Living / Livable Wage ?

[Basher]

£120pcm Food

and earning less than £18k, I've survived quite happily the past 3 months

£30 a week for food?

 

[tsinc80697]

£30 a week for food?

Well I think I've done 1 big tesco/asda shop a month which comes to around £70-80 and then I've bought smaller things when needed. ie bread/milk/cereal

oh and no, I don't live off rice and beans before anyone says!
I go through a good number of chicken breasts and mince, much more than frozen food and a lot of the time I tend to make too much so I could probably save bit more money there!

 

[fonzee]

whats the job?

18k will be fine to live on down here. lad at work here is on 11k pro rata and survives fine! he's got quite a commute too. just need to use your head and manage your finances...

 

[bigchez]

£18k a year in Cornwall is quite a lot of money - the cost of living is lower there.

Really? I appreciate renting is cheaper than London, but it still aint that cheap to live there, mainly as you need to drive everywhere. Food costs the same as rest of country, beer costs same, fuel costs same, clothes the same etc. My bro is on £24k in Cornwall and doesn't see himself as rolling in it despite being pretty careful with cash.

Although it doesn't look so far on a map, Cornwall is a very long way from anywhere. It took me about 5 hours fast driving to go from Warwickshire to central Cornwall last time I did the trip.

Come on, fast driving? Can do sub 3 hour door to door from Brum/Solihull to Perranporth or 3h 15m to Falmouth leaving work at 6 on a Friday night.

 

[[TW]Fox]

Come on, fast driving? Can do sub 3 hour door to door from Brum/Solihull to Perranporth or 3h 15m to Falmouth leaving work at 6 on a Friday night.

Then you must drive like a **** and be an accident waiting to happen?

It takes 3 hours, perhaps 2.5 hours at a push if its quiet, to get from my house to my girlfriends place SOUTH of Brum. There is no way you can safely do Falmouth to Solihul in 3 hours 15 minutes!

 

[Basher]

Can do sub 3 hour door to door from Brum/Solihull

Really

That's ~250 miles in less than 3 hours?

 

[bigchez]

Then you must drive like a **** and be an accident waiting to happen?

It takes 3 hours, perhaps 2.5 hours at a push if its quiet, to get from my house to my girlfriends place SOUTH of Brum. There is no way you can safely do Falmouth to Solihul in 3 hours 15 minutes!

Thats an average of 90 - hardly unsafe down a motorway and an A road?

 

[a1ex2001]

Really

That's ~250 miles in less than 3 hours?

All on his private race track. You know the funny shape one that runs up and down the country

 

[borich_planner]

heres an idea of what i'm paying for my place for everything

-420 Rent
-35 phone
-35 Gas
-25 electricity
-31 water
-12 phone
-7.5 Internet
-47 sky
-91 Council Tax
-60 fuel
-100 food

All in all I spent 863 a month on everything, its a two bed flat new build. even on 18k you could afford my place. I take home 2k a month so renting gives me the freedom of my own place which is priceless and allows me to save as well.

Borich

 

[jamief]

Thats an average of 90 - hardly unsafe down a motorway and an A road?

An AVERAGE of 90. You cannot sustain an average of 90 over 3 hours unless the roads are completely devoid of traffic.

 

[Basher]

Thats an average of 90 - hardly unsafe down a motorway and an A road?

Of course it's unsafe. To get an AVERAGE of 90 you'd have to be driving like a complete tool.

 

[teh_captain]

I'd be interested to see how I get on too; i've just landed myself a job in the centre of Bristol, and will be moving out of Devon where I currently live with my folks (pay £200 p/m house keep).

I'll be on 19k (on £16.5 atm), and initially be moving into my GF's mum's house for a couple of months until I find a place of my own. I was meant to move in with one of my mates in his flat, but he bailed on me and he's letting to a girl instead

I currently drive to Bristol every weekend which is about 200 miles, and also the commute to work and back is about 40 miles every day - in total it's around £200 a month just on petrol! I'll be saving all of that because i'll be able to get the bus to work!

 

[Andrew_McP]

Long term invetments ( god why do people always say this ) , do I want to be paying rent at 65 when I retire ? No i do not . Short term renting is fine ,long term it is money down the drain .

Mortgages are, in general, only a sort of enforced savings scheme. Anyone with their head screwed on can beat the system long term *if* they have the discipline to save the difference between rent and (mortgage + hidden costs of ownership). Most people lack the discipline though. But you'll usually end up paying at least twice the price you offer for a house... once to pay it, and again to buy the money to buy it.

If you can rent affordably for quite a while and save hard, you can bring down the overall cost of owning a home considerably.

Of course if renting is more expensive than buying (as it was when I bought my flat) then buying ASAP makes a lot of sense. But the renting v buying decision is far, far more complicated than the 'renting is dead money' brigade would have it. That way lies madness... as the last decade has proved.

Andrew McP

 

[[TW]Fox]

Thats an average of 90 - hardly unsafe down a motorway and an A road?

An AVERAGE of 90, yes. To get an average speed of 90mph you will need to have long periods of sustained three figure speeds. Between 6-9pm? Yea, whatever. Especially when you get off the A30 and its all single carriageway roads with villages. If you just drove at 90 wherever possible you'd have a much lower average.

You are either a liar or a wreckless driver

 

[Wiggins]

Well we recently got some mortgage prices and quite frankly, we are staying put in the rented market for a while longer. I have around a 30% deposit for a new home since selling my old home and renting is giving us more cash to save at present.

Many people do say it's dead money but a mortgage does not give you the opportunity to up and go somewhere else as easy as renting does. Plus we are adding more to our savings than we would have done with another mortgage.

We are even tempted to move to France to live with the wife's parents if things in this country carry on the way they are.

Edit: Dammit, wrong thread.

 

[R.O.S.S.I]

An AVERAGE of 90, yes. To get an average speed of 90mph you will need to have long periods of sustained three figure speeds. Between 6-9pm? Yea, whatever. Especially when you get off the A30 and its all single carriageway roads with villages. If you just drove at 90 wherever possible you'd have a much lower average.

You are either a liar or a wreckless driver

He's a liar, let it go, this is completely off topic lol.

 

[Mad old tory]

I'm on about 28k and wouldn't be able to live on my own. That's in London thought and I do manage to put about 250 a month away when I'm on a full month's wages (Currently on a 4 day week for the rest of this month). I do live a little though - a few nights out a month, meals out probably once a week or so and buying a few bits of clothing each month. I reckon your rent for a flat on your own would be about the same as mine is in a 4 bed here, so if you're careful should be ok. Houseshare would be my advice though.

 

[bledd]

christ, i can't believe how much some of you pay in rent..

i refuse to pay over £250 a month in cardiff, live with friends or your gf

currently on 21k, paying £230 a month rent


21k is nothing special, but I live quite comfortably on it

 

[kiwi]

I lived okay on 12k last year during my placement year without paying council tax, so it can be done.

 

[A2Z]

Im on 17k and I live at home and pay £250/month rent to my parent...after everything I end up without about £400 to save.

This is my first full time job after finishing uni and took a while to get in this climate...so not too bad...but really want to move up a few pay grades as I want to buy a few things