I got a very suspicious response from a flat ad I applied to on gumtree.com just last month. They claimed to be in Barcelona and if I sent a cheque for a month’s rent, they would send the keys for me to have a look. If I didn’t like it, I could send the keys back and get my cheque returned. Alarm bells went off all over the place, so I declined. It might have been genuine, but something didn’t add up.
11%, 12% if you earn over £34K. Unless you’re a special case. Cite.
Thanks for picking that up - having never been in that bracket I didn’t know NI went up. God the UK is expensive to live in, remind me again why we’re encouraging EuroMDguy to move here?
Well EuroMDguy no longer exists - all hail to Future Londonite :))
Thanks for all the advise regarding scams and paying attention to the small print. My coworkers had suggested a flatshare as well so that I have some more time to really find a place that suits me (instead of having to take one for the sake of taking one) and be able to check out areas in more detail before moving into one of them.
I’ll be making more than 34K gross - can I expect to end up with 60% net pay?
What a forward-looking new name! 
I was going to start doing sums to work out your tax question but realised that it didn’t really make sense. I could only work it out by knowing how much over £34K your salary was to calculate if your net would be 60% of the total. Rough calculation goes:
First 2K - 0 tax
Between 2K and 34K - 22% income tax and 11% National Insurance
Over 34K - 40% income tax and 12% National Insurance
(Take away 5.5K from your salary when calculating the tax as that’s tax free)
ah forgot the 5.5K taxfree amount - take that out and I drop below 34K. So I would end up with 67% of gross pay? That would be a neat sum to live from I think - guess that will change once I start to dig into looking for a place to live.
I’d def be up for a pint or two with Dopers
Oh believe me, once you’ve paid for your transport and your accommodation your beer money reserves will look a LOT smaller. But it’s still worth it to live in such a great city (remember, it’s one of only three world cities!).
A London-dope fest is long overdue, possibly your arrival could be just the event to make one happen.
It’s dropping from 22% to 20% after April 5th, and that first 2K band (which used to be 10% and not 0%) is now disappearing.
No. Assume you earn £40K. The first 5.5K is tax free; the next £28.5K is at the basic rate, and the final £6K is at 40%. That’s the tax.
On top of that you’ve got National Insurance, at 12%. So your basic tax rate is effectively 32% then 52%.
Then, when you purchase something, there’s VAT at 17.5%.
As a know-nothing Yank, I’m curious what’s wrong with Luton? It looks OK on Google Earth.
It’s good if you want to get out of it.
For crapness, there’s an airport, the houses are small and pokey, the town centre is dreadful. It’s generally not a very salubrious area.
Time it just right, and you’ll even get me along… 
Though I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing…
I just had to ask: what does it mean when one must get one’s kicks in Stepney and not in Knightsbridge anymore?
Don’t know the context (is it Quentin Crisp? A Kinks song?) but it indicates that someone doesn’t have as much money as they used to have. Knightsbridge is a very posh area - it’s where Harrod’s is - and Stepney is a down-at-heel area in the east end. Whether the “kicks” in question are drinks, meals, shopping, or prostitutes, I can’t tell.
Big understatement. It’s basically one big concrete plaza with one of the most unpleasant shopping centres in the middle. It has absolutely no soul whatsoever, in fact I think it begins to drain the soul out of people who visit it like some kind of Cthulu mythos creature.
Good Point, I believe **GomiBoy ** owes a few beers to some London dopers as well.
Time to reclaim them 
He certainly does, both for not showing up AND making us all trek out to the back end of nowhere to meet up.
Well a London-Dope would be a great way to get to know some of you…
Will you know anyone else when moving here? Or are we your only hope for a social life at this stage?
Yeah, but when he gets here, then the name will no longer be relevant and he’ll have to change it to “Current Londonite”.
Then again, he could grow into the persona “Future Londonite” by painting himself silver and acting like a robot.