Ever wondered if it’s worth moving slightly further away from the office, just to save a bit of cash?
TotallyMoney are back at it again – trying to convince us that we’re living in the wrong place. (Here’s their research on why we should all move out of London entirely.) But this time they’ve got some pretty shocking stats: it turns out some of us are paying over £3.5k for an extra ten minutes in bed. That’s just one press of the snooze button (ONE!!) meaning that if you snooze, you really do lose.
Think of it this way: we’re paying up to £7.20 for every minute we can cut off our journey time. So, if we were to get up just a little bit earlier and travel a few minutes longer, we could save up to £3,744 a year. That’s over 10% of the average London salary. Phewf.
Totally Money has redesigned the tube map, so you can see how rent prices change the closer you get to central London.
• Seven Sisters → 15 minutes from central London → £209 av. weekly rent → Victoria line
• Greenford → 26 minutes from central London → £146 av. weekly rent → Central line
• North Acton → 19 minutes from central London → £214 av. weekly rent → Central line
• Kingsbury → 31 minutes from central London → £155 av. weekly rent → Jubilee line
• Marylebone → 5 minutes from central London → £342 av. weekly rent → Bakerloo line
• Edgware Road (H&C line) → 6 minutes from central London → £337 av. weekly rent → H&C line
• Edgware Road (Bakerloo line) → 7 minutes from central London → £337 av. weekly rent → Bakerloo line
• East Acton → 17 minutes from central London → £266 av. weekly rent → Central line
• Redbridge → 29 minutes from central London → £182 av. weekly rent → Central line
• Hatton Cross → 38 minutes from central London → £121 av. weekly rent → Piccadilly
So the conclusion is, live along the Central line – it seems to have the most options to save you both money and time. But taking first place on the podium is Seven Sisters, with a journey to central London (Green Park, in this case) taking just 15 minutes, and a weekly rent of £209 which, believe it or not, is still below average for one-bedroom properties in London.
On the flip side, the worst location by a long stretch is Hammersmith in west London, with weekly rents of around £484, and fairly long journeys into the city.