Escaping the city
Discussion
Me and my missus are in our early thirties, live in London, both have good jobs (she's on mat leave at the moment), and are happy living in our corner of suburban zone 4 west London.
Neither of us are born and bred Londoners, and we've talked about moving out of London at some point in the future, and getting lower paid (but less stressful) jobs in the provinces. Not planning an immediate move, as we still enjoy London, but will probably be looking to move in 8-10 years from now.
I worked for a Big Four accountancy firm for four years before moving into other various financial services roles, so I (perhaps naively) hope I could get back into an audit role in the provincial offices of these firms, but I don't know how easy this will be.
There's a lot of chat in some of the house price threads about how London is overpriced and generally not worth the hassle, so has anyone on PH made a similar move - any advice or tips?
Neither of us are born and bred Londoners, and we've talked about moving out of London at some point in the future, and getting lower paid (but less stressful) jobs in the provinces. Not planning an immediate move, as we still enjoy London, but will probably be looking to move in 8-10 years from now.
I worked for a Big Four accountancy firm for four years before moving into other various financial services roles, so I (perhaps naively) hope I could get back into an audit role in the provincial offices of these firms, but I don't know how easy this will be.
There's a lot of chat in some of the house price threads about how London is overpriced and generally not worth the hassle, so has anyone on PH made a similar move - any advice or tips?
I grew up in South east London and worked in Central London for the first 26 years of my life, before we moved house and then job into the shires.
It's true that London is an expensive place to live in, but if you move to Bristol, Manchester, Bath etc things really don't get much cheaper relatively speaking as you're just swapping one densely populated area for another.
I wouldn't say that you'll find jobs themselves less stressful out of the big smoke. It's more that dealing with the day to day grind is made all the easier as you're not having to fight hordes of people all trying to cross the same densely packed miles just to end up in a pile of bricks only feet away from the next pile of bricks
It's fairly true that salary levels fall significantly the further you go out of London. The trick is to pick an area to move to where the cost of housing drops to match (i.e. don't try and match a job in Bedford with a house in St Albans).
You have to ask yourself whether you're sick of living in London or sick of living in a city in general.
Are you ready for such a change in lifestyle that you are willing sacrifice the convenience of having all the arts, restaurants and shopping facilities close at hand, trading it in for clean country air with the nearest shop a decent drive away?
It's true that London is an expensive place to live in, but if you move to Bristol, Manchester, Bath etc things really don't get much cheaper relatively speaking as you're just swapping one densely populated area for another.
I wouldn't say that you'll find jobs themselves less stressful out of the big smoke. It's more that dealing with the day to day grind is made all the easier as you're not having to fight hordes of people all trying to cross the same densely packed miles just to end up in a pile of bricks only feet away from the next pile of bricks
It's fairly true that salary levels fall significantly the further you go out of London. The trick is to pick an area to move to where the cost of housing drops to match (i.e. don't try and match a job in Bedford with a house in St Albans).
You have to ask yourself whether you're sick of living in London or sick of living in a city in general.
Are you ready for such a change in lifestyle that you are willing sacrifice the convenience of having all the arts, restaurants and shopping facilities close at hand, trading it in for clean country air with the nearest shop a decent drive away?
Once you leave the city, you will never look back or enter it again, we moved away from london and in my job I did not drop in salary. depending on how local you work what you might loose in salary might balance out with cheaper travel and less working hours/communiting.
It takes me 10 minutes to get to work...and I love it
mostly because my village has quick and easy access to an A road and my work is at a junction a couple of miles down the road.
It takes me 10 minutes to get to work...and I love it
mostly because my village has quick and easy access to an A road and my work is at a junction a couple of miles down the road.I'm 31 the OH is 27, she has lived in London all her life, me for the last 10 years
We have just made the decision to leave
Not too far we are only going to Kent so hopefully I can keep my job work from home a bit more but have the countryside all around and not have to do the schlep into London every single godamn day
Do it!
We have just made the decision to leave
Not too far we are only going to Kent so hopefully I can keep my job work from home a bit more but have the countryside all around and not have to do the schlep into London every single godamn day
Do it!
My only advice would be to make sure you can handle the commute. I used to live in a village nr Maidstone and moved to shad Thames. I got fed up with paying a fortune to park at the station, a fortune for the train ticket and then having to put up with the shambles that is the train service.
okgo said:
Why not do what everyone seems to do, move 10-20 miles outside the M25, get a better house, pay a bit more in rail and keep doing the same jobs, unless its the jobs that you can't stand!
Worst of both worlds IMO - still tied to London (bad thing) and adding hours to your working day through the commute (bad thing especially with a young child).Of course, some people like London
Edited by ewenm on Wednesday 6th July 08:29
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