London rents & budgeting | WTF is going on?
Hi Monkeys,
London-based chimpanzee chere. My rent has just increased by 30%, and I am hearing similar stories from friends / work mates around me. It seems like the salary bumps were entirely eaten by rents increase and inflation. Can only imagine how difficult it must be for average UK citizen to keep up with the rising costs.
What would you say is currently a reasonable monthly budget for Analyst/Associates with regards to housing, leisure, and savings?
Interested in your thoughts!
I've heard of rents going up in more luxury developments like £1.2k+ places (now 1.5k+) but all the people I know who pay less than that haven't seemed to be complaining.
Also rents are probably still being normalised from the deep discounts seen during the pandemic. A lot of people had no idea that they got incredible deals while moving to London in 2020/2021 and now their contracts are running out and the landlords are readjusting to market.
I won't bother giving you a budget because that's a personal thing that you should work backwards from your savings goals and lifestyle preferences for.
Where are you finding “luxury” for 1.5? You’re dreaming
I'm sorry your highness, I'll retract my frivolous comment immediately!
Yeah 1.5 will get you a pretty awful one bed in most parts of town
£1.2k luxury lolololololol
But could you name some places within london where you could get 3 bedroom for 1500-1800 .Expecting the commute time to be almost an hour via car
When I say a rent number, I'm talking about per person.
If you wanna find what you're looking for, go on Rightmove lol, I ain't a real estate agent
I live in an absolute sh**hole of a 1 bedroom apartment in London, legit some grim tiny council looking flat that you can never bring a girl back to and my rent is £1.6k a month.. the cheapest luxury 1 bedroom I can see online is £2.5k a month..
Even if you choose a 3 bedroom flat to share so you can save a bit, it will only save you £100-200 a month..
London is truly f*cked I'm asking my bank to open up a Kazakhstan office and relocate there.
Yeah London is a huge rip off. High rents and high taxes everywhere. You need to earn shit loads to be able to live comfortably. No idea how average people in normal jobs survive here.
This is ginormous cap. Not exactly sure what you consider luxury but let's look at South Quay Plaza in Canary wharf as just a guide here (whether you consider it luxury or not, the idea should remain). A 1 bed in the building is min 2.6k. A 2 bed: min 3.5k or 1.75k pp. That's a saving of £850 for adding a flatmate. You get huge discounts for sharing, in a lot of places.
I see a proportionally similar thing in my building (different area, paying nowhere near that much).
I'm paying 700 ppw for my 2br2ba in Embassy Gardens (yeah that place with the gaudy pool that was all over the news); expensive no doubt but some of you are clearly either not doing any research, not negotiating, or catering to unrealistic landlords. I'm on RightMove right now and I'm seeing decent selection of nice 1br options in the 450-525 ppw range in Z1. What am I missing?
That is a bad location though. Constant building and plane noise, poor transport links, generally corporate vibe with limited entertainment facilities.
Although I definitely agree it's a "dead" neighborhood in the entertainment sense, bad? Lol.
I'm 3 minutes walk from Vauxhall tube so there's your Victoria link, 5 minutes walk to Nine Elms tube, there's your Northern link. You have 6 major bus station stops servicing everything West End to out to CW. Clipper dock right out front of the building. Poor transport link is a comically out of touch comment. As I said in a separate thread, you go to the West End for entertainment, which involves crossing a bridge. You're a 20 min walk from Sloane Square.
3k per month is not cheap at all. you renting alone or sharing? how big is your place?
Even on an income of PS 300+ I still prob wouldn't be down to pay that much.
I'll never knock on someone for putting money away en masse, we should all aim to stash more. But 300 and you aren't okay with 3K/pm, 12% ish of your gross income?
It's not an insignificant amount of money by any means, but to me I'm getting the value out that I deem it's worth. Location wise, commute wise, comfort wise, etc. all of it. To answer your question though, live alone, 95m2
I pay ~£3k all in for a 2br in Southwark. Spacious and relatively new, not luxurious.
So regarding budgeting:
-Rent £1.5k
-Transport ~£100
-Food ~£100-150 (I have all meals for free in the office and then I am quite cheap on weekends)
-Drinks ~150-200. Drinks in pubs are really expensive. Try to go out with colleagues and have drinks expensed as much as possible
~Other stuff: maybe ~100?
So if you don’t have an expensive taste, you can do well with £2k and save half of your base salary
These numbers are per week, right? Because I would need to starve to death if I could only spend 100-150 a month on food. At least if you have to pay for lunch and potentially breakfast by yourself.
Lol is per month. I get all meals for free during weekdays and I usually work one weekend day, so 100-150 is basically food for 5 or 6 days per month. Most of those times I don’t eat out as it’s very expensive and I get to eat good food for free in the office, so I don’t see the point of spending +£40 eating out when I can have the same food for free everyday.
Depends if you're living alone or sharing.
Sharing I would expect £800 for somewhere decent like SW4. You've then got council tax at another £80. Bills at £150.
Honestly all in sharing I would budget £1250 pcm not including food.
Solo you're looking at easily £1600+
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