Money matters

When I meet someone new here in a social setting and tell them that I moved to England recently after living in US for more than ten years, here is how the typical conversation goes:

New person: (puzzled expression)
New person: (pauses for a few seconds)
New person: So... hmmmm.... how do you like it here compared to US?
I: Oh.. it's very much like US. Except for the bad weather and things being more expensive here.

Then we get stuck in the standard ritual of comparing the cost of living in both the countries. It's funny how once we start talking about money matters, we don't go back to the general comparison. Yes, I truly believe our life has not changed much. Yes, the weather is bad here. Yes, things are more expensive.

It should be a well-known fact that UK, being a tiny country and thickly populated, is a more a expensive place to live than US - even for someone who lived in the expensive north east (Boston suburb). I can quote a ton of stuff that cost more in one breath: clothes, furniture, houses, train tickets, hotel rooms, petrol, cars, car insurance, toys, electronics, restaurants, movie tickets. A general rule of UK pricing seems to be to find the price in US in $s and replace it with £s. So, a $9 movie ticket costs £9. This applies to most of the things in my list above except fuel, which costs $3 per gallon in US and £4.75 here. If only they did the salaries this way!

No, this blog entry is not dedicated to (just) complaining about the cost of living here. Instead, I wanted to draw up a list of things that cost less in UK (however small the list may be). Just like most information on this blog, this is highly unscientific since I am making this list from my own experiences and household expenses, so it may not apply to everyone. OK, here we go:

Nursery (daycare): We pay about £900 a month for our son for a full time nursery (that is five days a week, upto 10 hours a day). He is typically there for 8.5 hours and during this time he gets breakfast, a snack, lunch and tea. Nappies and wipes are taken care of. The nursery has got excellent facilities like toys and playground. The student - teacher ratio is about 3:1 most of the days. Sometimes there are as many teachers as children. The teachers are very friendly and don't seem to be in a hurry to head home at 5. He loves it so much that he refuses to leave in the evening when his mommy picks him up in the evening. This is part of Bright Horizons chain in US. He just happened to go to one in US and had very similar experience, where we paid about $2200 per month. That's a huge difference!

Utilities: I have talked about this here and here but let me say it again. Mobile phone plans are cheap - I pay £15 a month for 600 minutes and unlimited landline calls for my SIM-only plan, when something similar would cost me at least $40 a month in US. Broadband, TV and phone costs me a total of £70 here, when it would cost about $120 in US. If I had just broadband and phone, the savings will be even better - £22 against $70. Gas and electricity comes to £80 a month on average whereas we used to pay close to $200 a month for an almost similar sized home in US. Calls to India cost 1p a minute through Lycatalk, where we paid 2¢ a minute through Reliance in US.

Groceries: When we lived in US, we used to buy our groceries from Shaw's and Stop and Shop, till we discovered Costco. Costco was much cheaper than those stores, but you tend to buy in bulk and things you may not need. To make a reasonable comparison, you need to compare a supermarket like Tesco here with Shaw's. I logged onto peapod.com, Shaw's online groceries site and compared the prices with Tesco.com. A gallon of whole milk costs about £1.66 (after a discount, which they seem to have always), compared to about $3.50. One banana is £0.16, compared to $0.49. 1 kg of Gala apples is £1.71, compared to $2.9 (need to buy a 3lb bag for this cheap price). And so on. I understand there are certain grocery stuff can be cheaper in US, but overall, our monthly grocery bill used to be $600-$700 (blame Costco), now it is about £300.

Car maintenance: We used to have a 2005 Toyota Corolla which required oil change every 3-4 months or so. We used to take it to a Toyota dealer for service and ended up spending about $300-$400 at least twice a year - most of it on Toyota recommended service. For someone with limited knowledge on car maintenance, I used to simply pay up. We have a 2006 Ford Fusion here. Service intervals are yearly here and the last owner seems to have spent about £200 on his last service. The key difference is the less number of trips to the dealer, which reflects on the final bill.

There are few other minor things that are cheaper here. Books in amazon.co.uk definitely belong there. New hardcover fiction releases can be had for £5-7 when it would cost $12-15 in US. Driving lessons are £21 here and costs about $45 there.

As I digest everything I have written, I realize that it is not uniformly bad here. As with many things in life, you win some and you lose some. That's the way it has been for us with this move too!