope will return to someday i
would buy something called a monthly travel card i typically get a zone one two three travel card and
that costs 167 pounds and 10 pounds so it is not cheap and if you do want to lessen the burden of
traveling on public transport one thing you can do is stick with buses now it will require a lot more
time and a lot more patience because they tend to have a fair few delays but here is the math if you
travel by bus only you will pay four pounds and 65 pence per day which adds up to 87 pounds and 60
pence per month now if you have a car we're moving on to the opposite side of the spectrum that will
cost you a lot of money and i'm not just talking about the upkeep and the insurance and the gas i'm
talking about physically going into central london we have something called the congestion charge
and it adds up to 15 pounds per day our next category is a big one food now i say it's big
not because it necessarily needs to cost a lot of money but because there's so much variability for
example some people will be very content just getting the basics cooking at home and that's
it and that way you can save a ton of money but if you're uh like me for example sadly you might
end up spending a lot of money on this i have put together all of my shopping for the past month the
total sum was 122 pounds and 52 pence and that's just on groceries i then proceeded to add up my
takeaways and obviously currently i'm not eating out in restaurants but if we weren't in lockdown
i suspect i would be spending even more because when you go out to a restaurant you might get a
bottle of wine etc we all know how it is i spent 87 pounds and 70 pence on takeaways last month
and i should point out here that it was february which is a much shorter month so i don't even
that brings us to a grand total of 210 pounds and 22 pence for food which yeah is not great but
it is what it is when in lockdown sometimes you just get to treat yourself and um i do want to
point out here that obviously your bill for food can be just so much lower it could literally be
half that if you really really stuck to a budget okay we're gonna talk about salaries and how
affordable london really is vis-a-vis how much you make in a bit but before that i want to finish
with my last category which is just other they're these random expenses that you have on a monthly
basis they can be clothes they can be i don't know medicine or skin care the grand total was
76 pounds and 44 pence for my other spending okay and now the moment we've all been waiting for
the grand total i don't really want a drum roll for this but let's have one for dramatic effect
my hands are sweating i mean this is going to be terrible the grand total is it's 1434 pounds and
one pence oh dear yeah now it's a standalone figure that looks scary but it doesn't really
mean much we need to compare it to a base salary and in order to do that i have prepared three
different salary levels to compare the sums number one i want to start with the average london salary
glasgow thinks that the average salary in london is 40 732 pounds let's have a look at how much
that leaves us with on a monthly basis after tax i just typed the numbers in here and here's our
figure 2 612 pounds every month after tax and now for the fun bit let's subtract my monthly spending
from this figure what we are left with is 1178 pounds which frankly is pretty promising that to
me doesn't look bad at all you still have plenty left over for savings which i think is something
that's very very important you always want to have an emergency fund in case the world goes
bonkers like it just did but there are many many many people in london working for minimum wage the
london living wage at the moment is 10 pounds 85 pence let's say we times that by 35 which can be
the average work week for somebody who is working on that wage we get to a grand total of 19 747
per year this annual salary will leave us with 142 pounds per month after tax let's take my spending
figure and subtract it and look what we're left with we're left with a deficit of 12 pounds and
three pence now of course if that was your annual salary you would adjust your spending habits
and you would cut out a lot of the luxuries however let's bear in mind the fact that i
am single and i don't have children there are so many single parents out there who do have to make
this money stretch not just for themselves but for other people they are supporting so yes it
can be difficult to live in london for our final salary scenario let's look at a different source
here they listed the average salary for women aged 22 to 29 which is the bracket i fall into
based on this scenario we would go home with 1704 pounds every month after tax and when we subtract
my spending we are left with 269 pounds and 97 pence there are a lot of people in london in their
late 20s early 30s that are covering their bills every month but struggling to save money so that
is definitely something to bear in mind if you are thinking of moving to london another thing
to bear in mind is that yes renting can seem affordable but buying is near impossible for
anyone our age which makes us very different from the previous generation and there you have it this
is how much living in london costs me on a monthly basis obviously these figures will vary month to
month if you have any other questions about living in london do let me know and i might make a video
answering them thanks for watching and i put out new videos every friday so see you then
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