Living in england

It depends on where you live. The north is a lot cheaper than the south.

dadycool wrote:

Living in uk as permanente resident for the last 16 years,very expensive the cost of living.Every day is survival of the daily routine, if you do not get payed £24.000 a year your life is for sure a sad living....
Weather terrible.... but great country for education, no short of jobs( Depend) on your qualification, in overal is on the best country in europe to live.
I bourne in mozambique misse my country very mush going back to retire very soon

It's not expensive if you know where to look for the cheap things, and live according to your means. But many want to live beyond that. That's the problem. If people accept they can't afford certain luxuries, and do without them, then they will find it's not so expensive after all to live here.

I was recently made redundant and I am having to manage on £73.10 a week. This has to cover the following:
Mortgage
Council tax ( reduced)
Gas
Electricity
Water
Petrol
Car tax
House insurance
Car insurance
Gym membership ( my choice but I don't drink or smoke)
TV license
Phone
Prescriptions (contribution based JSA)
Dentist check up (contribution based JSA)
Opticians (contribution based JSA)
........and food
I have absolutely no other income as I have no children or husband /partner.

If I work, it gets deducted from my £73.10.

As previously mentioned: you have to manage with what you have - get your head down and buy sensibly. Make a pan full of chilli and freeze in portions, ditto with bolognaise. Walk, don't drive (I have a 2 mile walk to the nearest shop).

It's not rocket science - live life to best of your ability - it's not always caviar and a flute of champagne..........it's beans on toast and a mug of tea.

My life is NOT "a sad living"......it's what I make of it.

Chuckle Butty

SimCityAT wrote:

It depends on where you live. The north is a lot cheaper than the south.

Having lived in the North for most of my life (Newcastle precisely), I wouldn't want to go back. I would rather have less money in London, than more money in Newcastle.

Hang in there Chuckle Butty, you sound like a real sensible person. Make sure you use LinkedIn to it's full potential.... take it from someone who has to find a new contract every few months  Just for you btw, +1 for the North.... down south sucks, expensive, congested..... the list goes on

That's because you're white. The rest of us non-whites have a better quality of life in London. I was reminded everyday that I'm a non-indigenous when I was living in the North-East. In London whilst I maybe second-class, up North where I lived I would be lucky to be considered a 5th.

Carefull now... the last thing you want to do is tell the English they are racist!!... I mean they are the most "liberall" nation in the world...

Oh please. I'm born here, and lived all my life here. I'm not an immigrant.

you were to one moaning about being "  non-indigenous  " and being treat like a "5th" rated citizen....

XB23 wrote:

Oh please. I'm born here, and lived all my life here. I'm not an immigrant.

Im English and Welsh... so I will let you off lol

Farway wrote:

you were to one moaning about being "  non-indigenous  " and being treat like a "5th" rated citizen....

Lol. I wasn't moaning about anything. I simply responded to your comment - "down south sucks"... that it's a better place for us non-natives, than some parts of the North. In other words, the purpose of my comment was to disagree with you and say the South doesn't suck actually! Well at least not as bad as some parts of the North (for us non-natives) surrounded by natives. And I never said anything about the English being racists. I don't know where you got that from. That's a generalization I would always avoid. But times are changing. We are treated quite differently (have always been, but getting increasingly worse), and everyday we are bombarded with negative talks on immigration/immigrants etc. Just open the BBC, Guardian or what have you, look at the headline news, or at any newspaper. The Labour Party is in such a state as it's been viewed as the party most supportive of immigrants/foreigners, which clearly the majority of the electorate don't want as seen by the results of the recent elections. That's quite telling about the changing attitude in the country.

SimCityAT wrote:

XB23 wrote:

Oh please. I'm born here, and lived all my life here. I'm not an immigrant.

Im English and Welsh... so I will let you off lol

Lol there is nothing to let me off, as I didn't say anything about the English being racists. That's something that she said. Nothing to do with me!

The one thing the North has tought me is, be selective of your area...do your homework. We lived in a few horrid area's in our time, white or not so you have my sympathy, I am just glad we could buy into a really nice area....

Farway wrote:

The one thing the North has tought me is, be selective of your area...do your homework. We lived in a few horrid area's in our time, white or not so you have my sympathy, I am just glad we could buy into a really nice area....

We've had our windows smashed (racist incident), and that gave us such a scare that we never again lived in a 'bad' place. A 'chavvy' area in other words. I lived all over other parts. The nicer the area, the less acceptance we faced (though the difference is it was never physical). They viewed us beneath them basically. But at least you can sleep soundly at night, knowing that while they are not particularly fond of you, you will wake up with your windows intact at least, and tires not slashed. I would say the place we felt most welcomed in would be areas concentrated with other non-natives. Living amongst natives from both ends of the spectrum never fared well. It was simply a case of different forms of racism. One blatant, right there in the open, and the other hidden, kept in the mind and the privacy of their home.

I am German and I am reminded every day I am a foreigner.

Nothing compared to what I and other non-whites/non-Europeans go through. Some may understandably dislike the free movement of labour that comes with being in Europe, but they absolutely detest immigration from non-EU countries which they want controlled/limited, more so than migration from Europe. In my opinion, although born & bred here, I get treated worse than Polish & Romanians who arrived recently, with little to no English. Having traveled to other countries, all in all, I think the British are very tolerant in comparison, but things are getting increasingly worse. And to be honest, if my country was also flooded with foreigners without our permission, I would feel the same way. So I can sympathize with them.

Bayerinnewcastle wrote:

I am German and I am reminded every day I am a foreigner.

I lived in Newcastle for quite some time. I doubt they have anything against you. I will put it down to banter.

I lived in East London for 2 years, and even if I found a full time job with my partner, it wasn't enough for paying all the bills and the expensive rent. We were struggling every single day...if you earn the minimum wage it's just impossible to survive with a flat / house costing you more than £1000.00 pcm !
Our goal was to buy a property and we really thought it was possible to  do it in Greater London. Well...after 2 years as the prices went up, we realized we had to find another solution.

After having met a friend living in Leeds in West Yorkshire, and telling me the cost of living was cheaper there, we went in Leeds, my partner and I, in order to prospect and visiting the city : we really liked the city, and we had our first appointment with a mortgage advisor ( luckily, our advisor comes from East London like us, so she gave us good advice and she understood our point of view ), and we have been said that it would be easy to get a mortgage in West Yorkshire, and the house prices there are much more cheaper ( you can get a beautiful 3 bedroom house for less than 100K ).

So I decided to move in Leeds, got some job interviews before my moving, and I found a new part-time job there. My partner stayed working in London, and I came in Leeds on my own for the first 6 months and started working and looking for properties. In the meantime I had other appointments with our mortgage advisor in order to prepare our mortgage request. I found a second job 2 months  after the first one in order to improve my income.

We then found a house we loved ( it wasn't difficult there was loads of houses for sale ), and our mortgage has been approved within 4 weeks : we moved in our home in april this year and we don't regret our choice to move up here.

I can say people here are VERY friendly I was surprised the way I was welcomed by everyone here. We are now very happy in West Yorkshire and we are glad our efforts paid off !