cost of moving to the uk

I saved somewhere around £3,000 to £4,000 before I first moved to the UK. That is my recollection of my own savings, and I wasn’t planning to live in London. When I worked through a possible London moving budget in 2022, the number came out quite differently: £5,509, including a rental deposit.

Those are two different amounts for two different circumstances. The London calculation was an example I put together for people asking how much a move might cost. It wasn’t a record of what I had spent on my own arrival. Where someone wants to live, their visa and how long they need to manage without a paycheque all change the answer. These are the prices and assumptions I used then.

Getting there was only the beginning

For the example, I started with a flight from Toronto to Gatwick. Buying a one-way ticket had felt strange when I first moved, because that was something I had never done before. Looking at June flights for the 2022 calculation, I found cheaper options during the week and more expensive ones at the weekend. I put £200 into the budget for the flight. My own move had been in November, so this wasn’t my original airfare either.

My first visa had been the Tier 5 Youth Mobility visa. For the example I used the application fee I found at the time, £259, and two years of the NHS surcharge at £470 per year. Together, that was £1,199. I also talked about the £2,500 savings requirement I found for that route. That was money to show in savings, which was different from an application cost being paid away. All of those figures belong to the example I researched in 2022.

I left a solicitor out of this calculation. I had used one for some of my own applications and had also done applications myself, so I knew that could be another substantial expense. I had been through four visa applications by then. For this budget, though, I was working with the fees themselves rather than adding the cost of someone helping with the application.

Three months without an income

I wanted the example to cover three months of living costs. My reasoning was that someone might spend a couple of months finding a job and then still have a wait before getting paid. That wasn’t a prediction of how long every job search would take. The work someone wants matters too. I thought finding a particular specialist job could take longer than being open to a pub or restaurant job.

I chose London because I thought it was a popular choice for young expats and an expensive place to start, even though it wasn’t where I would choose to live. I preferred to calculate a higher budget and hope someone could find somewhere cheaper. Rent and bills were the awkward part. The separate flat and bill estimates I looked at were expensive, so I switched to an actual spare-room listing for the example.

The room I found was a double in Portobello, shared with other people, advertised at £750 a month including bills. The listing had a minimum three-month stay, which fitted the period I was budgeting for. It also wanted a £750 deposit. I kept that deposit separate from the monthly spending because I hoped it would come back later, but the money still had to be available at the start.

Food, a phone and getting around

For transport, I used £160 a month, or £480 over the three months. I allowed £10 a month for a phone. When I first arrived, I hadn’t been approved for a longer phone contract, and a pay-as-you-go SIM had worked for me. I put £10 on it each month and hadn’t needed more than that. It was a small part of the example, but still something to include.

Groceries got £200 a month, making £600 for the three months. I like cooking, eating and trying different food, so I was happy to give that category a decent budget. I thought someone could spend less, or more. Personally, I didn’t want to eat beans on toast every night. This was one of the places where my own preferences affected the number I chose.

Rent with bills, transport, food and the phone added up to £1,120 a month. Over three months, that became £3,360. That still didn’t include going to the cinema, having a drink or other things someone might want to do after arriving. I mentioned those separately because the basic calculation didn’t cover everything that made up a life.

The example and my own savings

Adding the £200 flight and £1,199 visa costs to those three months of expenses brought the example to £4,759. Then the £750 rental deposit took the amount needed at the beginning to £5,509. It was a sizeable number, and I understood that it could feel daunting. The job search and choice of location were two reasons I thought a cushion mattered.

My own remembered savings of roughly £3,000 to £4,000 were lower than that example. I hadn’t moved to London. I was in Kent, which I still found expensive, but I considered it cheaper than London. My answer to how much I saved was therefore different from the budget I had just worked out. Both numbers made sense in their own circumstances, and neither was a single amount that could describe everybody’s move.

Watch how I worked out my 2022 moving budget.