When moving to another country, certain things are simply unavoidable, and one of them undoubtedly is the change in costs of living. You should check what changes await you after moving from England to France and whether this choice will be profitable for your budget.
Moving from UK to France — cost of living
If you plan to limit exits to the city in France and all events with paid admission, it turns out that living in France is not more expensive than in the UK. In the comparison between Paris and London, it comes out:
- Bill payments cost 1.94% less in Paris (minus the rent – with the rent it would be 16.73% less).
- Rental prices in Paris cost 35.49%.
- Restaurant prices in Paris cost 9.49% less.
Higher prices appear only in everyday grocery shopping, where in Paris we will pay an average of 30.38% more than in London.
Food product prices
In the comparison of the prices of individual food products in Paris and London stores, the biggest difference appears for local cheeses – it is as much as + 147.13% in Paris, where in Paris we will pay €18.22 (£15.19) for cheese, and in London £6.15 (€7.37). However, it should not surprise us so much, bearing in mind the rich tradition of French cheeses and how much the French appreciate their local products.
You should also look at the prices of other products, where the difference in milk price is + 1.74% in the Paris price, where a litre of milk costs €1.13 (£0.94), while in London we will pay £0.93 (€1.11). So the difference is practically negligible. And for twelve eggs, we will pay 36.53% more in Paris at €3.71 (£3.10) than in London at £2.27 (€2.72).
In France, alcohol and ordinary bottled water are much cheaper than in England. For 1.5 litres of water in Paris, we will pay €0.83 (£0.70), while in London it would cost us £0.99 (€1.19). When it comes to alcohol, the cheapest is Parisian half-litre local beer, for which we will pay an average of €1.80 (£1.50), while local London beer would cost around £1.90 (€2.27).
Rental prices
Let’s take a look at the average price difference in renting a one-room flat and a three-room flat, as well as how much all bills counted together will amount to us.
In terms of prices for a one-room flat, in the centre of London we will pay £1.747.27 (€2.095.53), on the outskirts of £1,304.34 (€1,564.32), while for this type of accommodation we will pay €1,260.94 (£1,051.38) in the centre of Paris, and on the outskirts of the city €883.54 (£736.70). So we can see that the rental prices in Paris are lower than the London ones.
The same applies to three-room flats, where the average price of a London flat in the city centre is £3,472.97 (€4,165.19), and otherwise £2,140.00 (€2,566.54), while for the same type of flat in the centre of Paris we will pay €2,711.26 (£2,260.67) and otherwise €1,857.63 (£1,548.91).
For all monthly bills (i.e., electricity, heating, gas, air conditioning, waste disposal and water) we will pay an average of £206.06 (€247.13) in London and €178.27 (£148.64) in Paris. However, for 60 Mbps or more internet with unlimited data, we will pay £31.48 (€37.76) a month in London and €29.66 (£24.73) a month in Paris.
Average salary
However, all the given amounts have to be paid for something, so you should also look at the average salary in both of these cities. After taxes, the average Parisian will get €2,808.72 (£2,341.94) richer per month and the average Londoner will get £3,139.15 (€3,764.83).
Of course, it should also be remembered that all the prices and numbers given above are only average amounts, so you can not 100% reflect the actual prices that we will see on French shelves. Prices also vary from store to store, from agency to agency, and from owner to owner, but it’s very good to have a rough idea of how much our future residence will cost us.
