cost of living?

Does anyone know where I might find sites that give the average living expenses in SE England?  We are trying to build a budget for our UK income before we get there.  We will be at zero debt once we sell the house, cars, etc. and it will be a great chance to start from scratch, so to speak, and manage our expenses and income.  

Only 3 weeks to go!  Sent the Dependent visa apps off today FedEx overnight, so they should be back to us by the end of next week.  We are planning on a departure date of 10 or 11 Oct -- can't wait!

As always, thanks for the help

Stephanie Lathrop

This one is just too heady for me to figure out if it would do you any good. But it should be the Bible of statistics here in the UK in general.
National Statistics the official UK statistics site
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/themes/economy/default.asp

The Guardian online newspaper lists several recent features they've done about housing.
Housing features in the Guardian
http://society.guardian.co.uk/housing/0,7886,374539,00.html

Cambridge University has published a number of papers about land economy.
Department of land Economy publications
http://www.landecon.cam.ac.uk/property/prop_pubs.htm

The Home office has done a number of reports on various statistics. Though not giving any sort of standard of living, they do give a flavor of other things important to folks in general, such as crime, drugs, elections, etc.
Research Development Statistics by the Home Office
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/statsprog1.html

I haven't fully explored this, but it may be the user-friendly appraoch to the above sterile statistics. All you seem to need is a post code for the area you're asking about and it reports on just about anything, based on census results.
checkmyfile.com
http://www.checkmyfile.com/Guest/NeighbourhoodSearch.asp

Steph, otherwise, I don't know that your simple question has an easy answer.

Thanks Lisa -- I'll check out these sites.  I'm just trying to get a head start on the household budget.  We're excited about the prospect of actually being at zero debt.  It's our chance to start over, financially -- no mortgage, credit card debt, loans, etc.  Kind of exciting!  We're planning to budget based on 70% of the net income, and save 30% for travel, bringing relatives over, etc.  

Anyway, it's late and I'm rambling.  I haven't been able to sleep very well with the stress of closing down our life here and preparing to start up again in the UK.  

Thanks again!

Stephanie

D'oh.
Had this bookmarked for ages and never thought of it when I was writing the above. Just about forget the previous advice. Try this one:

upmystreet.com
http://www.upmystreet.com/

Thanks Lisa -- that site had more of what I was looking for.  I was looking for a lot of the stuff that creeps up in a budget, like cable/satellite TV, etc.

Stephanie

Does anyone know where I might find sites that give the average living expenses in SE England?  .... As always, thanks for the help, Stephanie Lathrop

The biggest thing in your budget will be the cost of housing, which in SE England will be startling, unless you are coming from somewhere like New York City.

You may find that too large a part of your budget goes on housing, and as low cost housing is likely to be really really small you may find yourselves spending more than you had planned.

If you can find a house near public transport and can manage without a car of your own then you can save lots that way.  It's not that public transport is cheap, but that cars are expensive - eg probably around $20k for a Ford Focus, and of course gas is expensive too.  Cars are easy to rent so do that if need one for a weekend away or when visitors come.  It has been reported several times in recent years that it is actually cheaper to rent a car when you need one and use a taxi for ALL OTHER journies than to own a car in the UK.

Otherwise, a good rule of thumb for many things is that you will pay around as many pounds in the UK as you would dollars in the US.  You may find that some groceries are a good bit cheaper, like a loaf of bread for around $1 (or less if you'll take cheap bread), or milk for $2.50 a gallon (except it comes in six-UK-pint bottles which is 0.9gal US, for $2.30)