It’ll be no surprise to anyone that London is an expensive place to live, and an even more expensive to play.
The average salary in the capital is £37,000 according to the Office for National Statistics. But apparently, you need to earn a lot more than that to actually enjoy life in the capital.
Finance company S Money looked into the cost of happiness across cities, as research from Purdue University found that having a greater income generally improves people’s moods – proving that money does buy happiness.
However, the university found this is only to a certain point, where the relationship between money and happiness weakens.
If you want to be happy in London, apparently £79,524 a year is how much you need to earn – which only the top 10% of earners in the capital make.
S Money said that ‘happiness (or the peace of mind required to achieve it) is permanently out of the grasp for most Londoners’. That’s a sad thought.
The researchers adjusted their findings for each city, taking into account the cost-of-living differences across the country to calculate the sweet spot for happiness.
The cheapest place to be happy in the UK is Leicester, where you need to earn £61,117.
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Cambridge, Guildford, Brighton, Bristol, and Oxford all require a salary of over £70,000.
But it’s not just about how much you have. How people spend money has more of a baring on our happiness levels – so you don’t need to leave the capital just yet.
What you need to earn to be happy across the UK, according to S Money
- Leicester, £61,117
- Dundee, £61,242
- Birmingham, £62,404
- Aberdeen, £62,833
- Coventry, £63,047
- Portsmouth, £63,369
- Cardiff, £63,357
- Sheffield, £64,107
- Exeter, £64,107
- Southampton, £64,959
- Norwich, £65,280
- Newcastle, £65,387
- Edinburgh, £65,816
- Derby, £65,803
- Belfast, £66,232
- Leeds, £66,446
- Plymouth, £66,875
- Nottingham, £66,982
- Glasgow, £67,860
- Bournemouth, £67,968
- Liverpool, £68,182
- Manchester, £68,611
- Reading, £69,897
- Oxford, £70,219
- Bristol, £70,307
- Brighton, £72,022
- Guildford, £74,273
- Cambridge, £74,808
- London, £79,524.
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