durham_lad

Good info, thanks.

verystormy

I would say that is very high!

My wife and I live in central Scotland, I work but she doesn't. So, home all day.
Council tax not sure, but from memory about the same.
Don't have house insurance as in rental
Food about £350 - 400 max and we are very food driven!
Electricity £40 - two bed country cottage
Mobile £10
Don't have sky as there are hundreds of free channels these days. Internet £23
Gas £35
Water in with council tax
Fuel. I travel a lot with work, but if not doing big (1000 miles a week) then about £80

christmasoompa

Ditto! Nearly £200 a week on food for two people.

Freshwhyte

Someone's doing their shopping at Waitrose !

old.sparkles

Contents insurance?

old.sparkles

News to me - most rentals I've had would not include any bills, including council tax. Some council properties will include water in their rent from what I've seen, but council tax, gas, electricity, etc is down to occupier to sort out.

verystormy

Nope. Don't really have anything worth pinching. And little point in having it for breakages as all the white goods are part of the rental and the tv cost £25. Also, living in a village where we have zero crime negates it.

Pondlife

Building and Contents insurance £24 a month

The 'food' bill includes cleaning stuff, dog and cat food and every other bit and bob for the house (Sainsburys)

I too think it's a lot. I am sure I could reduce this by £150-£200 a month. At least I hope so as I am the only one that works and finding it tough

christmasoompa

My weekly shop includes the same, food for 2 dogs & 2 cats plus all cleaning stuff. I still don't spend more than £120 a week max (usually under £100) and there's 4 of us (plus the animals)! I'd imagine you could get your monthly bill down to less than half what you're spending pretty easily.

verystormy

We are a couple and one dog. He is small but on a prescription (expensive diet). Did our weekly shop at the weekend and spent £80 and thought that was a high one for us! We also eat very well for that - cassoulet for Saturday dinner, scrambled eggs with smoked salmon for sunday breakfast and then roast chicken sunday lunch with homemade sticky toffee pudding for supper.

minhan

Would appreciate for support if you can guide more on this budget subject?

- My British husband will be bringing us (wife & two children) back to UK. My kids are 9 and 11 years old so we need to get good school district for them.
- My husband has been away from UK since 2002 so he has no clue the cost of living for us all.

We haven't decided where we're gonna to settle. No job yet so we will need to settle first then find a job later. I need to have an estimate of cost of living before we decide to go back to Uk or other options.

Please share your experience.

christmasoompa

I think you'll need to give more info for people to give you ideas of your likely costs of living, if you want more specifics than those already given in this thread. I have children a similar age so can give you my costings, but unless you're in a similar sized house and a similar area, a lot of them may not be relevant to you.

What sort of property will you be looking for and whereabouts? What do your children like to do? How many cars will you want to run? Etc, etc - the more info you can give the better and then we can all try and give you a rough idea of costs.

minhan

My two kids currently take piano, football, swim and Taekwondo as after school activities. We eat home cook food most days. Currently, we only have 1 car as I don't work and my husband works from home.

The thing is my in law lives in Wirral and I don't think my husband can find a job with his skill so we will have to settle somewhere that he can travel to London. We know it's expensive to live in London so a house with decent size for family of 4 will be good. We spend about 2000 USD per month for our food and utility bills.

I'm not British so have to get health insurance.

spouse of scouse

If you're a US citizen you'll need to apply for a spouse visa to live in the UK with your husband, and as part of that application you'll pay a health surcharge - this means you'll be covered by the NHS from day 1.

verystormy

I cant think of a single occupation that needs someone to work in London.