Rent isnt a "hedonic treadmill". Neither is food or energy. These are the 3 areas seeing the most inflation right now. Rents in London are up 20% in a year, food almost the same, and energy ...well, everyone knows what has happened to energy.
The average Londoner is paying almost 40% of their take home pay on rent, so saving 2/3rds is already impossible.
Even as one of the lucky ones earning a top 1% salary, I _still_ pay 40% of my take home pay on a mortgage with a 33 year mortgage term!
Your idea of getting off the treadmill must be living in the countryside and taking a 80% pay cut, I suppose?
Before coming to London I was doing an equally demanding role on 20% of my current pay.
Or how about raising a family in a 1 bedroom flat? - i see loads of people doing that these days. My old neighbours both had full time well paid jobs and were still in a 1 bed with a newborn.
There's no real escape. The economy is a dog, and we are all underpaid.
Wife is from UK, but we're in the US now. She's got some friends/family there, and we keep up with some news/sports/TV from the UK regularly. Have watched some recent reports about how dire some things have gotten over the last year or two. Things are 'bad' all over, but the UK seems to have been hit doubly/triply hard compared to some neighbors, esp with energy prices. Unsure how much brexit is a root cause, but between brexit/covid/ukraine, UK seems to be in a bad spot. Sorry you're dealing with so much that's beyond your control. I completely get this is well beyond "don't eat out as much" territory.
The problem isn’t as much the pay - I’d pay increases then so will rent (or housing costs)
The problem in the U.K and especially london is that demand for housing outstrips supply. This denies opportunities to most of the country as the only way for young green people to live in london is to live rent free with parents who paid two years worth of wages for a 3 bed semi 40 years ago, for a house now 10 times wage
Yeah. London is great when young and going out to do things all the time, sucks later on though. In London I definitely felt like I was living paycheck to paycheck, but moving to a European city with better services (but probably less culture), rent for our 3br flat in the city center was cheaper than our 1 bed in zone 6 - and taxes are much lower.
Now 9% of my takehome goes on rent, and I have no idea how I could ever go back to the UK. The energy bills alone are mind boggling, and every time I visit it just feels like it slips further and further behind the times.
You do have to live somewhere with a housing policy that doesn't suck. But that's doable. Believe it or not it's possible to find jobs that aren't in London that pay more than 20% of a London salary. (If you don't want to deal with moving internationally, often the easiest way is a remote job for a company based in London). UK planning laws are awful and are crippling the country. That's a fact about UK politics, not a law of nature.
I agree. Living in London is for people who don't mind to work till they're old. I lived there for nearly a year and concluded that, while it's obviously an awesome city, it's not worth spending an extra decade (or more) working just to pay off mortgage to live there. I chose to live in an less awesome city, and thus am already retired at 42 years old.
The average ${global_alpha_city_dweller} is paying almost 40% of their take home pay on rent
There is nothing particular about London in this context. What about New York City or Sydney or Hongkong or Singapore? Pretty much the same. (Tokyo is an odd duck.)
Also, this:
Even as one of the lucky ones earning a top 1% salary, I _still_ pay 40% of my take home pay on a mortgage
The alternative to "overborrowing" was paying the same amount, or more for a similar property, in rent, or for both me and my partner to commute in from much further out. The latter would still not comd off any better due to the ludicrous cost of public commuter transport.
The average Londoner is paying almost 40% of their take home pay on rent, so saving 2/3rds is already impossible.
Even as one of the lucky ones earning a top 1% salary, I _still_ pay 40% of my take home pay on a mortgage with a 33 year mortgage term!
Your idea of getting off the treadmill must be living in the countryside and taking a 80% pay cut, I suppose?
Before coming to London I was doing an equally demanding role on 20% of my current pay.
Or how about raising a family in a 1 bedroom flat? - i see loads of people doing that these days. My old neighbours both had full time well paid jobs and were still in a 1 bed with a newborn.
There's no real escape. The economy is a dog, and we are all underpaid.