Every round you buy at the bar makes your eyes water, and the tube alone costs an enormous amount of money. However, recent studies have pinpointed the precise income required to maintain financial stability in the capital. The golden number? A whopping £37,000. That’s around the average salary of a regional sales manager, nurse or firefighter, in case you were wondering. That’s also over £2,000 more than the average UK salary (which stands at £34,963), and is above the official London ‘living wage’, which is £13.35 an hour (£4 an hour less than what experts estimate is an actual liveable wage in the city). Money experts at Finder, who worked out the figure, also say that we should spend 40% of our salaries on rent, which for a £37,000 gross salary, would equate to about £921 per month. For that, you’d be looking to rent a room in a house share, such as this double room in Clapham Common or this cosy balcony room in Walthamstow. Finder calculated the suitable salary by working backwards – first creating a realistic budget for Londoners. Their research found that utilities, council tax, subscriptions and transport would make up 21% of the budget, which they say adds up to around £498. And groceries would also be about £166 a month.

Budget for Londoners earning gross £37,000