Surviving in London on £1000 a Month

bum said:
So recently I've bought my very own flat in London with the help from parents through shared ownership.

I have always lived in London and I am working in London. Based on my current needs it actually workout a few hundred pounds cheaper compared to if I were to rent the same type of apartment.

It's not bad considering that I'd be getting my own place and contributing to the equity via mortgage, rather than having everything go towards the rent itself.

Anyhow, its still very tough as after mortgage, rent and service charges I'd be left with only about £1000.00 a month to spend.

Any tips on surviving with such figure in London?
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Have you considered earning more money?
 
I can survive on 400-500 after all bills, rent, debt (more than minimum payment). That's even with drinking all the time and eating take out every week and buying lunch at work, however i never go out on weekends and spend money. if you go out weekends you can easily spend up to £100 if you paying for someone else or go to nice restaurants. Definitely not difficult, in fact its easy to live off £700 disposable.
 
Haggisman said:
To be honest, once you've taken care of housing, living costs in London aren't really going to be significantly different from anywhere else in the country.
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When I was down there last for a conference a pint of cider was costing me about £5. Up here I grudge having to pay £3 when not on a 'student night'.

Edit:
Although I wish I had £700 disposable income. I manage on less than £200 a month right now. However I'm a poor PhD student that stretched really far to get a mortgage at 21 in a place considered to be expensive for Scotland.
 
AFK_Matrix said:
I can recommend YNAB (You Need a Budget) to help you get a budget/plan setup so that you can see where everything is going and thus not go overdrawn/get in debt. It has a 34 day free trial so give it a go and see what you think. I would also recommend watching the support videos and if possible attending a live webinar which is also free and you can also win a copy of YNAB. It's been great for me as while not in debt I always struggled to 100% know if I would have enough to pay the CC off and would never have enough to pay for car insurance etc in full.

Now after over a year of using it I have a lot more savings and can pay for all my insurances in full.
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Thank you! I'll take a look at this.
 
Muz333 said:
When I was down there last for a conference a pint of cider was costing me about £5. Up here I grudge having to pay £3 when not on a 'student night'.

Edit:
Although I wish I had £700 disposable income. I manage on less than £200 a month right now. However I'm a poor PhD student that stretched really far to get a mortgage at 21 in a place considered to be expensive for Scotland.
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But assuming your living condition would be considerably better than your peers?
 
bum said:
Thank you! I'll take a look at this.
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Np just thought I would suggest it as even if you have £700 a month spare it doesn't mean you will necessarily save it. Especially if you are coming down from a higher wage etc and your not used to bills for a house etc. I have seen people on moneysavingexpert with massive incomes and there still in 10s of thousands of pounds of debt. As like you they thought oh I have a massive income and don't need to watch what I spend on.

I would say it takes a little getting used to YNAB espeically if you are used to a conventional way of budgetting. But do stick to their methodology and how to use YNAB as it does work!
 
bum said:
So recently I've bought my very own flat in London with the help from parents through shared ownership.

I have always lived in London and I am working in London. Based on my current needs it actually workout a few hundred pounds cheaper compared to if I were to rent the same type of apartment.

It's not bad considering that I'd be getting my own place and contributing to the equity via mortgage, rather than having everything go towards the rent itself.

Anyhow, its still very tough as after mortgage, rent and service charges I'd be left with only about £1000.00 a month to spend.

Any tips on surviving with such figure in London?
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that's more than enough? I live with my brother and after rent, food, bills etc(total £1500/month) we're fine!
 
bum said:
Sorry I wasn't being clear before. When I said 5 times I meant 5 times to my current £700 disposal income (after bills), which makes it around 3.6k on a monthly basis after tax.

However, as I am working as a contractor, there will be time when there's no work, such as Christmas and New Year.

Also, I would need to rent. Based on my current need I'll have to rent at least a 1 bed apartment, which in London it would cost around 1.2k a month minimum (unless of course I live like a student again where I share houses with people)

So I changed my job from being a unstable (but well paid) contractor to a permanent employee.

Being permanently employed means it'll be much easier to get a mortgage and the job is much more stable.
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load of tosh! we manage to rent a small house for £1k! with 2 beds, living room, kitchen, bath, garden etc.. unless you want to live very central then yeah, bend over.. but don't say that this is how much it takes to live in london.
 
To be fair, I don't think £1000/month after mortgage/rent is a whole lot of cash.

After mortgage and childcare, we're left with comfortably more than £2k/month, but I still don't have a lot of discretionary cash to spend. And I don't live in London/South East. That's covering 2 adults and 2 under-5s, though.
 
cheesyboy said:
After mortgage and childcare, we're left with comfortably more than £2k/month, but I still don't have a lot of discretionary cash to spend.
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Err, yes you do have lots of discretionary cash to spend you maybe need to prioritise things a little differently and realise there is a difference between the word 'need' and 'want'. I am not knocking you I am just saying we all have different priorities and in a thread with 'surviving' in the title we can safely remove a lot of the 'wants' and keep it to what we actually 'need'. After rent, bills and education (eg uni costs) I am managing on a lot less than that and I have 5 kids and I don't exactly live in a cheap area and we have a good life.
 
grudas said:
load of tosh! we manage to rent a small house for £1k! with 2 beds, living room, kitchen, bath, garden etc.. unless you want to live very central then yeah, bend over.. but don't say that this is how much it takes to live in london.
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Where are you because London is a term used to describe everywhere within 50 miles of the centre by some people.
 
Xordium said:
Err, yes you do have lots of discretionary cash to spend you maybe need to prioritise things a little differently and realise there is a difference between the word 'need' and 'want'. I am not knocking you I am just saying we all have different priorities and in a thread with 'surviving' in the title we can safely remove a lot of the 'wants' and keep it to what we actually 'need'. After rent, bills and education (eg uni costs) I am managing on a lot less than that and I have 5 kids and I don't exactly live in a cheap area and we have a good life.
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To be fair, you're mostly right - I didn't include bills, though. I don't buy stuff for myself or go out very often at all (so discretionary personal spending), but we do have enough to cover the majority of what we want to do with the children.

Luxuries are going to be in short supply on £1k/month, though.
 
Well, £1,000/month is a long way from the £60k someone recently (can't remember the thread) was telling us was the 'bare minimum' required to live in London :p
 
chanjy said:
Well, £1,000/month is a long way from the £60k someone recently (can't remember the thread) was telling us was the 'bare minimum' required to live in London :p
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I don't get those people.. jeez I have many friends who live on 14k/year :o
 
I have a lot of travel costs and 1k would cover everything including going out. I'm spending about that in a typical month.
 
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