A semester abroad in London will cost me...?

Question

I'm traveling to London in the spring of '09 to do a semester abroad. I'm from America, and I know our exchange rate to pounds is pretty crumby. I'm wondering how much pounds (or dollars if you care to convert for me) I'll need for a spring semester of some sight seeing, a few theatre shows, mild use of the wonderful pubs, and anything else a tourist would do. As a side note, my rooming and tuition shouldn't be included in the calculation, but food would be. Thanks for the help!

Answer 1

I spent a semester in London in 2004 when the dollar was slightly stronger than it is now.  I didn't keep very good track of my finances, but I estimate that not counting room and board I spent around $6000.  

My number was very high among my group of students though because I traveled throughout Europe frequently and shopped way too much.  Our school told us to plan for around $3500, and I think this is absolutely realistic, though with today's exchange perhaps somewhere closer to $4000 would be a realistic expectation of the minimum you should expect to spend.   Currently the pound is pretty much equal to $2, so every price you encounter in England will need to be doubled.  If something is 5 pounds, it’s $10, etc.

How much you will need depends on what you plan to do while abroad.  If you plan to travel throughout Europe or the UK try to save close to $6000. If you’re planning on staying in London the whole time and only shelling out for tourist attractions, pubs and occasional shows, I think $3500-$4000 would be fine.  

As I say I traveled a lot, but I did it the cheap way and still spent that much.  I used Easyjet and RyanAir airlines to fly to mainland Europe from the UK and I purchased a BritRail pass to cover all train trips in the UK before I went abroad (you cannot purchases these passes once in the UK so if you're going to travel throughout Britain visit http://www.britrail.com/ and get one before you go.)  I got the pass that allows you 14 non-consecutive days of travel within a 2 month period.  This is the best money I spent on my trip.  It allowed me to take frequent day trips to places like Bath, Salisbury, Oxford, and Cambridge without needing to worry about buying a train ticket that day.  I also used it on longer adventures to Cornwall (not to be missed) and Scotland.  I think my pass was around $400, which sounds high when you have to pay it all at once, but if you’re going to travel somewhat frequently the pass is well worth it and quickly pays for itself since buying individual rail tickets once in London is expensive.  Also…and you didn’t hear this from me…at least in 2004 staffers on British trains weren’t the best at properly checking BritRail passes, many of them seemed to not know what they were.  So they would simply glance at your ticket and make sure you had that day’s date filled in on one of the ticket’s spaces.  They would not mark your ticket, whereas in mainland Europe they stamp your Eurail pass.  Moral of the story is, my friends and I started filling in our ticket date in pencil and erasing it so we could use it more than the 14 days it was good for.  This helped a lot because then we could use it for short rail trips to and from airports and other journeys that would have otherwise been too short and inexpensive to justify using a day on our costly pass.  

Anyway, I apologize for getting off topic…but I’m assuming that if money is on your mind you’re game for some tips on how to save.  I also bought all my groceries at a Safeway market near my flat.  It was much cheaper than Tesco and Marks and Spencers.  And definitely get an International Student ID card.  Many shops and almost all tourist attractions provide discounted rates for students.  I recommend the ISIC card, it’s accepted all places that offer student rates - http://www.myisic.com/MyISIC/?WT.srch=1.  I hope I’ve helped give you some idea of how much you should save up!  Enjoy your semester!  Cheers!

Answer 2

A pound buys about the same in the UK  as a dollar would in the US. London accomodation is very expensive, but you can do a lot of sightseeing without putting out money.