Moving To/Living In London Megathread - ALL QUESTIONS TO GO HERE

Marcusm

RiseToMe wrote: »

Thanks a million for that. I was only looking at my starter form this afternoon and was unsure what to put down. My contract runs from July to July and following that the company splits from the university and comes back to Ireland with me so it is literally just one year that I will be UK based for.

That's a more complex set of facts and while my comments on the tax coding and PAYE remain valid, you will not qualify for split year treatment in either the UK or Ireland on the basis of a 1 year assignment. Certainly you'll remain resident in Ireland for all if 2014 and the UK income will have to be included in a 2014 Irish income tax return claiming credit for UK tax paid. 2015 will need separate consideration.

I have no idea what you mean by the "company comes back to Ireland" with you. You should seek professional advice. If you are contracting via an Irish company into a UK university, the UK PAYE obligation will, in the first instance, attach to the Irish company as employer.

seachto7

Got an email off a crowd in London interested in speaking to me about a possible job. £22K. As I mentioned here, I was of the assumption that I should be aiming for £25 onwards for London........
It's actually in Feltham....

BrokenArrows

seachto7 wrote: »

Got an email off a crowd in London interested in speaking to me about a possible job. £22K. As I mentioned here, I was of the assumption that I should be aiming for £25 onwards for London........
It's actually in Feltham....

Ya it would be tough in London on 22k. Although my flatmate managed on minimum wage for 11months until he found a better paying job. Not sure how he managed but he did!!

seachto7

I think I might hold out and see if I can get something over £25K...

Marcusm

seachto7 wrote: »

Got an email off a crowd in London interested in speaking to me about a possible job. £22K. As I mentioned here, I was of the assumption that I should be aiming for £25 onwards for London........
It's actually in Feltham....

Technically that's in Greater London but not in any meaningful sense. THere's some awfully cheap real estate out that way.

djpbarry

Marcusm wrote: »

Technically that's in Greater London but not in any meaningful sense. THere's some awfully cheap real estate out that way.

Was thinking that myself. I'm not sure I'd want to be stuck out beside Heathrow for any reasonable length of time. Handy for getting home I suppose, but it's not exactly the genuine London experience.

zweton

Guys,

What areas are considered good, total noob to london. I have been reading clapham is a good area, looking for somewhere safe, good transport and lively enough.

djpbarry

zweton wrote: »

Guys,

What areas are considered good, total noob to london. I have been reading clapham is a good area, looking for somewhere safe, good transport and lively enough.

That's an extremely difficult question to answer. There are plenty of places in London that could be considered safe, well-connected and "lively".

What's your budget like? Where will you be working? What sort of amenities would you like to have nearby? You see where I'm going with this...

Clapham is ridiculously expensive - avoid it.

Read the FAQ thread: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056364193

zweton

working on cannon street, i have not got a clue about where i would want to live there. can someone just throw out some areas which are nice and reasonable for rent. i can go from there.

enda1

zweton wrote: »

working on cannon street, i have not got a clue about where i would want to live there. can someone just throw out some areas which are nice and reasonable for rent. i can go from there.

Kensington is nice, bit on the pricey side though. Reasonable if you're earning millions per year which you might be.

zweton

unfortunately not :-) is kensington reasonable rent?

enda1

zweton wrote: »

unfortunately not :-) is kensington reasonable rent?

About £5000pcm for a 1 bed.

Reasonable is a how long is a piece of string question.

Like you were previously advised - the following questions could be useful to answer in order for people to help you:

-What type of property (shared house, 2 bed, 1 bed, studio)?
-rent per month? (remember to account for about £100/month for council tax too
-Commute time distance to work?
-Commute method? (walk, cycle, tube/train/bus)?
-Community? (Hipster, ethnic, mixed, grungy, sporty, English speaking immigrant)
-Quiet/bustling?
-Independent café on street corner/mcdonalds/nandos/betting shop on street corner?

And that's just a start!

For anyone to help you to choose from the hundreds of possible locations, you need to narrow things down somewhat!

x43r0

Cannon St has rail links to south east so if you don't mind not living central you could look in that direction like Woolwich, Sidcup, Blackheath. Look at the blue lines in this map coming from Cannon St

http://www.projectmapping.co.uk/Reviews/Resources/specialreports_2edb.London%20.gif

djpbarry

zweton wrote: »

working on cannon street, i have not got a clue about where i would want to live there. can someone just throw out some areas which are nice and reasonable for rent. i can go from there.

I don't think you really appreciate the scale of the options available to you. If you search for flats on a property site within, say, 10 miles of Cannon St, you will literally get hundreds of results, or even thousands, depending on your budget.

You need to give us something to go on.

seachto7

djpbarry wrote: »

Was thinking that myself. I'm not sure I'd want to be stuck out beside Heathrow for any reasonable length of time. Handy for getting home I suppose, but it's not exactly the genuine London experience.

True, I can only think of The Office

biZrb

I used to work in Sunbury, which is a little further out than Feltham, my salary at the time was £22K and I lived in London so its doable to work there, live in London and commute out.
Feltham isn't that far out, its only in Zone 6 and its got good train links to Putney, Wandsworth Town, Clapham, Vauxhall etc. If you work there it doesn't mean you have to live out in the sticks. BP are based there and a lot of people get the train from Putney or Clapham Junction there every day.

djpbarry

biZrb wrote: »

I used to work in Sunbury, which is a little further out than Feltham, my salary at the time was £22K and I lived in London so its doable to work there, live in London and commute out.
Feltham isn't that far out, its only in Zone 6 and its got good train links to Putney, Wandsworth Town, Clapham, Vauxhall etc. If you work there it doesn't mean you have to live out in the sticks. BP are based there and a lot of people get the train from Putney or Clapham Junction there every day.

But financially, that's the worst of both worlds - you're paying high rent and high commuting costs.

biZrb

Travel costs aren't that bad. A zone 2-6 monthly travel card is only £30 extra than a zone 1-2. Its completely possible to live somewhere in London and commute out to Feltham on a salary £22K and have bit of a life, sure it'd be better with more money, but wouldn't everything be?

Grandpa Hassan

djpbarry wrote: »

But financially, that's the worst of both worlds - you're paying high rent and high commuting costs.

Commuting costs wouldn't be too much if you don't want zone 1. And you'd get to live somewhere nice like Putney or Wandsworth. And of course commute the opposite way to everyone else.

RiseToMe

Just a FYI for up to date bank account opening,

I had an appointment with lloyds yesterday, all I needed was my passport and I left with a platinum account, free mobile, home and travel insurance, and aa breakdown, a diners card or six free cinema passes or a yearly magazine subscription of a magazine of my choice. And the usual visa debit and cheque book. Oh also a "planned overdraft" of 200, Not that I plan to use it but it was free and is charge free if used. They have good Internet banking and an app.

ballsymchugh

RiseToMe wrote: »

Just a FYI for up to date bank account opening,

I had an appointment with lloyds yesterday, all I needed was my passport and I left with a platinum account, free mobile, home and travel insurance, and aa breakdown, a diners card or six free cinema passes or a yearly magazine subscription of a magazine of my choice. And the usual visa debit and cheque book. Oh also a "planned overdraft" of 200, Not that I plan to use it but it was free and is charge free if used. They have good Internet banking and an app.

for a monthly fee of £17??

djpbarry

Grandpa Hassan wrote: »

Commuting costs wouldn't be too much if you don't want zone 1.

It's still about £1,500 per annum - that's a lot of money when you're only on £22k.

Grandpa Hassan wrote: »

And you'd get to live somewhere nice like Putney or Wandsworth.

You're the second person to mention Wandsworth in a few posts. I don't know where people are getting the idea that Wandsworth Town is nice - it's horrible.

Grandpa Hassan

djpbarry wrote: »

It's still about £1,500 per annum - that's a lot of money when you're only on £22k.
You're the second person to mention Wandsworth in a few posts. I don't know where people are getting the idea that Wandsworth Town is nice - it's horrible.

Communiting is always that much. The only way to avoid it is to not commute. The implication earlier was that to commute out to zone 6 would cost a fortune when it is actually no more than commuting into the city

I live in Putney and drink in the Alma, by wandsworth town station.....all seems pretty nice to me

zweton

ballsymchugh wrote: »

for a monthly fee of £17??

So your essentially paying for all that?

Fysh

biZrb wrote: »

Travel costs aren't that bad. A zone 2-6 monthly travel card is only £30 extra than a zone 1-2. Its completely possible to live somewhere in London and commute out to Feltham on a salary £22K and have bit of a life, sure it'd be better with more money, but wouldn't everything be?

I think the question here is "How much of the stuff you want to get out of living here requires you to be going into/through Zone 1?". For example, a lot of film and comic events that I've gone to in London require travelling across the city. Similarly, a number of the higher-profile free museums and arthouse cinema are fairly central. If those are things you want to get to on a regular basis, living out of the city and having to travel in (with additional costs in doing so) may not be the best option.

djpbarry

Grandpa Hassan wrote: »

Communiting is always that much.

Unless you walk, cycle or bus.

Grandpa Hassan wrote: »

The implication earlier was that to commute out to zone 6 would cost a fortune when it is actually no more than commuting into the city

Actually, the implication was that living in Central London and commuting out to say, Feltham, is far more expensive than, for example, living in Feltham and commuting into Central London, or living and working in Feltham, or living and working in Central London.

I drew no comparison between the cost of different commutes.

Grandpa Hassan wrote: »

I live in Putney and drink in the Alma, by wandsworth town station.....all seems pretty nice to me

You've found one decent pub in Wandsworth (The Alma's a pretty generic London pub) so Wandsworth is nice? There's a reason why rents in Wandsworth Town are relatively low.

FTA69

djpbarry wrote: »

It's still about £1,500 per annum - that's a lot of money when you're only on £22k.
You're the second person to mention Wandsworth in a few posts. I don't know where people are getting the idea that Wandsworth Town is nice - it's horrible.

I wouldn't call it horrible now to be fair, and it's a pretty convenient area to be in. Oakwood, now that's what I'd call horrible. Literally dick f*ck all there bar a horrible pub and a golf course. That having been said, it suits some people down to the ground like. People want different things from different areas at different stages in their lives I suppose.

ballsymchugh

zweton wrote: »

So your essentially paying for all that?

yep. page 3 here

http://www.lloydsbank.com/assets/media/pdfs/current-accounts/Banking_charges_guide.pdf

only free if you have had the account since 2005

djpbarry wrote: »

I drew no comparison between the cost of different commutes.
You've found one decent pub in Wandsworth (The Alma's a pretty generic London pub) so Wandsworth is nice? There's a reason why rents in Wandsworth Town are relatively low.

just out of interest, if you had a blank canvas and enough money to survive, what part of london would you consider living in? nearly every time someone mentions an area, you seem to have some major reservation about it. clapham is too expensive, everywhere else seems to be a hole...

Grandpa Hassan

djpbarry wrote: »

Unless you walk, cycle or bus.
Actually, the implication was that living in Central London and commuting out to say, Feltham, is far more expensive than, for example, living in Feltham and commuting into Central London, or living and working in Feltham, or living and working in Central London.

I drew no comparison between the cost of different commutes.
You've found one decent pub in Wandsworth (The Alma's a pretty generic London pub) so Wandsworth is nice? There's a reason why rents in Wandsworth Town are relatively low.

If you have a job in Feltham, would you want to live in Feltham? of course not! You'd want to live somewhere in town.

Living in zone 2 and commuting to Feltham is the same as living in zone 2 and commuting to the City. I'm really not sure where you're going with this. Unless you are just pointing out that living in central london is more expensive than living in Feltham. Which is pretty obvious

I know plenty of people who live around Wandsworth Town. It is fine!! I honestly don't know what problem anyone would have with it. Unless you are only happy with a townhouse off Sloan Square or something

seachto7

I'd be happy with an hour commute to work. Less would be great. I think that would be my plan, but it all depends on where/if I get offered a job.