How much do you need to earn to have a decent flat/life in London?

How much do you need to earn to have a decent flat/life in London?

I'm getting itchy feet in Newcastle, much though I love the place. I know a few people in London and a few more moving down next year....but I don't want to be stuck in a hellhole 2 hours from the centre.

I want to be able to go to new bars/clubs/restaurants, explore new places, meet more people and work in the big hospitals. The trouble is that I'm going to have to spend at least one year working outside the M25 (as far away as Cornwall/Colchester etc) if I do, and I know noone outside of central london.

Staying in Newcastle means a nice apartment, familiarity and loads of friends about, so I'm trying to guage how much of a gamble it would be to move.

i got bed and breakfast for 11 quid a night a couple of years ago round the corner from earls court

i think we'll still be barred though due to david lee running around with a sheet on his head at 6am pretending to be a ghost

The salary isn't too bad - should be around 30k, but I've got overdrafts to get rid of as well. Probably wouldn't need a car in central london, but I'm not living in a grotty single bedded room miles out of the centre!

I've never regretted moving before, but it's never been a gamble like this before - could be amazing, could equally be shit, and I'm tied to it for 2 years. Cheers for the advice so far

Sorry if this is hijacking the thread, but roughly how much would it cost to spend a week in Camden?

Iv been looking at hotels and hostels, but there either too much or look really grim.

Id probably go out about 3 times and do a bit shopping.

Ta in advance.

you can get a semi decent 1 bedroom flat in zone 2 for £800-900 a month.

My lass has just moved into a huge place in a lush converted nunnery with electric gates etc and pays around £515 a month and thats in Camberwell (SouthLondon Zone 2)

London being really expensive is a bit of a myth, your rent is more but everything else is only about 10% more than up here.

and make sure you dont live any further than zone 3, you want to be right in the action

its weird to say the least, blatantly haunted aswell

That's it exactly, but thanks to this bollocks application process I'm going to have to spend one year miles from it. I want to stay north of the Thames so I can get back to home/Newcastle easily.

I'm sure in most jobs you know where you'll be working/how much you'll be working/how much you'll get paid before you apply

I'm going to get on a fact finding trip down there asap

Do it..

You can get some cracking places for between 380 - 550 a month, it can be a mission finding somewhere, I'm in the middle of it now.. If you want to experience London, live North, if you want to live in suburbia go South..

Si is right, the cost of living down here is marginally more expensive than anywhere else.. in fact Newcastle turned out only £5 more expensive than London in a survey by Time Out or someone of the most expensive nights out in the UK recently so you won't notice it in terms of boozing..

As for travel, get a bike, it was costing me £88 a month to get to work and taking me 40-50 minutes to get from Bethnal Green to Victoria, now it costs me nothing and takes 25 minutes door to door... and I'm fitter than I've ever been riding 12 miles a day!

I have nearly £300 a month going out on debt and I still manage to survive quite nicely, it's entirely what you make of it.. good luck!

Totally agree with Tom- the only genuinely expensive thing about London is the cost of rent, especially living in a decent area.
Clubs etc are not that expensive to get in. For example, a Friday night at Fabric is about £12 to get in, and there is usually a shitload of djs and bands to see. Compare that to £15/20 when the likes of Shindig have a big name on..

I live in Shoreditch in East London, and my rent in total works out at about £450 a month. Ok, it's double what I was paying in Newcastle, but it's more than worth it. I have Brick Lane just round the corner, and there are so many bars and clubs (Cargo, 333, T Bar, Herbal etc) all within a minute or two's walk. It's a few minutes from Liverpool Street or Old Street on the tube, and it takes me half an hour door to door to get to work in Covent Garden.

For around £500 a month, you could easily find somewhere decent- like Bethnal Green, Camden, Stoke Newington, Shoreditch. All areas that are within zones 1 and 2 (the best places to live)

Shopping, drinking, clubs, cinema etc are all a pretty similar price to any other major city in the UK, as I said, it's just the rent that is more expensive. However, London is an amazing place to live, I've been here nearly a year, and there's still so many nights, clubs, museums etc that I haven't been to yet.

As Tom said, South London is more suburban, it's much livelier in either the North or the East.

is it bollocks, there are some suburban areas but so are there in north/east/west

e.g. this is right next to where i lived (SE17)

sorry misread that post, the nightlife is better in the EC/NW1 area but the south certainly aint suburban bliss

does the water really taste that bad?