Is Living in the UK good?
Podcast + Transcription
Hi guys,
Welcome to the new podcast.
I thought I would talk a little bit about living in the UK today, because I know it’s something that most of you sent me questions about it on Instagram, so I thought I’d tell you a little bit about living in England, living in London and other places.
So, basically, if you think about London, a lot of people think London is England, and it is totally wrong. London is almost a different country in comparison to the rest of England.
The Salaries there, the housing, the job opportunities, the culture. It’s all just totally different, so don’t go to London, or even don’t come to England thinking that London is the same as the rest of the country because it’s just not. It’s just totally, totally different.
Living in the UK
London itself is one the most popular tourist destinations in the world, and for good reason. With so much history, culture, the architecture around the city, you don’t have to walk for a long time before you come across another landmark.
Big Ben, Nelson’s Column and Buckingham Palace, to name just a few really are within a reasonably short walk from each other, and Tower Bridge being 15 minutes away on the underground. It’s still very very close.
But what is it like to actually live in London?
Why do so many people even go there?
Like I said before, the city is beautiful. It is overflowing with history and attractions that can keep you busy for days and days and days, and the mixture of cultures here is amazing: you can walk down streets in the city of London and not even hear a word of English sometimes.
Many people who visit however are truly shocked by the price of everything. Like I said, London is just so much more expensive than anywhere else. Apart from the UK having the most expensive currency to buy anyway (the dollar is usually around $1.50 to £1) the prices of London are also inflated over the rest of the country average.
A pint of beer will cost you around £5 (£3 in Birmingham). A hotel might cost £60 a night (£40 in Birmingham). Even Mcdonald’s in the city centre are more expensive than anywhere else. An attraction will usually cost around £25 per person. This goes for most museums, galleries, and entertainment like the “London Eye” and stuff like that.
So if you’re coming to have a good time and really see what the city has for you, make sure you bring enough cash!
From a Londoner’s point of view
I was born in London, and lived there for 25 years before moving to a different city.
London is a metropolis like any other, with a lot of people, traffic and pollution (although this has improved a little bit over the last decade). It is expensive to rent, and almost impossible to buy nowadays a house in the region due to the high demand for housing close to the city, but even as you move further out, towards the edges of London, the prices still remain extremely high (still nearly twice as much as pretty much anywhere else in the country).
If you haven’t figured it out, I am not a fan of London, but I know many people love the city life, so this isn’t really a fair comparison.
I will talk about being a Londoner in general then. I rarely travelled into the city when I lived there. I lived in Walthamstow (North East London) and it is about 1 hour on the underground (or tube) to Oxford Circus. The shops are more expensive, the food is more expensive, and the range of shops is no better than you find in any other shopping centre a little closer to home.
I never felt the need to go into the city except on a few occasions where there are specialist shops that can better serve you. There is a number of sound hardware shops, and music shops on Tottenham Court Road that have a much better selection than anywhere else, and the occasional tourist trip to see the sights is essential for anyone. I think I have been to the city 5 times in total, and if you have already seen the attractions, there is not really anything new.
I think you will agree (if you have been there) that once you have seen Big Ben, it is in fact just a big tower with a bell that chimes every 15 minutes. Buckingham Palace is incredible, but once you have walked down the Mall, and seen the spectacular front gates, there is nothing much else to see if you visit there again.
A city for the foreigners
Well, London is an amazing place to find a job, and it is quite easy to find someone else from your country (no matter where you’re from) that you will be able to share a house or reduce your costs in other ways. I think because of the possibility of “cost-cutting” with housemates and such, London is an obvious choice for people who come here to make money. I think for a lot of people though, when the “honeymoon period” wears off, London gets a little tiring. It is a 24h city and it never sleeps. Even at 3am you will still see cars on the roads, and people walking around, but this gives you little time for anything except work. The neighbours are usually quite noisy, and you get tired of having your car or motorbike damaged, or even stolen, and London is itself quite a violent city in comparison to the rest of the country. There are many areas that you should not visit by any means (Hackney is one of them), and I would not live in any of the areas in London just because of this reason. It’s just far too violent, far too much crime for my liking.
Where else is there?
Well, London is the capital and the obvious choice destination for people who want to make a lot of money there. The problem is that your wages get spent on the costs of living in London, a bit like a paradox if you ask me. You earn more money, but you end up spending twice as much money on what you would if you weren’t living in London
If you want to work in couriering (as a lot of Brazilians do) you can probably make just as much money in any of the big cities (Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool) often pulling in the same amount of money in deliveries, but halving your cost in rent, or for the same money you can move out of your bedroom in a shared house and get your own space with a garden, a few bedrooms.
If you get sick of the city life, there are many other places to live. I know a lot of people who live in large towns that can offer you work opportunities where you would earn less, but pay much less for your living costs, or if you like beach life, you could live on the coast. There are many towns and cities on the coast that can offer the same very successful summer months, but usually in the winter, being (you know) very touristy you’ve got the beach and stuff like that, in the winter it’s a little bit slower.
What I want to say is this… London is not the UK… and the UK is not London.
It’s a bit like saying Rio de Janeiro is Brazil. If I went to Brazil, and went to Rio de Janeiro, it would be all the stereotypes… the christ, the beach, and bars and parties and all the rest of it… But as soon as you move out of Rio de Janeiro, it’s all a little bit different. The pace of life is a little bit slower, and the cost of renting things is a lot cheaper, the food is usually a little bit better.
So what I want to say is this… London is not similar to the rest of the country, but that doesn’t mean that London is the only place you can ever hope of getting a job.
There are loads of places you can look to get a job in the UK, or to live in the UK. And yes the salaries will be usually less than if you were in London, but at the same time, the rent in London is well over double in most places to the rest of the country.
I know for example a couple that rents a bedroom in London and they’re paying £800 for a single bedroom, that’s per month but still £800. If you earn £2000 that’s half of your salary pretty much just in rent. And everything else on top of that.
You’ve got your car insurance which will be more expensive because you’re in London and the crime rate is higher. You’ve got your petrol. Petrol per litre is more expensive than the rest of the country. You’ve got things like your food is more expensive, delivery costs are more expensive. It just all adds, and it ends up being a very high sum of money compared to anywhere else.
If I were to live in Manchester for example. I could probably pick up a 2 bedroom house with a decent garden for about £700. If I were to live in the same conditions, If I were to live in a studio flat or rent a room in a shared house or something like that, you would probably expect to pay about £3–400 depending on the area in manchester.
So where you’re paying £800 in London, or £3–400 in Manchester, the salary is going to be about the same because you know the delivery or whatever you’re doing, you’re not going to see that much of a difference. So what I would suggest is maybe move out of London, to a smaller city, earn the same amount of money, but pay half of your rent. You know…
And, if you think about professional jobs, trained jobs. Not Cleaning or couriering or those jobs you can get with very little English.
Let’s say you want to work in a bank, or you want to work in an audit company, or you want to work in insurance, or technology. Manchester today is a huge technology hub. In fact in some ways, it’s even better than London because you’ve got a lot of people that are technically minded, and they all work there. A lot of the banks in London actually have their tech centres in Manchester. So Manchester is a fantastic place for technology today. They got a lot of banks, they’ve got a lot of everything in Manchester. It’s like a little london. And Birmingham is much the same. Birmingham is bigger than Manchester but it’s still quite industrial so you have got a lot of factories, a lot of warehouses, distribution centres, so it’s a different type of economy. But still, you can find jobs anywhere in England; it doesn’t have to be in London, but the advantage of not living in London is that you are going to pay a lot less money for your living costs; for your rent, and your food.
On top of that you will probably find that the traffic is a damn sight better too. Unless you live outside of the city and you end up commuting, then you’re probably going to spend 20 minutes to get to work. Whereas in london it can take you an hour, an hour and a half. You will have to get the tube which is ram packed with people in usual situations in the rush hour.
And that’s it, London is great for young people, and it’s great for people who have already got their houses, and they’re established, and they don’t need to think about getting on the property ladder. But if you’re trying to start a family and you haven’t already got your property in London, then I would definitely look somewhere else, because other places you can usually find a calmer life, a quieter life and still earn more or less the same kind of money. There you go!
What do you think?
Do you think the UK is very “just” London, or do you think that London is the best place to live?
