Moving to England?

[Silent Majority]

I have a friend who lives in Camberwell with two roommates. I think he's a temp, but I don't know him well enough to gauge his honesty. How's the nightlife/culture in Birmingham? Is there stuff to do? Comic shops, record shops, music venues, etc?

Yeah, its got what you need. Forbidden Planet, Geek Retreat. An old fashioned record shop next to a mod haircut place. Lots of good bands come by. Restaurants are good. I prefer it to London.

Great, thanks! And your rent sounds very nice. Do you have any sense of average salaries around?

You're a graphic designer aren't you? Probably over £20,000, maybe as much 27?

And is that considered pretty good there? I mean that's a SUPER tiny amount of dough in the states when you take into account rents, expenses, and everything.

I'm making less than 16,000 a year, and, annual financial crisis aside, I'm happy as hell. But I have admittedly very simple tastes.

[Silent Majority]

I'm probably the worst person to ask about finances now I think about it.

[Kory]

Yeah, its got what you need. Forbidden Planet, Geek Retreat. An old fashioned record shop next to a mod haircut place. Lots of good bands come by. Restaurants are good. I prefer it to London.

Great, thanks! And your rent sounds very nice. Do you have any sense of average salaries around?

You're a graphic designer aren't you? Probably over £20,000, maybe as much 27?

And is that considered pretty good there? I mean that's a SUPER tiny amount of dough in the states when you take into account rents, expenses, and everything.

I'm making less than 16,000 a year, and, annual financial crisis aside, I'm happy as hell. But I have admittedly very simple tastes.

If you don't mind me asking, is the crisis just a part of British living, or something more specific? I'm basically just trying to see if I'm going to have a drastically different standard of living.

[Silent Majority]

Great, thanks! And your rent sounds very nice. Do you have any sense of average salaries around?

You're a graphic designer aren't you? Probably over £20,000, maybe as much 27?

And is that considered pretty good there? I mean that's a SUPER tiny amount of dough in the states when you take into account rents, expenses, and everything.

I'm making less than 16,000 a year, and, annual financial crisis aside, I'm happy as hell. But I have admittedly very simple tastes.

If you don't mind me asking, is the crisis just a part of British living, or something more specific? I'm basically just trying to see if I'm going to have a drastically different standard of living.

Oh, that's Silent Majority specific.

[Silent Majority]

Maybe I won't have one in 2018!

[Kory]

Well thanks for the info, it's very helpful! It's hard to tell if a lot of those "average cost of living" sites are an accurate reflection of what it's actually like to live somewhere, so I'm flying kind of blind.

[Dr. Medulla]

Say goodbye to having a decent sealed pancake if you're over there.

[Kory]

Say goodbye to having a decent sealed pancake if you're over there.

The struggle is real.

[revbob]

You might find that IPA doesn't translate very well over there.

[Inder]

The UK's in a pretty bad place if you're looking to move there, to be honest. The immigration/visa situation is very uncertain as Brexit lurches from calamity to calamity. Employers are understandably skittish about hiring foreigners, given no one knows what the government is going to do next — even if you have already have a job offer, it'll likely be on a maximum three-year Tier 2 visa, with no guarantees you'll be able to renew it to stay on/hit the five years for residency (provided they don't end up changing that as well).

All that, plus the economy's headed down the shitter, inflation is rising, etc. Plus stuff like this —
UK faces two decades of no earnings growth and more austerity, says IFS. It's impossible to buy a house in London unless you have a spare £600k lying around or think it'd be a good idea to sink £300k in a fixer-upper in a shit part of a town. Rent for one-bed in the city's at a £900 minimum, or £700 for a flatshare. It'll be cheaper elsewhere, but you might have a tougher time finding a job.

I love it, but I wouldn't recommend anyone move here without a really firm grasp of the risks and sacrifices involved.

[101Walterton]

"Get into the middle class"? This is England, you die in the class you're born into. You can make a respectable white collar wage though.

Haha so true. Is England the only place where money has no bearing on class?
Doesn’t matter how much cash you have if you were born working class you will always be.
Likewise those upper class twats who haven’t got a pot to piss in or fix the hole in the roof of their inherited stately manner that they can’t cash in. Still upper class though.

[Kory]

The UK's in a pretty bad place if you're looking to move there, to be honest. The immigration/visa situation is very uncertain as Brexit lurches from calamity to calamity. Employers are understandably skittish about hiring foreigners, given no one knows what the government is going to do next — even if you have already have a job offer, it'll likely be on a maximum three-year Tier 2 visa, with no guarantees you'll be able to renew it to stay on/hit the five years for residency (provided they don't end up changing that as well).

All that, plus the economy's headed down the shitter, inflation is rising, etc. Plus stuff like this —
UK faces two decades of no earnings growth and more austerity, says IFS. It's impossible to buy a house in London unless you have a spare £600k lying around or think it'd be a good idea to sink £300k in a fixer-upper in a shit part of a town. Rent for one-bed in the city's at a £900 minimum, or £700 for a flatshare. It'll be cheaper elsewhere, but you might have a tougher time finding a job.

I love it, but I wouldn't recommend anyone move here without a really firm grasp of the risks and sacrifices involved.

Shit. Does this ring true for the other Brits here?

[Inder]

The UK's in a pretty bad place if you're looking to move there, to be honest. The immigration/visa situation is very uncertain as Brexit lurches from calamity to calamity. Employers are understandably skittish about hiring foreigners, given no one knows what the government is going to do next — even if you have already have a job offer, it'll likely be on a maximum three-year Tier 2 visa, with no guarantees you'll be able to renew it to stay on/hit the five years for residency (provided they don't end up changing that as well).

All that, plus the economy's headed down the shitter, inflation is rising, etc. Plus stuff like this —
UK faces two decades of no earnings growth and more austerity, says IFS. It's impossible to buy a house in London unless you have a spare £600k lying around or think it'd be a good idea to sink £300k in a fixer-upper in a shit part of a town. Rent for one-bed in the city's at a £900 minimum, or £700 for a flatshare. It'll be cheaper elsewhere, but you might have a tougher time finding a job.

I love it, but I wouldn't recommend anyone move here without a really firm grasp of the risks and sacrifices involved.

Shit. Does this ring true for the other Brits here?

Didn't mean to be too doom and gloom here — I've been doing my visa stuff again and all this has been rattling around my head lately. The government's doing everything it can to obstruct immigration and it's such a fucking hassle.

[Kory]

The UK's in a pretty bad place if you're looking to move there, to be honest. The immigration/visa situation is very uncertain as Brexit lurches from calamity to calamity. Employers are understandably skittish about hiring foreigners, given no one knows what the government is going to do next — even if you have already have a job offer, it'll likely be on a maximum three-year Tier 2 visa, with no guarantees you'll be able to renew it to stay on/hit the five years for residency (provided they don't end up changing that as well).

All that, plus the economy's headed down the shitter, inflation is rising, etc. Plus stuff like this —
UK faces two decades of no earnings growth and more austerity, says IFS. It's impossible to buy a house in London unless you have a spare £600k lying around or think it'd be a good idea to sink £300k in a fixer-upper in a shit part of a town. Rent for one-bed in the city's at a £900 minimum, or £700 for a flatshare. It'll be cheaper elsewhere, but you might have a tougher time finding a job.

I love it, but I wouldn't recommend anyone move here without a really firm grasp of the risks and sacrifices involved.

Shit. Does this ring true for the other Brits here?

Didn't mean to be too doom and gloom here — I've been doing my visa stuff again and all this has been rattling around my head lately. The government's doing everything it can to obstruct immigration and it's such a fucking hassle.

I'm looking for as much info as possible, negative and positive. I need to be as prepared as possible when it comes time, so I appreciate anything you can provide.

[JennyB]

The UK's in a pretty bad place if you're looking to move there, to be honest. The immigration/visa situation is very uncertain as Brexit lurches from calamity to calamity. Employers are understandably skittish about hiring foreigners, given no one knows what the government is going to do next — even if you have already have a job offer, it'll likely be on a maximum three-year Tier 2 visa, with no guarantees you'll be able to renew it to stay on/hit the five years for residency (provided they don't end up changing that as well).

All that, plus the economy's headed down the shitter, inflation is rising, etc. Plus stuff like this —
UK faces two decades of no earnings growth and more austerity, says IFS. It's impossible to buy a house in London unless you have a spare £600k lying around or think it'd be a good idea to sink £300k in a fixer-upper in a shit part of a town. Rent for one-bed in the city's at a £900 minimum, or £700 for a flatshare. It'll be cheaper elsewhere, but you might have a tougher time finding a job.

I love it, but I wouldn't recommend anyone move here without a really firm grasp of the risks and sacrifices involved.

Shit. Does this ring true for the other Brits here?

Didn't mean to be too doom and gloom here — I've been doing my visa stuff again and all this has been rattling around my head lately. The government's doing everything it can to obstruct immigration and it's such a fucking hassle.

Would it be even harder for Kory than you since you are Canadian and thereby a citizen of her majesty's commonwealth, or am I totally off base?