What do you think is a good salary and why?

Absolutely. I can understand London living, sure. But for the rest of the UK, if you can't live on 17k - why not?

yeah, other parts of the country, 17k is piss easy to live on! Yeah!

I know right, I just took a quick look at non student rent prices in my area and you can get 1 bedroom flats or apartments for as cheap as £73 a week and 2 bedrooms for as cheap as £90 a week. That amount to just £3796-4680 a year for rent, then add around a grand on top for council tax. The say you spend £30 a week on food that's £1560, electric and gas let's say £40 a week (and that is above average at least in my experience) , that's £2080. TV licence £145.50 a year. Internet £120 a year, land-line can get as cheap as £6 a month (not really even a necessity any more, so not adding that to final figures, I don't actually know of any friends who actually pay for a landline since moving out from home). Phone contract, can get a good sim plan for £120 a year. Transport will differ per area so I'll just say £1000 a year just to be on the larger side. That all adds up to around £9300. Not sure if I missed any obvious expenses, I'm quite tired. But from what I've added up that leaves £7700 which leaves £641 disposable income a month!


I bet I've missed out something important to add to costs now :P

I wouldn't live in London simply because everything is over priced.

London flat prices for a couple are around 250 for somewhere scuzz and non central, 300 for a nicer but small one-bed or studio and 350 plus for anything actually nice. I check them quite a lot, because I like to dream (I'm a year 13 student).

I think 30 pounds a week on food is conservative - 50 at least.



Rent is high. very, very high.

Everything else is pretty much the same and it's worth it for the things that happen here, the diversity, the tube and the southbank. Also for the pride you get in saying that you live in london, and most of the people here are nice too.

I wouldn't live in London simply because everything is over priced.

Aye I was talking about costs outside of London or other notoriously expensive areas.

Going to have to disagree with you, I think £50 a week for food for a single person is ridiculous. I actually live on between £10-15 a week on food and I eat all the time! £30 a week for food is like a gold mine for me. Unless unnecessarily buying branded everything there is absolutely no need for a single persons food to be £50 a week, unless they have some expensive dietary requirements.

Really not a fan of London either, I'd hate to live there.

I love food and I love cooking - a salmon fillet and some noodles, as well as maybe some broccoli, will be about a fiver, just for dinner. Plus breakfast materials and something small for lunch - maybe 40 at the very least.

Why not?

I love food and cooking also, buy salmon in bulk for cheaper prices for freezing (if you don't mind freezing salmon, I know some people hate it) - I do prefer it fresh. Vegetables are very cheap, noodles cheap as chips as well. Still completely disagree with you, £40 is a lot. Besides I doubt you have salmon every day - but other stuff too… two tins of tomatoes, a couple of onions, already have a clove of garlic, some pasta, tins of tuna, olives and cheese would come to about 9ish, just for that. :P

I find when people say food is expensive or that they can;t afford food they often do the following:

-Buy everything branded from baked beans heinz… does that count? and milk own brand to orange juice own brand.
-Don't know how to cook I do.
-Don't know how to properly use all ingredients without wastage I eat a lot - but occasionally overestimate slightly on the pasta front.
-Don't adopt good shopping methods, such as buying ingredients each day rather than doing a large shop a week or every two weeks. People often spend a lot more doing this. Whenever I visit my SO at uni we buy for that evening's meal, and tomorrow's breakfast/lunch - but we eat everything.
-Buy more than they need and waste food as it goes off. hate when this happens to perfectly good tomatoes and milk at uni.
-Eat out a lot, or always buy lunches out rather than making their own. guilty of the second, but the tesco £3 meal deal is hard to beat to be fair.

everyone here is unbelievable
please think carefully about your post
please

It's too busy, don't like the atmosphere'at all, overpriced as hell and in my opinion not worth the price. Nothing to gain (that I care for) from living in London that I couldn't get in any other large city.

two characters.

£9 for that? Tesco, tinned chopped tomatoes are like 40p a can - had to get napolitana ones because they ran out of own brand - £1.00 for two, can get a pack of onion in aldi or lidl for about 69p live nowhere near either of those - but I guessed 60p, bag of pasta can get for as cheap as 29p no way - about a quid for half a kilo, but I'd use half of that, so it lasts for two goes, home bargins you can get a 4 pack of tuna cans (branded ones too) for £1.60 yeah, about that, no idea on olives as I hate the things 1.50 for a decent sized jar? nice to snack on too. :P cheese, I buy the big 900g blocks from aldi/lide for £3.99 aww fack, can't stand those. 500g = 4 quid ish.

your estimates: £8.87 (I used my olives estimate, but even cheapo ones (50p?) would be £7.87, which isn't far off 9 quid, to be fair.

my estimates: £9.70, maybe the olives are high, but hey.

Another thing I've found, people are often either too lazy or too proud to shop in cheaper stores whatever's nearest for me - waitrose on my parents cash, sainsbury's on my own, aldi for the things I care less about (not saying this is necessarily the case for you). Though I do understand sometimes the stores aren't always in the area...though you can get deliveries. they cost money, don't they? and I quite like the walk

Yeah that counts :P I genuinely can't taste the difference. Though I rarely eat beans. heinz is the only way.

Aye, I wasn't implying you in particular can't cook, it's just a trend I have noticed. no, fair enough. out of 16 sharing the kitchen I'm the only one who cooks (and I don't even live there)… but I get to make everyone jealous

I always overestimate on pasta! :P But then I eat it all anyway because I'm a greedy bastard this. this is me.

No harm in doing it every now and again, but it's so easy to lose track of spending and buy far to much (even if you end up eating it all, if it was too much it's not like you saved money...you just ate more) or far to often when you are going shopping every day. I've done it myself.

I know! I learnt that fast, first week of first year in uni I bought way more veg than I needed and half of it went off, money down the drain. ah ****.

I agree it's a good deal for one off occasions, but if you're making it a daily habit it's an unnecessary cost when you can just make the sandwich yourself, buy multi packs of crisps and bring your own bottle for a fraction of the cost over time. yeah, bottled water then I guess. I don't reaaaaally eat crisps, but I guess it would be a bit cheaper...

Convenience costs money, and it adds up.

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