Ask five different Londoners what a “good” salary is, and you’ll get five different answers, all delivered with a haunted look. Some will say £50,000 is the baseline for not crying into your Tesco meal deal. Others, fresh from a weekend in Shoreditch, will claim £80,000 is “survivable” if you skip avocado toast. The truth? It’s a sliding scale of delusion.
Here’s a shocking fact: the median full-time salary in London is around £45,000 as of 2026. Yet, if you earn that, you’ll still feel like a peasant when your rent chews up half of it before you’ve even brushed your teeth. A “good” salary, therefore, isn’t a number—it’s a feeling. It’s the moment you don’t flinch when your Oyster card runs dry, or when you can buy a round of drinks without checking your bank balance like it’s a horror novel.
The Rent Monster You Must Feed
Let’s talk about the elephant in the room: housing. That cozy one-bedroom flat in Zone 2 with a “quirky” boiler? That’ll set you back £1,800 a month minimum. Seriously, London landlords charge extra for “character,” which is code for “mold that may or may not be sentient.” A good salary needs to slay this rent monster first. If your monthly take-home is £3,500 (roughly a £55k salary after tax), and your rent is £1,800, you’ve already lost the game of financial Jenga.
The rule of thumb is stark: don’t spend more than 30% of your gross income on rent. For a £1,800 flat, you’d need a gross salary of £72,000. See? That’s why people in London have four flatmates named “actually, I just sleep in the hallway sometimes.”
