Monthly outgoings

[PeterNem]

Hi all,

I'm trying to budget for the kind of place I can afford to live based on my sallary when I graduate. I realise the following won't be particularly accurate, but should give me figures of roughly the right order of magnitude!

What would be ace is if anyone who lives in an "average" area with "average" consumption could give me a rough idea of what their household spends per month on:

Council tax
Contents insurance
Electricity
Gas
Water
Landline (just rental, minimal calls)

Odds are I'd be looking at a 2 or 3 bed semi in somewhere like St Albans if that haas much impact on things like council tax (this is one thing I might actually be able to find on the local govt website actually).

All my other expenses I can already predict quite accurately (tv liscence, car insurance/tax/servicing, petrol, mobile phone useage, food shopping etc etc).

 

[PeterNem]

I don't think that you'll get anything in St Albans (even a 1 bed flat) for much under £125,000.

I'll have a flick through the St Albans local paper tonight but I think St Albans is out of the range of an average graduate salary.

Hi VIRII, in response to your points, I'd be looking at renting a 2 bed place and having a mate go halves on the rent (at least initially until I get a feel for the area).

I'm starting on a 32k sallary with a 10k starting bonus so shouldn't have too much problem between two of us paying about 1k per month rent.

In terms of property, I've been looking at the sorts of thing listed on this page: http://www.findaproperty.com/area.aspx?areaid=0352&opt=prop&salerent=1&bedrooms=2&abeds=1&type1=1

It's more the bills I'm interested in than the rent etc, as it's quite easy to find out the type of rent you're likely to pay in a given area. Everyone who has given ideas on what they pay for gas/electric etc has been a great help.

So far I've come up with the following as a rough idea. I'm just racking my brain to see if I've missed anything. The one thing I haven't included is contributions to the employee share plan or something like that, but it's something I'd opt into based on what I have left after having lived there a few months and likely pay in just a couple of % of my sallery per month, and perhaps the same with a pension. I'd then try and save as much as I could from what's left.

If anything I may have the Electric and gas estimates a bit high for 2 people, but I'd rather over-estimate than under.

 

[PeterNem]

It is a fair bit I guess, but I'd rather be over estimating than under.

Also consider I'm guessing you live with a partner and probably spend most the time in the same room etc, eat together and so on.

I'd be living with a mate and maybe quite a bit of the time spending time leading our own lives, cooking seperately etc. So, it'd probably not be far off to nearly double energy usage.

You might have 1 computer and 1 tv, we'd have two of each. 2 sets of bedroom lights on in the evenings, two lots of cooking being done etc etc.

 

[PeterNem]

Hi VIRII, thanks for the comments.

Line of work is IT consulting. I had a year out with a company and was lucky enough to be offered a job back with them upon graduation, and also offered a starting sallary above their regular grad sallary due to my year experience.

This is all looking quite a bit into the future - I don't start until October, although would probably want to move into somewhere a month before this to get settled in. At the moment I'm just trying to guage what kind of areas I should be looking at when I start to look seriously towards the Summer. I'd definately be interested in getting some feedback about areas in St. Albans nearer the time, so if it's okay will maybe email you at a later date (I see your address is in your trust account)

The car insurance is a bit annoying, i'd actually say at the moment given the car I drive (v6 mondeo) and my age (22, 2 years NCB) that it isn't too bad at the moment - I pay about £650 per year. Annoyingly trying 2 or 3 different postcodes in St Albans puts it up to £900 or £1k, despite the fact that I'm doing the quite as if I was 23 and had 3 years NCB (which touch wood I will when I move) - I guess I'm lucky that my home postcode is a small sleepy East Midlands village (very low risk) and that helps at the moment. I've not really shopped around though so could probably get that cheaper, again, it's just kind of "worst case".

Car insurance was one of the reasons I didn't want to live in greater London. I love my car and driving and wouldn't want to give up on that. Most of the areas in London I could afford to rent attracted car insurance quotes of £2k which was just stupid (probably as most the places in my price range in London were lacking parking, and parking on the street in London must attract a huge loading factor).

As for looking at different areas, that is something I'd definately like to do. Ideally I'd like to live just north of London with easy access to the M1/A1 as all my family friends live in the East Midlands and this will make it much easier for visiting. Another quite important point to consider is ideally it should be within a 30 min train journey to a London station. I beleive St. Albans is about 22 minutes to St. Pancras.

Someone else has mentioned Watford to me, and I shall certainly take a look there.

Hemel Hempstead I hadn't considered. Do you have any idea on what transport is like from there into London - is there a direct train service?

 

[PeterNem]

atpbx, my parents (and myself when I am home from Uni in the summer) live about 5 miles from Sleaford.

I'd love to be able to live there (cheap cost of living) but I guess at this early stage in my career it pays to initially go where the work is. My plan would be to perhaps eventually do free-lance consulting for smaller firms perhaps based in cities in the Midlands and therefore be able to live somewhere a bit more rural again when I properly "settle down".

Look at peterborough, or cambridge, as both are less than an hour from london on the train, and a HUGE amount of people commute to london from both.

While certainly doable, I think 2 hours a day on a train, plus time waiting around on a platform, getting to/from the stations etc etc could be a bit much on top of what at times could be long working days.

 

[PeterNem]

I believe St Albans goes straight to Kings cross

You're right, it does. Not sure why I said St. Pancras as I have a copy of the train timetable in front of me! One of the advantages of the Thameslink service is that it also carries on through the city and stops at the City Thameslink station which could be useful as I could then walk from there to work.

You can drop me an email anytime.

Thanks