I love these threads…
US Citizen, living in England for 6.5 years. Started off in Reading, then Henley on Thames, then London for the last 5 years (mostly W London but in Kingston now).
Couple of facts about immigration:
First trick is getting here. You either come here on a limited work visa, tied to a specific job, which job has to be offered to EU and British Citizens first and your prospective employer needs to prove they couldn’t find someone local more qualified (not impossible, but difficult - I might get kicked out because my current employer screwed up my work visa though so it does have some pitfalls), or else the Highly Skilled Migrant program being discussed above. If you come in illegally (i.e. on a tourist visa) and then find a job, you’re gonna get hosed hard when you do apply for the legal residence permits.
It takes 6 years, not 5, to apply for naturalization. I know this well - I’m going through it now. 5 years you can apply for Indefinite Leave to Remain, which is effectively a green card - you can live, work, and come and go as you please although if you leave the UK for more than 6 months they can take it away. It also costs $2000; I think per person (so you and your wife will need to both apply) but your kids if any should be fine. Once you’ve had ILR for a year, then you can apply for naturalisation. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO GIVE UP YOUR US CITIZENSHIP - that is a myth. You can still be a US citizen and a citizen of somewhere else at the same time.
Now, once you’re here:
The cost of living is HUGE here compared to the nearly every part of the US. A mate who just moved to New York and lives in the West Village finds it cheaper than living in Central London. Cost of houses is especially large. 300K GBP ($600,000 USD) is the AVERAGE home price in London; I think it’s something like 220k GBP for all of the UK. So if you’re buying, it’s expensive.
Rentals are also pretty expensive. I rent a small 2br flat, on the ground floor, with a great garden (yard to you tanks) out the back; it is in the suburbs (Hampton Wick) and about 35 min to central London on the train (Waterloo) and I pay the equivalent of $2300 per month. And I don’t even have a dining room, or room for a kitchen table. Most of the young, urban professionals I know in London have flatmates, with a very few exceptions, because the cost of living in London is so high.
Transport is pretty expensive. A zone 1-6 travel card, enabling me to travel on buses, overland trains, and tubes in all of greater London, is 13.80GBP peak, or 7.00GBP off-peak. A monthly zone 1-6 is 171.30GBP. Think of paying $300 per month just to take public transport - it puts it in perspective.
Food is not so expensive compared to US prices, but is going up. Expect to pay between 50GBP and 100GBP for a nice meal out in London for 2; cheaper food is certainly available, and food in grocery stores isn’t outrageous, but it’s certainly not cheap.
Clothes and other consumer goods are hideously expensive. I save my clothes shopping, except for all but the most urgent things, for trips to the Continent or the US; if it wasn’t for the voltage differences, I’d buy all my electronics in the US as well. It’s a nearly straight conversion from pounds to dollars - as in something that costs 70GBP costs $70 USD. It’s just ridiculous, especially when the same thing probably costs 70 euros on the mainland.
Entertainment is highly variable - a night out in the pub with mates might cost 20 quid or might cost 100 depending on location; doing other things in England is expensive for the same reasons as above.
As for the ‘walkability’ scale, sure - London is highly walkable. I don’t have a car; the girlfriend pays for a car scheme which we use on those rare occasions when public transport or home delivery just won’t work, or we rent one if going further afield like this coming weekend when we’re going to Dorset for a wedding. I haven’t ‘needed’ to own a car for about 1.5 years or so. But I do live in London - other parts of England are not nearly so public-transportation friendly. I can’t imaging living in Reading or Henley without a car - you’d spend half your life on buses. But you can get by day-to-day, in your local village or local area, without a car which is a good thing because parking is a bloody nightmare anyways and petrol is insanely expensive. And cars in England are HUGELY expensive beasts. New cars have road tax, which is seriously pricey, and old cars have both road tax (slightly less pricey) and annual MOT inspection for safety and emissions which isn’t that cheap either. And did I mention petrol is nearly $10 per gallon and set to rise more? And that car insurance is pretty expensive? And that congestion on the roads makes even short drives incredibly painful and demanding?
So why do I live here?
I like living in an English-speaking country. Not speaking French or German, and with very limited Spanish, I would imagine the bureaucracy is twice as hard to navigate in those countries as here. I’m having enough trouble in English!
I love the travel. Other than in the recent past, when my visa was in question and I was worried about getting let back into England if I leave, I was travelling to new countries about once a quarter or so, and going to at least France or Spain once a month. I went all over Easter Europe and Asia when I first got her (it’s actually easier to get to places like Thailand from here than from the West Coast - don’t ask me why). it’s cheap as chips to get nearly anywhere in mainland Europe and fast as well - pretty much everywhere I want to be is within 5 hours flight of London and the flights are frequent, cheap, and easy to get to.
I love the history. It’s a brilliant country for the feeling of aged loveliness all about you - I lived in Seattle before I lived here, and like the OP the only parts I liked were the ‘old’ parts in Pioneer Square and on the waterfront.
And I love the people. The dry British humour, the sarcastic wit, the international welcome, the vibrancy. It’s all glorious. And the summers (unlike this rubbish 2-days-on-2-days-cold-shit-rainy-weather current one) are just great.
Oh, that plus the beer - truly a wonderful concoction and they do some wonderful ones here. Speaking of which, time to ask the barman for another as I’m writing this in the pub 