British people - Thinking about emigrating...

[Fidel_Castronaut]

If you're going to live in London, you better prepare yourself if you don't think you'll be earning too much money in the short term. The cost of living in London is ridiculous, and as a someone who was born there and visits family frequent, I'd never want to live there. If you're going to rent (inevitable), living in even the shittest part of London is likely to set you back around £1000 a month as a minimum.

There are plenty of other cities in the UK where you could move and live more cheaply albeit with perhaps fewer opportunities, but it depends entirely on what you want to do.

I'll say now that for the 'haves', the UK is a great place to live with very high standards of living and a vast array of services to spend your money on or invest it. For the havenots, it can be difficult. Like Portugal, youth unemployment is a problem here, and there is a growing sector of employment that offers relatively low wages with very little security (zero hour contracts as an example). Welfare services are also under strain in many areas, especially London boroughs, where cuts to the public sector have reduced staffing levels and growing populations have added burden, so increasingly the have nots are seeing it become more difficult to live.

Would you be looking to study here? Or get a job in law? If so its rewarding if you can get on the employment ladder, but again, competition is high.

I assumed the cost of living in London was high as a relative of mine working there has told me - he lives in a urban area whose name I don't know and works as a barman at night shifts for a fancy expensive club, he does earn a pretty good amount for what he does. If I did went there I could stay with him but unfortunately this person I'm talking about is struggling with drug addiction and so it is a bad option for now.

London was just an idea, but I'm open to pretty much anything that allows for a decent living. Can I ask how is minimum wage and what I can do with it? Also, if I have a drivers license do I need to take a full license in the UK as well, considering you guys drive on the left side of the road?

Regarding minimum wage, I believe the standard is around £6.50/hour though it's sort of complicated depending on the type of worke, age, and how you're paid: https://www.gov.uk/national-minimum-wage-rates

In London you're likely to get more, a so called 'living wage' exists which is supposed to match inflation and the cost of living which the minimum wage doesn't meet (especially in London), though even with that wage what you could do with it in London is realistically limited. It's hard to explain to people who haven't lived there but it really is quite difficult to get by if you're not earning more than the minimum because the cost of living is so high. Where I was born (Hackney) in the 80s you were lucky if you lived in a flat which didn't have a drug problem in the neighborhood, now you'd be lucky to pick up a property for less than a million pound. Things in London just cost a lot more, but it's still doable:

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/...15576.html

http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/cit...ity=London

http://www.workgateways.com/working-in-t...-of-living

As far driving goes I believe you can drive on a valid EU license, though if you were in London there'd be no point as there's no point In having a car. I don't believe you need to sit a UK driving test though if you brought a car over you'd need to register it under UK rules after 6-9 months (MOT, tax and insurance).

If you need anything else let me know mate ^_^