Was moving to the Boondocks worth it? – brokeGIRLrich

When I first moved in May 2022 my rent was £995. In May 2023 it rose to £1024.85.

In early spring 2024, my landlord in London informed our entire building that the rent would rise to £1,125 at our next renewal in May for a one-bedroom flat in Woolwich/Plumstead in a converted private house that was absolutely freezing all the time and had an electricity meter that regularly broke down and simply ate up the money I sometimes put on it.

At the time, I was also considering moving in with my boyfriend, which, while it would have been a huge drop in rent, would have meant us living in a very small space together, which I just really didn’t want. I also wanted to live somewhere where friends and family from the United States could visit. This was complicated enough cramming them into my small apartment alone with me. I knew it wouldn’t really work if we lived together.

So after some discussion we agreed to look for a two bedroom apartment, but I soon discovered that we are at different financial points in our lives, and as the maximum rent we could pay together was around £1800 a month, a two bedroom apartment in London was out of the question.

I also can’t quite convey to you how impossible it was to heat this apartment and how cold it was every winter, despite monthly gas bills of €150+ for myself.

So I did a little research and found a small town at the end of the commuter line to London, with several good connections (three major train companies serve London here, so if there are problems with one, the others usually run).

And then I looked up places that we could rent out here and couldn’t stop laughing hysterically. There is so much space in the suburbs. We love it here. I don’t think we can ever go back to London now.

But I still had a full year of school to go, which included teaching three courses as a teaching assistant, monthly supervisor meetings, and the occasional PhD meeting or event. And my partner’s family live in London, so sometimes we go back to see them. I wondered if moving was the best choice.

I ran some numbers and I still felt like it would probably be cheaper to live in Peterborough – especially since we split the rent and utilities. And despite the increasingly ridiculous cost of train travel in Britain.

Today we analyze a year full of figures for a moment of truth.

For simplicity’s sake, I’m going to convert that £1125 into $1500 monthly rent.

I also averaged my monthly utilities from July 2023 to June 2024 and my average transit costs (which was TfL, trains and the occasional Uber).

Utilities averaged $172/month and public transportation was $138/month. Taking our monthly total for just existing in London up to $1810. Or $21,720 per year.

Did a year in Peterborough improve that?

Well, my rent from August 2024 to July 2025 was £625 and in July 2025 it went up to £650. We rent a three bedroom, three bathroom terrace house (like an American townhouse), with a garden at the back. It was actually bigger than we thought we needed, but I’m completely spoiled with my own office and my partner usually uses the guest room as an office too.

So for this calculation, I’ll use $835 as my monthly rental conversion. I would say that the exchange rate has certainly risen between US dollars and pounds over the past year, but when I checked the August 2024 accountability report, the £625 there was $820. So let’s figure for all 12 months at $835, which will cover the small increase in August of this year when our rent went up for the following year.

I also have to pay council tax of $78/month, which I was exempt from in London because my household consisted exclusively of students. We now only get a 25% discount on council tax, so we split that.

Now I was definitely a bit sloppy about keeping track of my budget each month because I started lumping buses, TfL, trains and Ubers into a category called ‘travel’, but I did have a total of extra expenses: $4,430 on travel

• Total rent: $10,020
• Total city tax: $936
• Utilities: $2130
• Travel expenses: $4430

$1458/month or $17,506 per year

Just passed $4,000 in savings.

My utility average went up $6, though unsurprisingly I went from a small apartment to a full-blown townhouse. And the council tax was quite a nasty surprise, even though I do benefit from things like rubbish collection etc. It just doesn’t make sense to me that it was free when I lived alone, but now if I live with a non-student I only get a 25% discount on it. It’s mathematically illogical.

I will say the initial train estimates are £25 based on very little research and not understanding peak vs non-peak vs…. Dude, I don’t even know. Train prices are so confusing here… it was actually completely wrong.

I’d say it’s a rare day when a return ticket to London will cost me less than £30. It’s not unusual for it to cost that much in one way. That is with a student card. By local train (an hour twenty from Peterborough to St. Pancras). And to get the best deals, I usually have to book the entire ticket – round trip – in advance, which is not always possible. Sometimes I’m not quite sure what time I’ll get back to Peterborough. There was a show I volunteered for a few evenings after teaching, and I usually didn’t get home until almost midnight (on the plus side, the very late trains are often cheaper, even as last-minute purchases).

On top of that, my partner’s mother got sick, so we were in London every weekend from January to April from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon. Our Friday ticket time was always reliably peak, right after he got off work. Occasionally I would go home early to study at the British Library and travel alone outside rush hour. And we could never buy in advance for Sunday, because we never knew when we would get home.

I had estimated €100 per month for train tickets, but most months it was almost double that.

I also forgot to factor in the cost of going to school once I got to London, which was about an extra £10 in tube fare. Then there was the fact that London is dark, rainy and cold 80% of the year and it turns out that if I have to be at the train station at 7am, I absolutely take an Uber in that weather. That’s usually another £7 each way. When the weather is nice, I walk or cycle, but when I get home at 1 or 1:30 am after working or seeing a show, it doesn’t really feel safe.

So that extra £24 is an extra $30-$32.50 per trip.

I also think I just kind of forgot how expensive and difficult it is to get to the airport now. Although I haven’t included this in our expenses as it’s largely optional, we usually book a night at the hotel next to the airport if we’re flying anywhere now, as the trains are questionably reliable and if we have an early flight it’s impossible to get to the airport by public transport.

One thing I miss from London is being 20 minutes away from London City Airport for little trips to mainland Europe. That is by far the best airport in London.

But overall I think we made the right choice. My school sent me a letter saying they were concerned about how far away I was living six months after I moved here, but it turns out they can’t really tell you where to live in Britain and after pointing out that I hadn’t missed anything since moving here and was saving money, they left me alone.

We’ll see how I feel about this move in the spring of 2026 when I’m looking for a job, but right now this place feels like the most “home”-like space I’ve lived in since I left home for college at 18 and it’s working well for us. I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to drag the partner back to the States in a few years, but until then I expect Peterborough to be home.