Living and working in the UK

Mrs Garth Brooks

What is it like for the Irish over there?

Im thinking about moving over for work. Im applying for jobs anyway as there isnt alot going here.

Im still not sure. Is it manageable to live on a salary of around £16,000 per year. Converting it to € and its what il get here.

How's the cost of living, with rent, bills, food, travel?

r3nu4l

Irish people generally don't get much hassle in England anyway. There will always be idiots but there's no real mass prejudice anymore.

A salary of £16,000 a year is very different in the South of England, compare with the North. It's cheaper to live in the North of England.

Look at the UK salary calculator on i-resign.com to determine your monthly take-home from £16,000

Then remember that from that you will have to pay council tax, shopping, gas, electricity, phone and broadband bills and possibly commuting bills too.

Make sure that you check what the monthly rail fare would be from where you plan on living to where you plan on working. Trains are very expensive! No point having rent that is £200 a month cheaper because you are one hour outside a city if your travel to that city to work will cost you £400 a month.

For rental prices have a look at sites like Rightmove or find the names of local papers and go to their website and look at rental prices.

Solair

It's almost exactly the same as living and working here.

Prices of accommodation vary enormously depending on what part of the UK you're thinking of. London is ridiculously expensive and full of very low standard accommodation at the lower end of the market. If you're on a low income and can get a decent job in another city, I would give London a miss. There are lots of other really nice parts if Britain.

Word of warning : British landlords are mostly amature muppets like their Irish counterparts. Be very careful about checking all aspects of leases, taking photos and an inventory of everything when you move in etc.
There's also a similar lack of serious regulation of the rental sector. It's not at all like continental Europe and extremely similar to Ireland!

The only differences to be very aware if is Council Tax. It can be extremely expensive and really makes the residential property tax coming in in Ireland seem tiny in comparison.

Make sure you factor it in when you're budgeting as you'll be paying it even if you're renting. There are also water charges but there are no bin charges.

Most things are directly comparable to Ireland and you'll find Britain generally so familiar you'll forget you're abroad most of the time.

My only other advice is while the Irish networks are great get to know British people too! They're mostly very, very similar to Irish people. they eveb do moaning about everything, drinking too much and all that

Also it's only an hours flight away.

To be honest, it's only slightly more of a change than moving from say Dublin to Cork and probably less of a change than moving from an Irish urban area to a rural area.