Unhappy due to lack of money...

Theophany · 26 Nov 2012 at 10:17

krooton said:
Sevenoaks is one of the places we shortlisted for our first house when we sell the flat, but the commute just would not work for me

I know what you mean, if I had to commute into London regularly it would be a deal breaker for me. £280 per month for a season ticket to Charing Cross iirc. :eek:

HangTime · 26 Nov 2012 at 10:51

Bes said:
All depends. I know people that pay £700PM to flatshare in Clapham North (Admittedly they have a really nice place) whilst earning <£30K. That is going to put anyone on a middling income under pressure.
I am just going off personal experience really - even earning £1500 a month after tax (30,000-ish salary?) you are not going to have much left after paying say £450 flat share, Oyster card, council tax, bills, etc. so I understand the OP's predicament. £450 a month in somewhere like Leeds gets you a decent flat to yourself or a small house just out of the city.

Friend of mine has a houseshare on the Isle of Dogs and pays around £750/month. I think she earns about £31k which is nearly £2k/month after tax and NI so it's not too bad. Zones 1-2 Oyster card costs under £1200/year (bargain IMO) so less than a ton a month which isn't bad considering you can use it for commuting assuming you work in the city plus any other central travel you want to do. As for the general cost of living in my experience (admittedly not having lived in London) it doesn't seem as bad as people make out supermarket shops cost the same by and large and even eating/drinking out is not massively more expensive unless you are fussy about the places you go to.

Until she took the plunge I had dismissed the prospect of living in London but I think as long as you are comfortable with a house share it is viable even on 'modest' salaries.

do_ron_ron · 26 Nov 2012 at 11:02

GSWAudio said:
I have a job but it doesn't pay well and it's in London so by he te I've paid for my flat share train fair there's just enough left for food. I have a good job and I'm lucky with that.

I'm not unhappy due to low numbers in the bank it's what the money allows me to do. I love creating beautiful things out of wood metal electronics and I'm being stopped from doing this. I know a lot others are worse off but this isn't trivial for me, it's who I am and I'm depressed because of it. I don't even have a little of money left over each monh to save to try to be a bit business like and earn myself about of extra money somehow.

I don't even have enough to ask a nice girl to have a coffee or something!

Join the millions of other people in the UK. Having a lack of cash when you are young is the norm. Do voluntary work locally to boost your self-esteem.

HangTime · 26 Nov 2012 at 11:05

Amp34 said:
When you start talking about an hours commute it suddenly makes no sense to live in London... An hours commute to central London can allow you to live in most of the south east, on a mainline. Where I live I could get a 3 bedroomed house for the same price as a single room, obviously the commuting costs would be more, so I'd have to get a flat to myself or something. The last train home is way after the tubes shut down anyway

I think the costs are starting to get factored in to some of these commuter belt towns so a lot of places that are right next to a mainline station giving 45min or less to central London will be carrying a bit of a premium. Some people might prefer to be in London anyway i.e. a 1hr commute with London on the doorstep might be preferable to living in, I dunno, Basingstoke or something.

Another advantage of London is a good direct train service to most of the UK, a train of say 2h15 or less gets you to Manchester, Bristol, Exeter, Brighton, Norwich, Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool (heck even Paris) etc etc. Depends how quick you can get to the NR station but in broad terms it puts you very 'central'.

I'd agree however that "London" is a very big scope and you'd need to choose carefully in terms of location dependent on were you want to get to ('getting across' London is something that not everyone factors in to their initial thoughts).

Conanius · 26 Nov 2012 at 11:11

Just so you know, magically having more money won't bring you happiness. You'll just want more.

Deny it if you want, but if your salary doubled over night, within 6 months you'd realise you needed more money for something else. Be that a holiday, car, nicer flat, house deposit, shopping at waitrose... Whatever.

I honestly think having a 'normal' life in London (zone1-4 somewhere nice) sub 50k is impossible if you aren't in a flat share.

Speaking as someone who did 4 years in London (2007-2011) living in a variety of locations, with and without house shares.

krooton · 26 Nov 2012 at 11:39

Theophany said:
I know what you mean, if I had to commute into London regularly it would be a deal breaker for me. £280 per month for a season ticket to Charing Cross iirc.

It would cost me £373 a month

JonJ678 · 26 Nov 2012 at 11:55

Good electrical engineers leave uni on about 40k and make it to the happier side of 100k within a decade. Crap ones do not do as well.

You're working as an "electronic engineer" at 18. I doubt you have the knowledge or the mathematical ability to do anything worthwhile at 18, which would explain why you're struggling to pay rent. Uni seems a reasonable plan really.

Name · 26 Nov 2012 at 12:00

yes i am unhappy but i think thats due to my job not lack of money!

and i get sub 12k a year working 37.5 a week

Theophany · 26 Nov 2012 at 12:06

krooton said:
It would cost me £373 a month

Whaaaaat? How so?

krooton · 26 Nov 2012 at 12:29

Theophany said:
Whaaaaat? How so?

I work in Surrey now, and the only way would be a train in to London, then back out to Addlestone. If there was an M25-alike train route it would be cheaper.

Eliot · 26 Nov 2012 at 13:48

Living in london on your own without anything more than 23k will be very difficult indeed.

believe me i know

Richdog · 26 Nov 2012 at 14:06

name89 said:
yes i am unhappy but i think thats due to my job not lack of money!

and i get sub 12k a year working 37.5 a week

That is almost slave labour... what job is it?

Name · 26 Nov 2012 at 14:13

Its Just under 12k, i get £7 an hour \o/

Accounting clerk at the moment, data entry, processing and creating invoices/cr notes, dealing with e-mails, manual payments etc.

Everyone agrees i should be getting more than what i am on, but im a temp so.....there ya go ha ha.

Yamahahahahaha · 26 Nov 2012 at 14:55

If you live in Lewisham and know electronics, you could probably make a few quid unlocking stolen phones.

More seriously, London is just expensive. Under 16k you're really going to struggle to have any spare dosh at all. Zone 6 might be feasible on 20k, but you're looking at much longer commute times into town every day.
Either find somewhere much cheaper to live (another house share or a squat) or just concentrate on getting more money together by doing work on the side.

Richdog · 26 Nov 2012 at 15:05

name89 said:
Its Just under 12k, i get £7 an hour \o/

Accounting clerk at the moment, data entry, processing and creating invoices/cr notes, dealing with e-mails, manual payments etc.

Everyone agrees i should be getting more than what i am on, but im a temp so.....there ya go ha ha.

That's pretty shocking, you may as well be stacking shelves in Tescos!

Try and get a permie job asap, i'm sure you're worth far more than 12k...

MasterPlan1 · 26 Nov 2012 at 15:17

I'm on 30k and I might as well work local and earn 23... After travel (£480pm) it gets a little bit silly, but I'm hoping I can get a new job soon enough... As it's quite depressing that colleagues in my previous job who I was working along side of are now on £40-55 and I'm stuck on 30.

krooton · 26 Nov 2012 at 15:18

Richdog said:
That's pretty shocking, you may as well be stacking shelves in Tescos!

Try and get a permie job asap, i'm sure you're worth far more than 12k...

Working at Tesco gives you (I think) 10% off groceries, so if you work their lowest paid job, but buy everything from them, it bumps your effective wage up by a bit.

Infidelus · 26 Nov 2012 at 19:29

name89 said:
Its Just under 12k, i get £7 an hour \o/

Accounting clerk at the moment, data entry, processing and creating invoices/cr notes, dealing with e-mails, manual payments etc.

Everyone agrees i should be getting more than what i am on, but im a temp so.....there ya go ha ha.

That's a bit of a poor wage for a Purchase/Sales Ledger Clerk. My first Purchase Ledger job paid £8/hr, and that was with no experience at all.

dokko · 26 Nov 2012 at 19:33

Lost my job twice this year (both times down to redundancies) living off scraps and in my overdraft, it's not great, can't do anything but keep applying and hoping I get a break.

Had my first holiday in 12 years this year, came back lost my job and on the way home wrote off my first car in the floods of newcastle.

If you don't laugh.

Bear · 26 Nov 2012 at 19:42

Conanius said:
Just so you know, magically having more money won't bring you happiness. You'll just want more.

Deny it if you want, but if your salary doubled over night, within 6 months you'd realise you needed more money for something else. Be that a holiday, car, nicer flat, house deposit, shopping at waitrose... Whatever.

I disagree but then I guess it depends on what type of person you are. I can honestly say that I earn more than enough and have everything any reasonable person could ever want. Anything more is a bonus.