A Living Wage For London

[toggle]

I survived in london on less than that as a student. Then, my shared room in halls cost under £35 per week, I had no bills to pay and no travel costs.


That sort of rent isn't possible now though.

 

[gaijingirl]

I do also think you should be able to find somewhere to live by yourself if you're earning £22k. My last flat in Brixton (2 bedroom) was £650 pcm including heating and water bills - it was a lovely flat - a bit old and rough around the edges but really rather nice.

If you're on £22k and getting £1,388pm net then that leaves you with £738 per month for additional bills and living expenses. It's not tons, but it's not bad either. I know I managed earning less than that for the past 6 years.

 

[citydreams]

my shared room in halls cost under £35 per week,.

was TV still in black & white?

 

[scifisam]

Yup, it's not for the whole year, just for ten months, and, like I said, I couldn't do it long-term. For this year, it's been hard, but doable, not just for me but for all the others on my course, only two of whom live with their parents. The rest also have to pay rent, bills, etc. And again, it's still a lot less than that living wage.

I guess maybe I'm lucky that I don't have any old loans or credit cards to pay off - maybe that's what's taking such a chunk out of other people's earnings.

 

[gaijingirl]

Yup, it's not for the whole year, just for ten months, and, like I said, I couldn't do it long-term. For this year, it's been hard, but doable, not just for me but for all the others on my course, only two of whom live with their parents. The rest also have to pay rent, bills, etc. And again, it's still a lot less than that living wage.

Did you get your bursary straight away? Mine didn't starting getting paid until the end of January. I had taken out the loan so that tided me over and my partner helped me out too, but there are plenty of people on my course, like you, who really needed that money to survive on. I wondered how they got by!?

 

[scifisam]

was TV still in black & white?

Oh, I don't think it existed then. *ducks and runs*

One shared room I lived in was £35 per week too, in Pimlico - it was lovely. But that was in 1995-96.

 

[scifisam]

Did you get your bursary straight away? Mine didn't starting getting paid until the end of January. I had taken out the loan so that tided me over and my partner helped me out too, but there are plenty of people on my course, like you, who really needed that money to survive on. I wondered how they got by!?

Yeah, well, almost. The last installment hasn't been paid though, and I don't know why. Why was yours late?

Maybe they just lived on the loan too - if mine had been paid properly, this year would have been fine financially; you do get some help if you have a child, or bizarrely, a partner: one of the students on my course got a dependant's grant because she's engaged and her fiancé had been a student the previous tax year! Lucky! I guess your friends at least knew they would be getting the bursary eventually, so were able to borrow against it.

 

[citydreams]

Oh, I don't think it existed then. *ducks and runs*

One shared room I lived in was £35 per week too, in Pimlico - it was lovely. But that was in 1995-96.

You have an amazing tendency to find cheap accomodation.

1993 I was in a bedsit on £55/week which was cheap to me and it certainly wasn't lovely. The bathroom walls were furry, the kitchen stank of cat piss which we could never tell was from the cat or from the landlord's octogenarian mother who waddled around in her night-shirt.

 

[gaijingirl]

Why was yours late?

Lambeth cock up - who seemed to think I was doing an undergraduate degree in German for some reason?

you do get some help if you have a child, or bizarrely, a partner:

They didn't take my OH into account. But I was worried they might do in the negative sense.. ie get him to pay for me or something - so I was glad they didn't.

 

[scifisam]

You have an amazing tendency to find cheap accomodation.

It was only as cheap as that because it was a shared room - the rent for the whole room was £70, which I thought was quite expensive really, but the location made it worth it. However, at that time there were plenty of rooms going for £40-£45pw. This was East London (apart from the shared room, of course).

Looking on the accomodation sticky at the top of this thread I see a lot of rooms that aren't miles away from that either - less than I was expecting them to be.

Gaijingirl - how bizarre. Maybe they were processing forms that had accidentally slipped down the back of filing cabinet and crossed into a parallel universe. It's the only reasonable explanation for why so many seemingly normal people can muck so many things up.

 

[toggle]

was TV still in black & white?

This was 12 years ago. The neighbours really didn't like students living on low rent in their midst. Then it was south kensington

 

[Orang Utan]

Does he have a life? I couldn't do it on that money. Its hard enough on £25K.

He manages fine - just had a massive bender of a weekend with him - he doesn't have any debts mind.

 

[scifisam]

But its about standard of life. Working your arse off just to cover rent and bills and not having enough to actually enjoy life? Fuck that.

I guess this is the key paragraph on why we're disagreeing on how much is a living wage. To me, a living wage is only enough to cover rent, bills, other essentials and a bit left over for the fun stuff (I do include having some left over for fun stuff and emergencies - otherwise it wouldn't be a living wage, it'd be a surviving wage). It might not be enough for holidays, gadgets and expensive outings. They're what you get when, hopefully, you've done OK at work and started earning more.

It also might not be enough to run a car in London, because of insurance and parking, but a car isn't as essential in London as it is in most places (and anyway, I was taking travelcards into account when working out what I think a person would need to live on).

 

[Orang Utan]

I think people are disagreeing about what constitiutes a good living and that changes the more you earn.
I used to live on 11k about 5 years ago, but I went to the pub once a month and clubbing once every two.
Now I earn more, a living wage constitutes being able to afford to go out every week and to go on holiday once or twice a year.

 

[Kanda]

I doubled my salary in 4yrs and am still skint all the time, and I don't have any debt

 

[arty]

But its about standard of life. Working your arse off just to cover rent and bills and not having enough to actually enjoy life? Fuck that.

judging by some of the responses here (and my own experience) it ain't that hard to rent a studio flat in London for £600. Even if you pay £700 that leaves you with plenty leftover if you earn £22k.

I guess everyone needs a different amount to enjoy life.
Some people might blow £50-£100 on a night out, while I might go to a soundsystem dance for maybe £5, have a couple of drinks before, a couple inside, smoke a couple of spliffs, total cost maybe £15-20.
people also spend inordinate amounts of money on shit they don't need, or maybe they do need them to enjoy life, but other people don't.

This thread is about a living wage anyway, not how much people need to have the particular lifestyle they might desire, which is obviously much higher for many people.

 

[Blagsta]

you can survive in London on no money..

Not really, no. You can beg for money but you need some money, even if only to get the bus.

anyway, ScifiSam isn't claiming to be living on only £6k.. that is for the 10 months of the PGCE for which she has also taken out a £1k loan and has accumulated in the space of a couple of months a few hundred quid debts.

Oh, I thought that's what they were saying, that they could survive on £6K/year.

 

[arty]

you do need money for food, but the bus can be free

 

[arty]

dbl post

 

[Blagsta]

I do also think you should be able to find somewhere to live by yourself if you're earning £22k. My last flat in Brixton (2 bedroom) was £650 pcm including heating and water bills - it was a lovely flat - a bit old and rough around the edges but really rather nice.

If you're on £22k and getting £1,388pm net then that leaves you with £738 per month for additional bills and living expenses. It's not tons, but it's not bad either. I know I managed earning less than that for the past 6 years.

I couldn't survive on that. Not after paying bills, credit cards, travel expenses, food, clothes. Well maybe I could survive, but I couldn't live - I wouldn't have a social life, I'd be a hermit. That's no life as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Blagsta]

you do need money for food, but the bus can be free

until you get caught and have to find £100 fine

 

[Orang Utan]

until you get caught and have to find £100 fine

You can get away without paying that usually

 

[Donna Ferentes]

I don't get it. If you're earning £22,000, why can you only afford £600pm on rent? Where does the rest of the money go? £22,000pa is £1,388pm net.

(I'm using this tax calculator, btw.

My friend has a two bedroom flat in a gated development in Whitechapel, ten minutes' walk from the financial district. £600pm. Another friend has a two-bedroom flat, fully furnished, in Penge, zone 3, £650pm. My partner's own rented room in West Ham, which is zone 3 but has excellent transport connections, is £300pm including bills. My houseguest recently went to look at 2 rooms in shared flats, zone 2: one was £320pm inc, one was £345pm inc. Two friends of mine rent an absolutely gorgeous one-bedroom flat with a balcony in Camden - not a cheap area - for £700.

These are all big, clean flats in pretty good areas (Whitechapel has a reputation but if you visit it you find that it's very much out of date) not too far out of the city. That's a lot more money than you'd pay for something similar in the suburbs or most other cities, but it's not absolutely impossible.

Right. Now I can't remember exactly how much I had to live on every month when I was in Brixton - my wageslips are about a thousand miles away - but it wasn't that much, since there were, as Blagsta observes, items such as pensions to consider. That was a sizeable amount - amidst the great fuss made about these public sector pensions everybody's apparently getting, it's rarely observed that they also cost a bit, too.

I also had to pay back about a hundred a month to meet the debts I'd incurred in order to qualify as a librarian.

I also had to pay my share of council tax.

After paying for my monthly Travelcard I seem to recall having about five hundred a month: not nothing, and I imagine theoretically I could have paid another couple of hundred a month on rent, if I'd wanted to have no life and no holidays.

I didn't live lavishly or anything like it: I didn't have overseas holidays or expensive ones, nor did I go out or go away a lot. But was I really supposed to spend more on rent than on all my living expenses combined, in order to have, if I was lucky, a studio flat, and no life to speak of? It was bloody tight enough as it was and I should object very strongly to any suggestion to the contrary.

 

[citydreams]

Not really, no. You can beg for money but you need some money, even if only to get the bus.
.

what do you need to get the bus for?

seriously, my cousin lived on the streets in london for years, never drawing a penny of dole. she's a bit of metalist though.

 

[Blagsta]

I guess this is the key paragraph on why we're disagreeing on how much is a living wage. To me, a living wage is only enough to cover rent, bills, other essentials and a bit left over for the fun stuff (I do include having some left over for fun stuff and emergencies - otherwise it wouldn't be a living wage, it'd be a surviving wage). It might not be enough for holidays, gadgets and expensive outings. They're what you get when, hopefully, you've done OK at work and started earning more.

It also might not be enough to run a car in London, because of insurance and parking, but a car isn't as essential in London as it is in most places (and anyway, I was taking travelcards into account when working out what I think a person would need to live on).

If I'm working my arse off (if anyone's working their arse off), then the reward should be more than simple survival. Simply surviving ain't any sort of life.

 

[Blagsta]

judging by some of the responses here (and my own experience) it ain't that hard to rent a studio flat in London for £600. Even if you pay £700 that leaves you with plenty leftover if you earn £22k.

.

I'm sorry, it gives FA left over. I couldn't afford a flat on my own and live in London.

 

[Blagsta]

what do you need to get the bus for?

seriously, my cousin lived on the streets in london for years, never drawing a penny of dole. she's a bit of metalist though.

Well clients of mine need to get the bus (despite living on the streets) to get to appointments that they can't walk miles for due to having DVT or other medical problems or disabilities.

 

[Donna Ferentes]

It would give absolutely stuff all left over. It sounds fine when you do the calculations, until you actualy start having to calculate the things you're paying for too.

 

[Blagsta]

Right. Now I can't remember exactly how much I had to live on every month when I was in Brixton - my wageslips are about a thousand miles away - but it wasn't that much, since there were, as Blagsta observes, items such as pensions to consider. That was a sizeable amount - amidst the great fuss made about these public sector pensions everybody's apparently getting, it's rarely observed that they also cost a bit, too.

I also had to pay back about a hundred a month to meet the debts I'd incurred in order to qualify as a librarian.

I also had to pay my share of council tax.

After paying for my monthly Travelcard I seem to recall having about five hundred a month: not nothing, and I imagine theoretically I could have paid another couple of hundred a month on rent, if I'd wanted to have no life and no holidays.

I didn't live lavishly or anything like it: I didn't have overseas holidays or expensive ones, nor did I go out or go away a lot. But was I really supposed to spend more on rent than on all my living expenses combined, in order to have, if I was lucky, a studio flat, and no life to speak of? It was bloody tight enough as it was and I should object very strongly to any suggestion to the contrary.

Exactly.

 

[arty]

If I'm working my arse off (if anyone's working their arse off), then the reward should be more than simple survival. Simply surviving ain't any sort of life.

I agree it ain't ideal, but as a "living wage", below which noone should be able to pay, I think £22k would be more than enough,as you can live comfortably on it, I've lived comfortably on less.

and no, living on the streets ain't really another good option, even though it's obviosuly possible.

as for the bus fine, speak with a foreign accent, you're going back to your country in 2 days (i.e. before any fine notice will arrive), you've got no ID on you, and they really can't be arsed to hassle you for too long. You do need a certain amount of bullshit ability though.