Salaries and Standard of Living

Howdy Everyone --

Thanks for organizing this board. For someone contemplating a relocation to London, it's truly an invaluable resource.

Okay, I seem to be missing something and I'm hoping someone could help clear this up for me:

I'm currently negotiating an offer from my company to move to London for about a year and I'm trying to figure out what salary I need to make to maintain my standard of living. Here's the kicker though -- my salary will need to cover two people in London as opposed to one person in the States.

I'm currently living in the DC metro area and am making mid-70s right now. It seems like every cost of living calculator and analysis has London at about 70% greater in the cost of living department than DC, but when I look at individual pricing, it doesn't look nearly that expensive. For instance:

A CD still costs 13 GBP
Housing in NW London looks to be about 200-400 pw GBP on Craigslist
A nice dinner is 70 - 150 GBP

Apologies for sounding ignorant, but am I missing something? If I make 75k GBP in London, should I expect to have the same standard of living (in terms of disposable income, etc) that I do in DC? Can anyone help me understand this probably ridiculously obvious question?

Also, can anyone give me ideas on what a typical relocation package looks like from an employer? Do they:

- Set up your visa(s) for you and your family or do you take care of that yourself?
- Pay for your entire move (furniture, etc) out there?
- Put you up in temp housing for a certain amount of time (how long?) so that you can find a flat?
- Provide a housing stipend?
- Help you setup a bank/CC/utility account or are you on your own?
- etc, etc. I'm sure relo packages are pretty varied, but I'd love to hear what some people have been offered so that I can know what to expect.

So... a lot of questions -- sorry for that. But thanks for all the advice I've already found on this forum -- I'm looking forward to hearing people's replies!!

Honestly, if you're making £75k, you'll be living well beyond comfortable.  That's £50k after taxes, which more than enough to live in the UK.  I know a few couples who survive on £10k after taxes per year (although not in London).

A CD most of the time costs about £8 these days, especially at the supermarket if its a chart disc.

And if you're living in London, you might not want a car since public transport is so good and the cost of the car itself (road tax, parking, MOT, insurance for something you might rarely use) is a liability unless you plan to leave London frequently.  Don't know if that's a reasonable thing for you to factor in. 

If by 'nice dinner' you mean 'Three Course Michelin Star' then yeah, £75 - £150 might be right!


Vicky

Thanks for everyone's feedback! Yeah -- I thought the same thing that everyone said, but I was confused by the COL calculators and comparisons. Thanks for the help!

Does anyone have any ideas about typical relo packages? I'd really appreciate any examples that people could give me.

Thanks a ton!

My husband relocated from the UK to the US and then back to the UK after 8mo in the US.  His package was something like:

Everything visa related was taken care of for him including fees
A certain weight allowance of his things (and then our things back to the UK) were shipped. His company arranged the shippers and they came and packed everything for us.
They provided housing for him for his first month in the US but then he lived with me so he was given a per diem in lieu of housing for the remaining 7 months.
We were put up in a flat for a month when we moved back to the UK.
Took care of all DH's US taxes.

I have a horrible memory and that's all I can think of for now but hopefully that gives you an idea..

As for your question about salary, I would think £75K for 2 people in London would certainly be enough to get by but I think it depends on your definition of 'comfortable'.  I would probably require slightly more to cover 2 people living by my definition of 'comfortable' especially in London. 

As for your question about salary, I would think £75K for 2 people in London would certainly be enough to get by but I think it depends on your definition of 'comfortable'.  I would probably require slightly more to cover 2 people living by my definition of 'comfortable' especially in London. 

Ditto, Lissa.  I have absolutely no doubt that you can easily live on £75K, but you might come up short on the "comfort" end, depending on your current standards and expectations.  Especially if it's for 2 people. 

Without question, the biggest variable is housing.  We ended up significantly above our initial target range, so depending where you're looking in northwest London (and what you're looking for) 200-400 could be accurate, but it could also be really off. 

Our package was similar to Lissa's -- one thing I'd add is a set number of flights covered for going back and forth to the US each year.   

For me: 

- Set up your visa(s) for you and your family or do you take care of that yourself?
     Sort of- they did mine from the WP aspect, but I had to do the actual entry clearance visa myself. They were surprised I needed to actually even get a visa, they thought the WP was enough

- Pay for your entire move (furniture, etc) out there?
      Sort of- I had a fund of money until it ran out and it didn't cover all of it.  But my company is used to moving people within the UK and not from overseas and they only gave me a tiny bit more than what someone relocating within country would get

- Put you up in temp housing for a certain amount of time (how long?) so that you can find a flat?
      Yes. I had a nice relocation assistant to who helped me find a place to live

- Provide a housing stipend?
       No
   
- Help you setup a bank/CC/utility account or are you on your own?
        Yes, my lovely relocation assistant again helped me on that for bank.  Credit card, utilities, etc were all on my own.

I'd be absolutely amazed if your company paid you the same in £ as they would in $!!!  If so, what company is that! I want that!   

Our package was similar to Lissa's -- one thing I'd add is a set number of flights covered for going back and forth to the US each year.   

Yep, forgot about flights!  DH only came for 8 months but he was allowed one trip during that time and then his company paid for both of our flights back to the UK as I was his spouse by then. 

Thanks soooo much for the replies! They're really helpful!

So it sounds like I should be looking for a relo package that includes:

-- Flights for me and my gf to London
-- Visas for both of us (is it possible to ask my company to get my gf a work visa as well?)
-- A set amount of money for moving costs
-- A relocation assistant to help me setup accts, find housing, and deal with the visas
-- Temp housing for a short time while I'm looking for a flat
-- Perhaps: a flight or two for both of us back to the states while we're over there

Anything else that I'm missing?

Thanks also for the clarification on the salary stuff. I guess that it amounts to the cost of living is greater in London, but salaries don't reflect that, right? Could someone please give me an idea of how significantly reduced your salary was coming over here? For instance, negating currencies, if you made 75k in the States and in the UK you made 60k, that would be a 20% reduction.

I'd really appreciate if anyone could help set my expectations.

Thanks again for all the amazing help!

I must admit, I am really puzzled as to what people's idea of 'comfortable' is.  Two people can live very well on £75k in London.


Vicky

Where in DC are you living (or MD/VA)?  I used to live in Woodley Park and my roommate at the time (just a year ago) is now in London so I could run some things by her to see what she thinks as far as price goes.  Your standard of living is a bit higher then ours but we weren't too far behind you in salary so she should have a decent idea.

I think those calculators are off a bit because DC has defiantly got a bit more expensive in the last 5 years with the housing costs shooting up so fast. 

Some others may be able to answer better from a legal standpoint but seeing as your gf is not part of your family, I would have thought the company might balk at providing visa help much less a work permit (unless she was working for the same company and they needed her in the UK branch!).  Normally, I think they do family visas for spouse and children, that'd be awfully generous if they provided your gf help with WP and visa.

I used to live and work around DC in the early 2000s.  I know some of the apartments at that time in, say, Ballston were going for $1600/month upwards for 1-2 bedrooms.
Nowadays flats for, say, 2 bedroom in the area are between $2-3K/month just looking on apartments.com.
Now if you went to rightmove.com and looked at flats to rent in Hampstead as that's generally considered a nice area in northwest London for an urban professional you'd be looking about £250 - £450 per week max.  So I'd say the prices are roughly equivalent.

How often do you plan to spend £75 - £150 for nights out?  That'll drain your finances alright!  I would have thought an average dinner might be £30-£50 for 2 of you (probably depending on what you drink and how much!) at a reasonably nice restaurant, what you quoted is probably quite posh place.

Where in DC are you living (or MD/VA)? 

We live in Arlington, but I'd be interested to hear the COL comparison for a place in Woodley. Thanks!

Some others may be able to answer better from a legal standpoint but seeing as your gf is not part of your family, I would have thought the company might balk at providing visa help much less a work permit (unless she was working for the same company and they needed her in the UK branch!).  Normally, I think they do family visas for spouse and children, that'd be awfully generous if they provided your gf help with WP and visa.

Yeah -- I guess that I'm hoping that I'll be valuable enough to the company so that they'll take care of her visa stuff as well. I talked to someone familiar with relos and was told that my request isn't unreasonable. If anyone is aware of the legal implications of my company taking care of a visa and a WP for my gf, I'd really appreciate it.

How often do you plan to spend £75 - £150 for nights out?  That'll drain your finances alright!  I would have thought an average dinner might be £30-£50 for 2 of you (probably depending on what you drink and how much!) at a reasonably nice restaurant, what you quoted is probably quite posh place.

Ha! Definitely am not planning on spending that kind of money on a normal dinner. I was just using the £75-£150 figure as a benchmark for nicer dinners. For example, a nicer, celebratory dinner in the District runs about $100 - $120 for two. Definitely not an every night (or every week, or even month) kind of thing, but I thought it'd be helpful to use in order to get a read.