The cost of living where I live in Scotland is pretty small (IMO).
I make around £40k as a developer with 11 years experience, which seems about average for my city.
My total cost of living each month is around £930. That includes my mortgage.
The company where I was working before I made ~£29k as developer, some people in that company were on as low as £21k. The average was probably around £25k.
Contracting rates can be good, I regularly get calls about contracting jobs from recruiters with rates around £400-£450 a day for a 6 month contract. But then you have the hassle of looking for a new contract every 6 months or so. That hassle is just not worth it for me.
I get emails each day from a job place with jobs. Today the jobs are
C# .net developer - £30k - £45k
C# software developer - £28k - £35k
Senior python developer - £65k
PHP Developer - £35k - £42k
.NET Developer -£38,000 DOE
.NET full stack developer - £35 - £50k
Java Developer - Upto £65k
Javascript Developer - £30-£40k
These are all for positions with many years experience. I don't know where people are seeing £100k a year salaries?
Salaries that have been <£40k for the past few are starting to look really abysmal. UK inflation is currently 3.1%. In England we have above-inflation rail fare increases, inflated rents that keep going up, potentially 5.99%/year council tax rises and not to mention utility bills and food.
The effect of price rises (council tax, travel, utilities, rent etc) combined with your salary remaining stagnant is nothing short of devastating over a period of 10-20 years.
Companies pretending that inflation doesn't exists probably contributes quite a bit to job hopping
