The Cost of Living...

I've been chatting with various people over the relative costs of living between Australia and the UK lately, and we have come to a rather surprising conclusion, so I thought I'd record it here. It's actually not that more expensive living here day to day than back home.

Oh I'll grant you, the coast of accommodation here is heinous. And here you pay water rates and council tax as a tenant which you don't back home. The result of this is that I'm paying almost 50% more for about 1/2 the space as I was in Aus ($200 / wk versus $300+ now). But this is London, one of the most expensive cities in the world, so that's hardly surprising.

Otherwise... well, let me give you a few examples:
£40 will get you 5 paperback books (£8 for one). That's ~ £85 Australian at the current exchange rate. And last time I checked, a book in Aus was between $18 and $20 so it may even be cheaper here.
£15 will get you a DVD. (~$32 Aus)
£9 a movie (~$19 and yes that's a little more exe than home, but not by much)
£25 a meal in an average Restaurant (~$53)
£25 - £50 a theatre ticket ($50 - $100)
And you can get 50 Twining teabags, for £2 ($4.25), which is less expensive than Aus.

I suppose the biggest difference beside accommodation is travel. It costs me £0.90 using an oyster card for a single bus trip, and between £1.50 and £2.00 for a single tube trip. If I caught the tube every day, it would cost me £20 a week ($42) to travel to and from work. I take the bus in the mornings and walk most evenings so it costs me about £5 a week, but still... And yet if you lived in Sydney and drove to work it would probably cost you that much in tolls anyway (Em?). And I don’t have to have a car here like you do in Canberra – almost everywhere is accessible by public transport.

So really, especially with the current exchange rate, the cost of living here is not that bad. The $50 you spend back home will get you approximately the same amount of stuff that the £20 your $50 will buy you here will get you… if that makes sense.