robin1234

This is my big thing too. Jet lagged as I was, I went to Tesco last night and bought a fair amount of cakes. Included Mr. Kiplings French Fancies and a couple of Batenbergs. French Fancies are pretty much all gone now.

mrken30

My biggest issue in the UK is the amount of people. The queues at checkouts in some parts of the country are so long. Parking can be a nightmare. During retirement , hopefully I won't need to be concerned about working and was thinking maybe some areas in the UK with higher unemployment might be more pleasant to live, due to population density.

nun

I've done the calculations and it really depends on where you live and how you live.

I live in MA on a retirement income of around $30k a year. I would need to spend far more than that in London, but less if I moved back to my home town in North East England.

Take a look at the geographical variation across the UK of median income and that will give you an idea of how far your US retirement income will go.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/dat...in-ashe-mapped

geoff52

Do you know the area of the house location.

trirod

I would expect to be back in the US for my "permanent" retirement by the time I hit 65 and am eligible for Medicare. The UK thing is supposed to be temporary (but maybe we'll really like it, who knows?).


But that brings up a good point. When I visit the US, while based in the UK, will there be any trouble getting travel insurance for unexpected medical events while in the US? Are there limitations if I am a US citizen, or go for more than just a few weeks at a time?

trirod

Respectfully disagree. I have a pretty good handle on what kind of expenditure my assets and income streams will support (based on historical returns of various investment classes and a hoped for absence of black swan events), and I have a pretty good handle on what my expenditures would be in the US, but not so much in the UK. I agree that currency fluctuations could have a significant impact and I would look into ways to hedge against that.


I have an idea of what I think I will need to live on in the UK, but was just curious if anybody else making the move from the US to UK or UK to US had noticed any significant differences in cost of living that I might not be thinking about.

trirod

I get that. Every time I visit there I always forget how long it can take to get places. In Toledo, everything is 20 minutes or less away!

robin1234

No, you should be eligible for regular UK travel insurance so long as you are resident in the UK and are just visiting the US. My son (US citizen) visited the US two or three times a year when he lived in England, he had some kind of an ongoing travel insurance policy that covered the US.

As for your first paragraph, financial advisors typically suggest budgeting $6k to $10 per annum for healthcare in retirement (Medicare premiums and other out of pocket expenses.) In Britain that figure would be £0 but in both countries residential care, end of life care etc. looms and may or may not be budgeted for.

Rete

Then perhaps you should be posting this in the Moving Back To The UK forum where people who are living what you think you might do can tell you exactly what their cost of living is at the present time.

http://britishexpats.com/forum/moving-back-uk-61/

malch

You just can't compare UK versus US. It's not a legitimate question, IMO.

You've got to get more specific -- where in the US and where in the UK?

I happen to live in the San Francisco Bay Area where the cost of living is astronomic. But there are literally tens of thousands of cities where the cost of living is WAY lower. Some have drawbacks... climate, amenities (or lack thereof) and so on. But there are still lots of places with quite reasonable living costs depending on the type of environment you seek.

Same in the UK. The cost of living in Highcliffe-on-Sea (where my mom lives) is a fraction of that in central London. Very different environments.

In my experience, the price of housing drives the vast majority of costs. When housing is expensive, labor is expensive. And expensive labor makes everything else more costly.

mrken30

I have no idea whether it is a good or bad area, if that what you mean. Also good and bad is all relative. I was just trying to give an example showing that not all UK housing is expensive.

durham_lad

Like everything it depends on what you are comparing. Last May we moved back from just north of Houston to a market town in the NE of England and everywhere is so much closer and easier to get to here. As mentioned above we drive far fewer miles here and second hand car prices are very good here.

We rented a 3 bed bungalow for about a year while we looked for and bought a 4 bed 2 story detached house with double garage with wonderful views of the hills but only a 10 minute walk from the town centre. Rent was £650/month. Cost of new house was £285,000. We are looking for a place for our son to move to and there are plenty of 2 and 3 bed semi detached houses for £120-160,000 on the same estate as we are. My sister is in the process of buying a 3 bed semi very near us for £123,000 (hopefully will be moving in 2 or 3 weeks time.) she has been renting a 3 bed house for the last 2 years in the same town, on the high street, for £450/month.

House insurance, car insurance, broadband, cable TV is all a whole lot less expensive here. Car tax is more, food is less, healthcare is less. We just had our first visit to a dentist here, recommended by good friends, private only, not NHS. Much cheaper than our excellent dentist in Texas. Our first visit was free and he asked if he could do a full set of x-rays which he did and spent plenty of time discussing them with me. Cost was £7. Although I don't need treatment I asked him how much a crown would cost and he said about £400. Dental insurance is available but he said that I had very healthy teeth so the cost of insurance would probably be about the same as treatment.

We are both dual US/UK citizens so have to do the tax returns in both countries. We structured our finances so that all our after tax investments in the US are HMRC reporting funds, and in my wife's name to maximize the tax benefits as my US pensions plus my U.K. pensions have me in the higher tax band. (The exchange rate pushed me over - not complaining as the house purchase was hugely cheaper than we had budgeted for).

We are also converting IRA money to Roth as the conversions are taxable only in the US and the Roth withdrawals when we take them are tax free in both countries.

mrken30

How do you know if you have an HMRC reporting fund?

Moses2013

Good point and many people forget that there are loads of different areas in the UK and it's not just London. Sure, there's pros and cons everywhere but you can also buy a house in a UK capital for less than 100K.


It's also not that hard to escape people in the UK either, if you consider Scotland or Northern Ireland.

durham_lad

https://www.gov.uk/government/public...eporting-funds

If you own these then dividends, capital gains etc are recognized as such by HMRC and taxed accordingly at the much lower rates instead of as regular income.