jasey

The commute to Canterbury for two people will come to approximately 12k/year, or 1k/month. If rental in Canterbury comes to around 2k/mnth, that's a total of 3k/month before any other expenses. How much would a family of two need to earn monthly to afford this?

Pistolpete2

GBP75,000 - 80,000 per annum say, as this would leave you GBP20,000 per annum to play with, eat, travel etc. but where is this 2k/month rental Jason. You should be able to do better than that, dogs, detached accepted.

P

P.S. http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-...?premiumA=true

jasey

Thanks Pete! Sounds doable, was wondering how much would be needed for the 'fun and eating' portion, so that does help. The 2k is just an estimate based on looking around at rentals mostly. Haven't considered the purchase route because not sure what banks need in terms of credit history (and that could take some time to build up). But perhaps this isn't necessary?

That property you found is such a tease Pete. With a river too. Why do you do this to me?

Pistolpete2

Thing is that if you are working in London you could be tempted to stay on and catch a later train but in Canterbury itself there are loads of places to eat for every budget, hope this guy doesn't mind me giving his details, again, but I like his taste;

http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/members-reviews/Donsafe

Most popular restaurant in Canterbury area right now:

http://www.kathtonhouse.com/

It is usually much cheaper to eat Lunch in these places to save money - Saturday?

I would say 50-55 quid for two incl wine and tip, for two courses and coffee. Say 6,000 a year for eating out for two. If you are commuting you can pick up easy to prepare meals at the station outlets of M&S, Sainsbury's, Waitrose before you board. Then there are fish & chip shops of which there are several (I know of three) in Canterbury. F&Chips costs about eight to ten pounds for two decent portions and chips.

Hard to tell what your supermarket budget would be but you can buy decent wine for 3 pounds and beer is cheapo these days if bought in quantity. 100-120 pounds a week for two for the whole lot, incl misc items??? If you are paying additional to this for your lunch then the expense will start to pile up.

jasey

Thanks for the links Pete - the Trip Advisor guy's reviews will come in handy for sure. Luckily, I prefer cooking at home so I'm sure we'll end up saving quite a bit that way. But it IS nice to go out too - and we'll be wanting to spend on travel outings and park entries and things.

Good to know what groceries would come to, thanks for that too. Wondering about other bits and pieces like:

- medical aid / health insurance for the first few years
- car, and car insurance
- insurance on household goods
- life insurance
- TV, home internet, mobile, etc
- animal food (Hill's)
- water/lights/sewage/electricity
- etc

Pistolpete2

See above! Aviva and Legal & General are a couple of the biggest Uk insurers. There is also National Farmer's Union Mutual and DirectLine. These can all, with others, be checked on the internet.

Pistolpete2

I know that you are smitten by Canterbury and I can understand it but early on in your Kent search it was mentioned that long distance commutes can invariably be disrupted by railway issues and bad weather which can put stress on your employment status and YOU. On top of this, for Canterbury, there is the issue that the only commutable run is into St Pancras and it's expensive.

Since you have, I believe, yet to determine exactly where you are working in London, this could be a problem when you have to add a fair bit of time to the London-end to actually get to work AND you have to consider the same stuff and some add-on expense for parking at the Canterbury-end.

Commuting into London is tough and not just on your wallet and not for the faint-hearted.

There are others on here that have Canterbury links funnily enough who are now raving about the area west of Sevenoaks near Westerham from where the commute is pretty ideal without the property prices necessarily being at Sevenoaks levels because the links are not by train directly into The City.

Just a thought and I really don't want to confuse things.

Down the other end near Canterbury, there really isn't anywhere better than being close-ish in to Canterbury in Chilham or Chartham or even Selling plus Sandling near Folkestone on the same High Speed track link. They are all roughly the same in time, if not more, and in rail fare. On the slower line through Pluckley, Marden, Headcorn (1hr 6mins)(GBP5,128 incl tube) the season ticket would cost a thousand quid less but the time to Charing Cross is longer.

christmasoompa

If it helps the OP, I spend about that each week and we're a family of four, plus 3 cats, guinea pigs and a dog. I can't imagine that a couple would need to spend anywhere near £120 a week.

Pistolpete2

I should have responded and noted that in my response I recalled that he had four dogs and two cats. It would indeed be good to keep to a budget for two of less than £100 per week. incl booze, if both are working.

Upon further searching, Guideline for (a couple of) Australians moving to the Uk is £60 per week for food and basic laundry and toiletries.

ElizabethK

I hope that's the case because if it is, we (2 of us) should be quids in when we're back. My USA grocery bill is way more.
Having said that though, I expect my portion of the food bill will be solely spent on satisfying my appetite for Heinz vegetable soup and ready made egg & cress butties, the two things I have missed beyond belief in the 17 years of living in USA

(sorry for going off topic there briefly!)

jasey

Thanks Pete. Will dive into them when I get home tonight

You're right Pete. Even more so at the beginning of our move. We have to be realistic and give ourselves a chance to settle into a completely new country and way of life (and weather) without having the additional daily commute to deal with (at least not for the first year or two). I think at this point we need to focus on somewhere green-ish, close-ish to work, and with enough space for our animals (and us).

Good memory Pete! The Hill's Science Diet pet food definitely adds up, so will be interesting to see what the UK costs are (thanks for the link). I'd rather budget too high than too low, so your numbers are useful.

mikelincs

Your rental costs will be a lot less than £2000 a month, Zoopla has 5 bedroom detached houses for less than that.

Pistolpete2

I sense that I too will be leaping for the items that I've been deprived of for all these years, such as Twiglets.

I checked with my sister last evening and she said her weekly bill for a family of four was 200 pounds but she requires special butter and goats milk and is not a big cook. She said our mother spends between 50 and 60 pounds a week on everything just for her because she isn't able to cope with much cooking from scratch for herself these days and isn't able to get out to the farmer's market.

This is terribly subjective and depends tremendously on access to cheap fresh food in markets, planning ahead and the time to prepare it. A particular liking for grapes, fresh lamb or fresh fish and decent cuts of fresh meat like steak could knock the budget sideways.

Having lived in high food cost places for the last thirty five years I've learned how to budget and shop accordingly rather than go in with any pre-conceived ideas as to what is on the menu today.

When in the Uk, I'm staggered at the price per kilo of a large number of supermarket-packaged goods such as cheese, ham, tongue and other deli and salad items such as peppers and hot peppers. Though shopping at Iceland is a way to get the spend down that is not the way we have shopped up to now so I don't intend to start now.

Planning ahead, in Canterbury there is opportunity to get decent fruit and veg from the market and a couple of very good greengrocers and excellent fresh fish can be bought at reasonable prices from the fish market area in Whitstable on occasional excursions there. Whitstable is known for being one of the least cloned towns in the UK and there are several independent butchers thriving within range of a Tesco Superstore.

Pistolpete2

I was thinking that if factoring in a landlord's expected return of around 5% these days in Canterbury, that rental price equates to a house valuation of just under 500,000 quid which does seem an awful lot.

HOWEVER, It's really hard to find anything detached with space for animals within decent distance of Canterbury West Station at this point and you have to satisfy the landlord regarding those animals which could cause a premium to be asked for.

Sorry Jason :

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-...-37162303.html

Now near Faversham, you have more open spaces.

As you can see, you have a choice of station depending upon where you actually are in this area south of Faversham and you still have easy access to Canterbury when you want it - Faversham also has its own particular attractions; the creek, Oare and the brewery for instance.

jasey

Amazing that there are people with properties like that (with huge open spaces) who still insist on shouting about "no pets!". Isn't the whole point of paying a deposit that they'll have cover if the tenant's animals go crazy? And surely then they should be saying "no kids!" too? Drawing on walls, blowing things up, they could go crazy.

Anywayyyy, the right place is out there waiting for us