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cost of living?
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
in General Chat
OK, I'm moving out in a couple of weeks (hopefully!) and sharing a house with 4 other people. Rent is £40 a week, however it is dawning on me that I haven't a clue how much it costs to stay alive. My mam will be buying some of my food but I will get the majority I would think, and I will also need to put money towards the gas and electric - we are using the top up card system. Then there'll be other stuff like council tax, water rates. How much can I expect to pay for all of these things? Particularly the gas and electric?
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edited to say: I'm on income support so I don't pay council tax, and my rent is like £7 a week.
I do live in Washington, yes.
I would love to move out and only live a few minutes away, you've struck lucky there m'dear!
Blimey!!! Hope you had a big room :-S
food ...cheap crap food is cheap crap food.
good quality food can be even cheaper than crap ...if you know what to look for ...where to look for it ...and how to cook.
depends how much gas and electric you use.
might find yourself getting a bit mental about switching all the lights off to save on the electricity, or only putting the heating on for an hour a day in the middle of winter to save on gas. sigh. the student life. how i will (not) miss it.
and don't forget water bills. i believe yorkshire water are still chasing us with an outstanding £500 bill.
also remember the hidden extras that you never think of - stuff like disinfectant, washing powder, bin bags, washing up liquid. house insurance? might want that in a shared house. can be some dodgy dealings.
How come your rent is so damn cheap?!
Well it can't be that bad, we use £10 a week if that & we are ALL electric.
Believe me the washing machine never stops so i don't think its bad. Plus no bill is great. .
When I lived by myself I used to spend at least £30 a week and now between me and my mrs we usualy spend about 80 a week.
Where do you shop?:eek:
We normally spend £20-30 a week. We can't afford to spend more. Thats two of us & a baby whos now on solids!
Well... there's 5 of us @ 40 a week, which is 820 a month (hopefully, or I'm gonna look dumb), not including bills or anything, so it's not really cheap, just there's a lot of us It is a nice house though, lovely garden, converted loft.
Thanks for everyone's help, got a bit of an idea now
Next year I'm in a house, £52 a week inc. water. Hoping not to pay more than £2 a week gas, £2 a week elec, £2 a week broadband and £2 a week phone line rental. No council tax cos we're students.
Ah, now see... I'm a uni student, one of the others will be starting college in September I think, and the others work full time. So I'm not too sure how that works out re council tax
only students are exempt. the people who work will have to cough up. and you students will have to prove your student-ness.
I'm paying about £55/week for my flat now, and it is a very good flat in a nice part of town.
utility bills will come to about £30/week, all in.
You are exempt from council tax if everyone at the property is a student; there are reductions depending on how many people there are who are students compared to thsoe who are not.
If you shop well you can live on about £15/week on food, providing you know what to shop for and how to cook. 6 chicken thighs from tesco are £2.80, and they will do 6 meals. Add in veg and carbs and you are looking about £1.50 per main meal. Cheap bread and cheap beans, or tuna and mayo, will do for lunch.
You will just have to get used to eating boring food. But even eating extravagantly I do wonder how anyone can spend more than £20/week on food.
I used to pay £90 a week for a bedsit in Southampton in 1989, and that was the going rate then!! Fortunately for me I didn't have to pay gas or electric cause I wouldn't have been able to afford it. Two of us used to eat for £15 a week, bearing in mind there was no smartprice/value stuff then. A loaf of bread used to cost about 60p on AVERAGE and a tin of beans was 29p.
Well no, not really. Who wouldn't eat well if they could afford to? And Waitrose is expensive, even if it IS good. Back in my bedsit days I used to buy one loaf of bread a week, as a treat, lol and we used to eat one meal a day of vegetable stew and spaghetti. I tell you what though, I was disgustingly healthy, even if there wasn't much (any) variety!
One time I was invited to dinner by someone I knew vaguely who was a lecturer in health and nutrition. Guess what we had....yeah, you guessed it, exactly what I ate every day only with a bit of chicken chucked in too!! I still wonder in idle moments if she thought all bedsit dwellers lived on tinned pies.