london_calling

Hi everyone, I'm considering the move and this would be our combined income. My wife is a USC so visas aren't an issue.

Would this be enough to live reasonably? From where I sit NYC doesn't seem much cheaper than London.

Frankly I don't want to go to the US, but would consider it if our standard of living might increase substantively.

Thanks in advance.

rpjs

Yes, even by NYC standards that should get you a pretty comfortable lifestyle.

MarylandNed

Do you have any kids? Kids can absorb a lot of income.

london_calling

No kids yet but I think we will in the next couple years. Is having children more expensive in NYC than London? Some of the state schools I've seen in Manhattan look terrible. We wouldn't be paying for private education here.

Nutmegger

You would probably want to be in Westchester, NJ or CT when you are ready for children, where there are good public school options. In the meantime, you can enjoy Manhattan for a few years.

london_calling

I've looked into that but the train services out of NYC are horrendously slow and infrequent, especially on weekends. At least London makes it convenient to live outside the city. We're mid 30s so kids are likely to be sooner rather than later.

Nutmegger

Then you should be checking out the rather astronomical private school fees if you are thinking of raising children in the city -- that will indeed make a hole in your budget. Have to admit I never thought of the train service into the city as particularly slow and I certainly wouldn't describe it as infrequent for commuters. . Suppose I'm just used to it!

london_calling

I know it's twice hourly from South Orange NJ to Penn Stn, and hourly on weekends. It takes 35 minutes to go 12 miles! By contrast, my regular suburban train from Waterloo leaves every 20 minutes 7 days per week until 1am and takes 40 minutes to travel 40 miles..

I get the impression American politicians worry that wanting to invest in mass transit makes you a communist.

Michael

Also expect to pay an arm and leg for reasonably sized small apartment in Manhattan, much like Central London, when you have kids instead of only an arm for a large house in Winchester or NJ.

rpjs

You're kidding right? I commute to NYC from Westchester on Metro-North after a decade commuting to London from Kent on Southeastern and Metro-North is commuter paradise in comparison.

Pulaski

It was from my perspective, from Westchester, Putnam, and Dutchess counties. Very poor compared to London. It was so bad from western CT that I decided there was no way for me to commute from there.... Short of habitually arriving in the office 30-45 minutes early, I faced being one delayed train or missed light driving to the station from being unacceptably late to the office. And this was one of several key reasons we left the NY area.

I don't live a particularly luxurious lifestyle, but I found the quality of life I could afford to be much less than in London on a matching salary at the prevailing exchange rate, which was at around $1.4/£1. I have consistently said that I would only return to NYC to work for about 50%-60% more than LondonCalling is considering because I found the cost of living to be that high. ...... Maybe I've just had it too good for the past 12 years down here!

Pulaski

I didn't realise commuting into London from Kent was that bad? Metro-North sucks compared to SW Trains into Waterloo. Trains every 15 minutes on most lines and half an hour into Waterloo (my service was 16 trains an hour IIRC ), as compared to trains at bizarrely irregular times every 25-40 minutes for a journey that was almost an hour from Whiteplains.

I guess it depends on your experience of commuting in London ss to what you will think of M-R North.

notonuksoil

Not sure what lines or services you are looking at but we have 4 trains into NYC between 6am- 7am, 5 trains between 7am -8am and 4 trains between 8am - 9 am with a service that runs pretty much on time and to schedule 360 days of the year baring days when snow fall is over 8 inches. Monthly season tickets are less than $240 a month.

Return trains during evening peak also offer drop off express trains, one or two stop express trains plus the usual stop at every lamp post service.

I come from a railway background in the UK and the service into NYC is considerably cheaper and more reliable than a similar distance commute from the burbs into London.

rpjs

Yes, Notwork SouthEast wins on frequency, usually, because it's a much more extensive network, so unless you live at the end of a branch, you've usually got lots trains coming through your station from different places to London. And one advantage we had in Kent was a choice of London terminals (St Pancras, Victoria and Charing X plus Cannon St at rush hour) so if the service to one went t/u you'd have fallbacks.

But that extra connectivity makes for much more complex operations and far more things to go wrong, so IME Metro-North has been far more reliable. In the four years I've been commuting on MNR I've experienced on average one major disruption a year and delays of up to half an hour maybe every six months on average.

In comparison, half hour delays on Southeastern were barely worth noting, and pretty much every month or so I'd rock up to St Pancras to find a huge crowd of people at the gates because the "high-speed" service was down, and would have to decide whether I should wait it out or tube to Victoria to see if the service there was still running.

And then there's the spaciousness of the trains. Yes MNR has the 3+2 seating like the hideous high-density British coaches, but here they are three full sized seats which anyone can fit in without having their shoulders scrunched up around their ears. Even better, the Americans don't like to sit in the middle seats anyway! Pussies. They wouldn't last five seconds on the 0757 to Cannon Street...

hungryhorace

My heart bleeds. Yes, I think you could probably just about get by on $250k. You may have to ration yourself to meat only thrice a week though.