Originally Posted by
Elin
Depends what they mean by living. If you shop exclusively at Lidl, Poundland and Primark, feed yourself from the reduced to clear section at the supermarket once or twice a week, never eat out / order takeaway, live on a council estate, and have almost nothing in the way of outside expenses (medicine, children, subscription TV, expensive habits like smoking and drinking, travel, etc...), then I think you could probably keep yourself on that. One of my friends supported herself working a minimum wage at McDonalds for a year. But she wasn't happy at all, and had virtually no social mobility to speak of because she had no free time and no extra money to put away. So I'm not sure I'd call it "living" so much as just keeping your head above water. :/ It's particularly bad in a capital city like Edinburgh and especially London.
But what you say about London is 100% true, you can't live there on minimum wage, if you're planning to live with minimum wage its better to move to some city where rents are cheaper. Rent can have a huge impact. I have a 2 bedroom flat for £500, my friend used to have a studio the size of one of my bedrooms for £700 in London.
