So is there anything I get a better deal on then Americans?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Living in England, it seems to me that I pay more for, well, just about everything than Americans do. Just off the top of my head, and using current exchange rates:

Food: a three-course meal for two at a reasonable restaurant, with a bottle of wine, will cost £50 (very nearly $100) - oibviously it varies from place to place, but that’s not anywhere too fancy, by any means. Even a simple McDonald’s “Extra Value” meal, regular size, is £3.79 (I think), or $7.05.

Petrol/gas: an obvious one, last time I filled up I paid 85p per litre, which works out at an even $6 per US gallon.

Housing: a one-bedroom apartment in a none-too-desirable part of London (not “downtown” by any means") will easily go for £200k ($371,500). The house I live in (rented from my parents at an agreeable rate, fortunately) is a three-bedroom end-of-terrace (row house) about 35 miles outside London, with a garden no more than 60 feet long, and I’d be surprised if it was worth much less than that.

Public transport: maybe not applicable to many parts of the US, but still. My train fare into London, from 35 miles away, is £14 ($26) return, and it is only that cheap because I can travel off-peak. If I got the train before 9am, at peak commuter rates, I’d be forking over very nearly twice that amount.

I know that part of this is because I live in the southeast of England, which is notoriously expensive (and we supposedly get higher wages to compensate).

So am I right that these prices are all far higher than in the US? Maybe they’re not and I’ve been misled. And is there anything that Americans feel ripped-off by compared with us Brits? The only thing I can really think of is healthcare - for all that people whinge about the NHS it really does provide a pretty good service, for free :cool:

2

Well, I’ll pay about $5.00 (or £2.70) for a value meal at McDonalds, about 2.10 (£1.13) for a gallon of gasoline (I think that comes out to £0.29 / liter). I can commute via bus from 60 miles outside of Boston MA for about $60.00 per week (£32.40 - £6.48 per day round trip, if you want to look at it that way).

One can buy a good-sized single family home within 60 miles of Boston, MA for $500,000 - $750,000 (£270,000 - £405,000) (I think - it’s been a while since I looked).

I think we’re paying about the same price for a decent dinner, though.

As for your health care - I’ve been in the US Military, and I always picture that as a blueprint for a nationalized health care service. Quite frankly, the prospect terrifies me. But I’ll save the horror stories for some other time.

3

All of the ones that you listed very much more expensive than prices that most Americans pay. Somewhat of an exception is that housing prices in or near Boston, New York, and San Francisco can meet or exceed those around London but you have to get into specifics to do the comparison correctly. Most Americans pay somewhere between $100,000 and $200,000 for a nice, three bedroom house with a yard.

I can’t think of anything that would automatically cheaper for you except more obscure items. My wife’s family owns a larger gourmet foods importing company and I know that some of your better English cheeses and other specialty foods will be cheaper for you (most likely).

4

I’d say you get a better price on Tunnock’s Tea Cakes and Frank Cooper’s Thick Cut Oxford Marmalade.

5

All of that’s fine and good, but what do you pay for a pint?

6

And just try getting Slade CDs at a reasonable price over here. It’s brutal, I tell you!

7

Without a doubt, Easyjet is much, much cheaper than any American airline. Just yesterday, I was looking at fares between London and Belfast (for a friend’s b-day coming up). The price was 19 pounds, or something like $35. The cheapest flight I can find out of Washington, DC right now to anywhere is double that.

8

Ah, but what are your airport taxes like? The EasyJet prices often seem really cheap, and then you find that you have to add anything up to £50 per person in airport taxes onto a return journey.

In my local, £2.60 ($4.80). In London, it’s closer to £3.00. That’s for a strong European lager (say Stella). A pint of bitter is usually a bit cheaper, but still well over £2. Also, am I right in thinking that UK pints are bigger than US pints?

9

Any examples of average pay rates in the UK? What does a person working in a coffee bar make? I asked one guy and he said he made 7 GBP an hour. What does a mid-level IT professional make? Is 75K GBP a lot of money to make in a year, or is it fairly standard for a college-educated person with 5 years of experience?

10

The minimum wage is £4.85. Would I be right to guess that he was in London, where pay tends to be higher?

Some figures for average earnings, ranging from £20k in NE England and N Ireland to £33k in London. But those are gross figures - a hefty chunk will go as Income Tax.

Somebody on £75k after five years in the workplace is doing very well for themselves - even in careers such as corporate law it would not be sniffed at.

11

Well, the minimum wage is now £4.85 ($8.98) for people aged over 22, and £4.10 ($7.59) for ages 18-21. I’ve never worked in a coffee bar, but I’d suspect £7 per hour is above average for that kind of job.

I guess a “mid-level IT professional” makes about £35-£40k (say $70k ish).

£75k is a lot of money, yes. You’d be doing very well to get that kind of money five years out of college!

FWIW, my first full-time job after university paid £16,344 a year (yes, the figure is etched on my brain!). That’s a touch over $30,000. And yes, I was paying London prices on that salary. It was tough.

That was six years ago, and I’m now earning roughly what I guessed a “mid-level IT professional” would get, above. I could be widely off beam on that, but if so, my friends who work in that field are keeping quiet :wink:

12

I think a dollar/sterling comparison is not terribly useful, since the dollar is currently in a downward freefall - what’s the spending parity at the moment? What’s it based on?

13

Generally, but a good number of US drinking establishments – at least the ones I frequent – serve Imperial pints (20 UK fluid ounces, or 0.568261 litres) versus US pints (16 US fluid ounces, or 0.473176 litres).

In downtown Minneapolis, a UK pint of an import (Stella, Guinness, etc) will be at most $5 (£2.70) but generally cheaper, while a domestic bottled beer (12 ounces, or 0.354882 litres) would be $2.50 or so (£1.35).

Those prices fluctuate from bar to bar, of course, and from time to time. One of my preferred watering holes offers UK pints for $3 (£1.63) from 4-6pm.

14

Head north, and the price of beer fall as precipitously as the price of housing.

15

In general, the prospect of trying to live in Britain makes this American’s head hurt. On top of the high prices and tiny spaces, there is the sales tax that is, what, 17%? And then the health care stinks.

I’m not sure I can describe, though, the thrilling feeling I got when I discovered that the Heathrow security people have their own special tweed. On eBay, I am continually salivating over the things that are being sold in England (and, rarely, I work myself up to paying the shipping for them). You do have cultural capital over there, that I really don’t feel America has, for all the silly university courses on Toni Morrison etc.

16

17½% actually :stuck_out_tongue:

As I said before, I do think the NHS gets a bad press. In my (albeit limited) experience, it is really quite efficient.

And, of course, our dentistry is the envy of the world :smiley:

17

As GorillaMan rightly points out, prices in London are not representative of average UK prices (except maybe in petrol). You can try comparing London and NYC, or US and UK, but not London and US.

But London is ridiculously expensive.

18

I think that it’s important to compare costs in London to NYC or San Francisco. Comparisons to most other places are inaccurate. Then maybe compare costs of Birmingham, Manchester or Liverpool to similar cities in the USA, maybe Boston, Philadelphia or Atlanta? You can’t compare straight country to country, it really makes no sense.

As an example, when I moved from the USA to Switzerland they gave me a cost of living index comparing the two. I think it was about 160. On the flight over I saw the data for a comparison of Washington, DC to Geneva. It was a 220 index. But I was moving from Cincinnati to Geneva. This would be closer to a 250-300 index. So I was kind of screwed. But in reality that’s not even correct, because the index assumed you’d live exactly the same in both places, and in reality you don’t. It’s probably totally impossible to buy a 3000 square foot, 4 bedrooms 2.5 baths house, sitting on it’s own plot of land, in the Geneva area for less than USD 1,000,000, if not more. But that’s because only the uber-wealthy do that sort of thing. Everyone else lives in flats. And it’s smaller. But it’s also fine.

The Big Mac index is probably the way to go on this one.

19

$7.19 a jar in Texas :eek:

20

Isn’t the sales tax built into the product price in the UK, like most countries. Our sales tax is almost always tacked on the end.