£55-60K pa salary in London

A salary of £55-60K is pretty OK but you will still need to carefully choose the place where you live since it isn't a high salary. Richmond is indeed a beautiful place, one of the nicer parts of London, in fact that whole area of Surbiton, Kingston, Richmond, Kew and Twickenham and all around there is really nice. I spent a long time living there.

But you are right to consider living in another city as an option. The train from London Victoria down to Brighton takes about an hour, so you could live in Brighton if you don't mind the commute. However, all along that route, all the way in to London are nice places to live, Croydon, Haywards Heath, Wandsworth, Burgess Hill and even Lewes and Rye which are amazing places but I think are on the Hastings to London line.

The advantage of living in one of these places is that the rent or house price is often cheaper and you can probably live in a bigger house than in London, and, you will be either in or near to the countryside or even by the seaside.