A decent wage in London

[steveeeeeeeee]

I've applied for a job back in the UK, slightest of chances I might get it as there are only a handful of people who meet the criteria. You can choose if you want to be based in London or Manchester. But with a salary of 27k a year, it would have to be the latter. Is that amount enough to live comfortably in Manchester if the other half can't find work she's interested in doing? I fairly sure I earn more abroad.

And is Manchester a nice place to live? Only ever been there to watch football twice and one gig and can't say I got much of a feel for it.

Job seems nice though.

[sw2borshch]

A decent wage in London

I would suggest it depends what you mean by comfortable. And do you want to live in the city centre, buy a house, run a car etc.

It's pretty rainy there. But it's a proper city, if that makes any difference, just not a metropolis. Manchester certainly has a reputation for vibrancy, booming media sector, everything on the rise.

It'd be certainly enough to live comfortably in Middlesbrough, but housing costs are definitely cheaper here. Maybe have a look at some estate agent sites - others could answer questions on districts.

Downside - they all sound like farmers.

[George]

A decent wage in London

Ghastly place for the most part. Probably on par with Leeds. Influx of media types especially with the BBC relocation has no doubt increased the numbers of people per square-mile that you would cross the street to avoid.

[EIM]

A decent wage in London

It's bloody great, Steveeeeee. Manchester is everything I used to pretend living in London was. I'll elaborate later, because I'm off out, and I need to wash pineapple juice out of my jeans.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

A decent wage in London

Central Manchester has become markedly more "hip" in the last few years, the University seems to have trebled in size, a lot of IT and design companies have sprung up and the BBC moving much of its London production effort to Salford Quays (sorry, "Media City") was a huge coup for the city. Nowadays, the only men wearing flat caps are 20-something games designers also sporting ironic tweed trousers and silly beards. Most of the big West End shows come to Manchester now (I saw the Lion King there earlier this year), and you've got no chance of finding a proper pub anywhere near Piccadilly Gardens anymore, let alone in the trendy "Northern Quarter". Look at the state of some of these, FFS. "Kosmonaut"? "Odd"? Get a fucking grip. Chinatown's still brilliant, though.

As a result, though, and due to the introduction of novelties like indoor lavatories and gas central heating, prices have skyrocketed. You'll easily be looking at £600-£700 pcm for a one-bed flat in the city centre or Salford, then probably the same for a two-bed place anywhere a bit further out and still inside the M60. Friends of ours recently moved to Heaton Chapel, halfway from the city centre to Stockport, on a budget of about that, and got a nice place. As with most cities, if you move out and commute in, you'll get a lot more - by the time you get out to somewhere like Westhoughton you can rent a 3-bed house for about £500pcm, but then you'll be looking at commuting in, and season tickets for your 20-minute journey each way would be around £1,000 per annum. People prefer using the metro to commute than a train line, but while the metro is more modern and comfortable, it often seems to be out of service for some reason and I'd hate to rely on it. There are some cheaper suburbs but these are, as with most cities, correlated to lack of regeneration, drug use and murder rates. Generally speaking I'd say the poshest suburbs (outside the M60) are south and west, the roughest ones east and north-east.

[EIM]

A decent wage in London

I move into a decent 2 bed flat in Salford Quays (That's actually Ordsall, marketing fans) at the end of the month. It's less than the rent Rogin is quoting for a 1 bed in his post.

[swafuk]

A decent wage in London

I live in Manchester, it's great!

And there are decent pubs near Piccadilly gardens, but then why would you be hanging around Piccadilly Gardens?

[Geoffrey de Ste. Croix]

A decent wage in London

It's over 10 years since I lived in Manchester, so anything I say will be out of date. I lived in Chorlton before its descent into hipster wankerdom. Great city and I thoroughly enjoyed my time there.

[Antepli Ejderha]

A decent wage in London

Good luck stev9e with the interview and prospective move. Money might be an issue at first but after moving to London I've found that making my better half happy living in a foreign country is much more of an issue. Beware of the climate is all I can add.

[EIM]

A decent wage in London

There are decent pubs in the trendy Northern Quarter (TM) too. I could list a DOZEN*.

*Three, maybe four.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

A decent wage in London

Oh, you will find decent places on less than the sorts of rent figures I was using, but those aren't unusual and wanted to give steveeeeeeeee a broad idea in terms of the OP. Is £27k a reasonable living wage in Manchester? I'd say so, I reckon whether you choose city centre or suburban living your housing, utilities and council tax etc budget needs to be, say, £8-9k per annum? Definitely less than £10k. Should leave enough for a few nice things in life, anyway.

[anton pulisov]

A decent wage in London

ironic trousers

[steveeeeeeeee]

A decent wage in London

Thanks for all the advice.

Overall, I think the job has been created for someone who commissions some of the work I do. But it's worth a punt because it's a really interesting job that I'm qualified for and would like to do.

But 27k would be roughly what I earn in Cairo, where I need about 50 pence a day to live on once rent is paid, and less that I earned in Lisbon.

[Bored Of Education]

A decent wage in London

I hate Manchester and stay in Liverpool and travel if I have to go there and London is the greatest city in the world. However, London is much more expensive. Indeed, I am surprised that it is the same salary for both locations. Interestingly perhaps, £27 grand is the starting salary for a teacher in inner London and it is £22 grand elsewhere.

[steveeeeeeeee]

A decent wage in London

I think it is 29k in London.

I know London, the only way I could make that work is if I moved back into my mum's house. Can't see sra stev9e liking that much.

[Antepli Ejderha]

A decent wage in London

Before moving to London I was told that 35k would be the minimum income needed to support the two of us in a relatively decent way, I would say that's about right from our experience here.

[EIM]

A decent wage in London

I hate Manchester and stay in Liverpool and travel if I have to go there and London is the greatest city in the world. However, London is much more expensive.

Dunno where to start with this... Maybe by saying London isn't even the best drummer in The Beatles. Which sounded dead funny in my head, but on the white vastness of the screen doesn't really stand up to much scrutiny.

[Giggler]

A decent wage in London

Manchester's a great city that I enjoy spending misty Saturday mornings in, going for a fry-up before doing some record shop hopping, but I don't want to live there.

I lived in the centre when I worked in it, from 2006 to 2009. It was great having everything on my doorstep but I spent beyond my means because of the temptation of "a quick pint" (turning into four) on the walk home from Oxford Road to Rochdale Road. I was sharing a cold, clinical flat, whose electric heaters I didn't dare turn on because they were so expensive, with a misogynist from Buxton that didn't really cost a lot but was enough on my low salary of the time. When I lost the job in the city, I moved back to Bury and I was glad of it.

I'm now in a job that's enabling me to save for a house and I'm looking at Ramsbottom as my location of choice. There's a bus that connects it with Manchester and back at peak times and even if that's unavailable, you're a bus ride from Bury and all its charms (of which there are several, honestly) as well as the Metrolink (but I wouldn't rely on that at all). Manchester is always within reach as a treat but Rammy is greener, more compact and has an array of bars and restaurants that belies its position.

When thinking of Manchester, don't automatically think of south of the centre. The North has much to offer too, not least the cheaper housing for which £27k a year would get you a nice, stone, two bed terrace in the town that was recently voted as having the second best independent high street in the country.

[EIM]

A decent wage in London

I'll be visiting Rammy shortly to see my mate play football for them.

[WOM]

A decent wage in London

When you lot say you don't turn on the heating because of the cost, what exactly are we talking about? Like, to keep the house comfortable for a day, would cost ... what in pounds?

[sw2borshch]

A decent wage in London

I don't know how much they cost relative to each other, but Giggler is almost definitely saying there's no central heating (gas heated water radiators here, usually, or them horrible storage heaters, or, as our mam & dad used to have, some kind of warm air blowing through vents), but those sucky blow heaters that heat the air about a foot in front of them that you can see the dial on the meter whizzing round when you use 'em. And they make a right racket.

[WOM]

A decent wage in London

Right. Your garden variety space heaters.

When I stayed with some friends in Edinburgh once, they had the heat off in May and I thought I was going to freeze to death in my sleep. And it's been remarked up a number of times, on here, over the years. I was just wondering how expensive is expensive.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

A decent wage in London

To WOM: I don't know what our specific "heating" bill comes to as our gas and electric in total for the house comes to around £80 per month on a direct debit (which spreads the annual cost out over the year). That's not just heating, that's cooking, hot water, all appliances as well. But when I look at how the actual bill varies over the year to the payments (our cooking/electricity costs presumably run flat) we run at about £30 a month in the summer (when the heating's off), and around £160 a month in winter (when the heating's on full). So I reckon we spend maybe £130 a month - maybe £120, given the lights are on as well - to heat our house in the winter, on that basis?

[sw2borshch]

A decent wage in London

WOM, you're a disgrace to Canadia City.

[sw2borshch]

A decent wage in London

I'm also tempted to ask in you sleep in the nip, but I'm not going to.