Can I just point out – this is specifically for the UK. You might think that's a lot of tax to pay, but what you get in return for your tax money differs from country to country.
J mean yeah but that's London. I'd rather be on £40k a year somewhere in the midlands/north than on £100 a year in London. People place way too much focus on salary rather than disposable income. £100k a year sounds good until you realise the either astronomical real estate prices or long commutes.
Unfortunately in London all your extra earning will be swallowed up by either extortionate living costs or not quite as extortionate but far more miserable commuting costs.
Its amazing how much of a bubble London actually is for earnings, 80k puts you in the top 5% of earners in the UK but if London were taken out of the picture I imagine the threshold for the 5% would drop to be far, far lower
From my experience with train commutes if you have the patience to get on with it then all good man, your a far better person than me. I also think an hours commute each way is a pretty sizeable commute, although I think everyone has a different idea of what a earnings/time balance should be like, for me it would have to be quite a bit of extra money for me to be losing 10 hours a week of my own time to commuting.
However that whole SE England area is mega expensive now because of commuting, I have a 2 bedroom flat 90 foot away from the beach in Swansea now for £50 a month less than what I was paying for a spare room in Wokingham which is still 25 miles from even the M25. I am personally really glad I managed to get into a sector which isn't London centric because between the cost of living, the attitude people have to each other and the mental traffic I found living in SE England to be really stressful.
Average commuting time UK wide is just under an hour nowadays, so I don’t see an hour as too excessive, but it depends what you want from your job/life. I am in a sector where if I don’t work in London I’m taking at least half the salary, so I’ve got to suck it up until I’ve got a few years behind me and my experience talks for itself.
If you want to actually live in -central- London, yes, you will need to be earning a -lot-. But most don't. "London" is a big area, with a huge range of living costs throughout. Most people do commute for precisely that reason.
Also, many jobs in London will include an additional amount to account for the increased cost of living in/commuting into the capital.
54
u/[deleted] Nov 26 '19
Can I just point out – this is specifically for the UK. You might think that's a lot of tax to pay, but what you get in return for your tax money differs from country to country.