Is it worth leaving London?
If your job has gone remote, the maths of staying in London gets harder to defend. Keep the same salary, move somewhere cheaper, and the money you actually keep can jump. Here's a real same-pay move — London to Manchester, working from anywhere — on 2026/27 rates, and then the bit the spreadsheet misses: whether leaving is the right call.
Same pay, very different rent
This isn't a pay cut — it's the same £55,000 job, just done from a cheaper city. Your take-home doesn't move (£3,538 a month either way; income tax and NI don't care where you live, unless you cross into Scotland). What moves is the rent: a London flat at £1,900 becomes £950 in Manchester, and the commute shrinks too.
Stay in London
£55,000, working from London
Move to Manchester
£55,000, working remotely
Same salary, and yet £1,095 more a month to spend or save — your spare cash more than doubles, from £663 to £1,758. None of that is a raise; it's just rent you're no longer paying. Even after the £3,000 it costs to move (about £83/month spread over three years), you're £1,012 a month better off.
Three years of breathing room
Over a three-year horizon the move is worth about £36,420 in extra disposable income, net of the cost of moving. That pins the money axis to +4.55 — almost as far toward leaving as it goes. When the salary is identical, the rent is the decision, and London's is the outlier.
So what holds people in London?
Rarely the money — it's the rest. The scene, the friends, the sense that opportunity is denser if you're ever job-hunting again. Greener scores that too. In this example the life axis still tips gently toward moving (+0.54): more space and an easier day-to-day outweigh a quieter social life and a thinner local network, on these settings. With the money so firmly in favour, the verdict lands at +2.69: the grass is clearly greener over there. But it's your weights that decide it — turn the social and career dials up, tell the calculator London's buzz is what you'd miss most, and the answer tightens. The number was never really in doubt; what leaving costs you in life is the real question, and only you can set it.
Two things worth checking before you go
First, make sure it really is the same job and the same pay — some employers location-adjust salaries when you leave the capital, which would eat into that £1,095. Second, if your move crosses into Scotland, your take-home does change even on identical pay, because Scottish income tax is set separately — we work through exactly that in Scottish income tax vs the rest of the UK. And if you're moving the other way — chasing the capital rather than leaving it — see is it worth moving to London?
Weigh your own move
Open this example, then put in your real rents, your salary, and what leaving London is worth to you. Everything recomputes live, in your browser — nothing you type is uploaded.