Soldato
I found 40 hrs a strain, live to work or work to live?
How do people afford to work in expensive areas of the country?
- Thread starter Stu999
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60 hours work a week all your life is just not worth living in my opinion. That only gives you a couple of hours at most each day to do your own thing.
Soldato
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Caerphilly and nearby are now spillover for cardiff people. It's very obvious, because I meet them daily.
Some people are forced to make that choice on cost grounds alone. Some probably for lifestyle.
There is a ridiculous amount of building going on in Caerphilly at the moment. Weirdly, ONS reports a near 2% drop in population (though this is county) between 2011 and 2021.
Especially not to just get on the playing field.
60 hours a week should be getting you ahead. Like you say, that FIRE thing people do.
Its a lovely county too. But man, getting anywhere in the rural area is a chore!
I spend a lot of time in the rural areas of Caerphilly county. So many trees and woods/coeds around. If it was closer to the sea I'd happily live there
My headline suggestion is that it’s not worth living in a location / situation if it makes your lifestyle difficult compared to other options.
Other options could be:
- look for a job in a location that affords a better lifestyle
- try to lodge with friends and family if possible (but be respectful of boundaries)
If you absolutely must subject yourself to harsh conditions, strive for more lucrative earning opportunities that would improve your quality of life.
Caporegime
Unfortunately the UK isn't a first world country any more for the vast majority of people. My first cousin lives in America and her brother in law is earning high 6 figures as a trucker and I am nowhere near that.
Yeah USA is insane.
Unfortunately the UK is going towards the USA for state support (ie little) but salaries of a big state (ie low).
I do worry for the long term what that means. With a dwindling pension pot, stagnant wages, rotting public services and a basically broken NHS...
How can you fix all that when you can't exactly tap PAYE up?
Seems like no one will go after wealth.
The maths doesn't stack up to me
Up in the grim north, mostly. Plenty of rough areas mind you.
I live in a "decent" town on the outskirts of Liverpool, very easy commute into the city for work (trains every 15 minutes), and even then our 3-bed detached, new-ish build at about 100sq.m was still £250k. Way more affordable, especially if you're able to WFH. Annual pass on Merseyrail is £800 at the moment, which on face value is quite high for the small area it covers (not even the whole network) but when you consider mortgage costs in London/SE I'm sure that'd be a very welcome trade for a lot of people, or not even needed with WFH.
The price disparity is pretty nuts. A 100 sq m 3 bed detached in nice bits of surrey would likely be north of £800k
Soldato
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If i'd done that FIRE thing i would have missed out on a lot of fun in my youth. No beer- no thanks!
I'm guessing having kids also makes that way more difficult.
Also, my divorce was quite expensive...
I agree. It's already happening. Most job adverts for London based IT roles I see, have at maximum the office presence set to hybrid 2 days a week. An annual season ticket into London on the train for me is just shy of 6K. If my office told us all to start coming back into office more than a couple of days a week, I'd instantly be looking for a new job. I won't ever put myself through 4/5 days a week in London commute again in my lifetime unless the pay was huge.
I think it is already happening and I worry that I'll miss the boat of cheaper housing more north or west. Things will start to go up in those areas and London will probably level out more. This will probably take a decade or so though.
I feel for my and others children living in the UK nowadays. I just hope they are able to go on to live a fulfilling and enjoyable life. If that has to be in the same house as parents for a long time, that will have to be the way.
Yeah. Such a shame it comes to that but I totally get it.
I agree. It's already happening. Most job adverts for London based IT roles I see, have at maximum the office presence set to hybrid 2 days a week. An annual season ticket into London on the train for me is just shy of 6K. If my office told us all to start coming back into office more than a couple of days a week, I'd instantly be looking for a new job. I won't ever put myself through 4/5 days a week in London commute again in my lifetime unless the pay was huge.
I think it is already happening and I worry that I'll miss the boat of cheaper housing more north or west. Things will start to go up in those areas and London will probably level out more. This will probably take a decade or so though.
I feel for my and others children living in the UK nowadays. I just hope they are able to go on to live a fulfilling and enjoyable life. If that has to be in the same house as parents for a long time, that will have to be the way.
Yeah. Such a shame it comes to that but I totally get it.
My parents were good parents.
But in the end I had to rent.
I constantly felt like a kid at home. And because they charged rent (not much, few hundred a month, but no bills/food) and I had to be working I was the garden all the time and when I was asked, it was just too much.
This obviously massively set me back. As I started renting.
Many don't even have the option. I guess we will get used to it. It may even not be a bad thing. It sure seems like it though. As an introvert I found it very very difficult.
This is my thinking. Long term, with technology , remote working and AI etc I don't see why so much value will be given to working in or around London. I mean, other than the wages, what is the advantage of living in or around London? Expensive houses and ever increasing overcrowding? Shopping (another thing that will end up primarily online) ?
I do think London and the south east is in a massive bubble house price wise, and no one is thinking long term and how work/employment will look in the future. Modern technology has made most of the reasons for being there or nearby defunct. You can even live stream a London opera or ballet from a cinema screen nearby to you!
I too expect a countrywide evening out price wise. It will take a while yet for sure, but at some point the penny is going to drop in terms of why everyone is commuting to London to sit at a computer...
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Habits. Atmosphere of the city. Nightlife. Being with people.
These are all reasons I guess, but for most, they are not enough.
Yeh, I get that but it will come to the point where that stuff just won't be worth the cost.
I just don't see how the house prices and the constant rate of increase they have been going at is in anyway sustainable unless wage growth increases enormously.
Soldato
I don't get the London attraction but my daughter and son in law love it. It's all about eating out, comedy clubs d and d nights, theatre , dinner party's she hops straight on the tube to central London on her office days.
She's not a poor person like me though
She's not a poor person like me though
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Look at the changes in bottom quartile of takehome pay not just the median salary. When I looked at this a while back, what I found was young people (on lower incomes typically) were disproportionately better off in terms of wage inflation compared to older people on higher wages iirc. Essentially the bottom rungs have been raised significantly due to changes in min wage and taxation, so the headline of inflation vs wage growth kind of masks how much takehome pay for the lower paid has risen.
edit: OK I found the investigation I did last time for reference: https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/threads/mortgage-rate-rises.18954903/post-36457077
I was only looking at median wage, takehome pay would a lot more interesting as I expect the rise in takehome will be well in excess of 50% the bottom rungs. But you get the point, even that 30% rise in median you mention will be heavily skewed by poor rises for the medium/high earners and not illustrate just how much wages have risen at the bottom end, which is what is relevant for the case being discussed around minimum wagers.
Student loans got mentioned earlier. But not everyone has a student loan. Of those who do have student loans, you'd imagine a fair number are earning above minimum wage, which was the scenario being discussed. I imagine the loan repayments are tiny (or even zero?) if you are on minimum wage anyway due to the minimum earnings threshold to have to make repayments anyway.
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Everything eventually reaches a tipping point. Our whole economic cycle is a never ending boom and bust.
It's obviously very difficult to know exactly when, but average house prices just carry on being a bigger and bigger multiple of average salaries, and that obviously cannot just keep getting larger and larger.