I knew I\u2019d save money as a result, but I didn\u2019t expect I\u2019d find myself spending a fraction of what I used to on food, clothes and random expenses. Turns out living 15 miles from the nearest shops, tucked between a vast loch and a forest, is quite thrifty \u2013 because unsurprisingly, there\u2019s very little opportunity to spend, spend, spend. <\/p>\n
In fact, according to Scotland.org, the cost of living here can be up to 34 per cent lower than in London, while Scottish cities (outside of very pricey Edinburgh) are around 10 per cent cheaper than others in the UK. It is estimated that the cost of Scottish living is on average \u00a3342 less per month than in England.<\/p>\n
At a rough calculation, I save around \u00a3500 a month on my city life. Admittedly, I don\u2019t pay rent here, but a glance at the local estate agent shows two-bed properties similar to our detached cottage priced between \u00a3150k-\u00a3200k. In Chorlton, the leafy suburb of Manchester where I used to live, a two-bed terrace is listed for \u00a3400k.<\/p>\n
In 2024, average house prices in Scotland were \u00a3112k cheaper than in England. And we get free prescriptions, too. <\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/SEI_252154481-e1747671246371.jpg\")
\u2018We rarely go on holiday, because where we live is so beautiful it\u2019s hard to think of anywhere else we\u2019re really desperate to see\u2019<\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s shopping. When I visited the shops back in Manchester, it was a dazzling smorgasbord of delight and temptation. <\/p>\n
Some years ago, there was a small boutique in the city centre called Oyster, whose owners hit on the brilliant idea of holding \u201cshopping evenings\u201d and giving customers mini bottles of champagne. Imagine my crippling shame when I woke up hungover one morning to find a full-length net skirt in hot pink hanging on my wardrobe door, and a receipt for \u00a375 in my bag. And even when I wasn\u2019t being quite that idiotic, there was Selfridges, Harvey Nichols, TK Maxx, Waterstones \u2013 even the giant Boots, which everyone knows is impossible to visit without spending \u00a340.<\/p>\n
Here, going to the shops is more of a\u2026 wartime experience. I\u2019ll pop to the ironmonger\u2019s for dog biscuits, the greengrocer for apples, the fish shop for prawns. Even though I crave new clothes and books daily, my needs are entirely served by the Community Charity Shop, which offers jewellery for 50p and shoes for \u00a32.<\/p>\n
I now far prefer the joy of a good rummage in the \u00a31 box to doing frantic mental calculations in the Selfridges changing room (\u201cwell, if I don\u2019t eat for two weeks and I never have another holiday, I can maybe put the rest on a credit card\u2026\u201d).<\/p>\n
Now, I can bag a new wardrobe for \u00a320, and gather a stack of newish hardbacks for \u00a31 each. <\/p>\n
We do have a small local supermarket<\/a>, but shopping there is fun, and I skip about like Celia Johnson in Brief Encounter, having little chats with the shopkeepers. Not only is it life-enhancing, it works out much cheaper as I\u2019m less likely to chuck random ice cream and wine into my charmingly old-fashioned wicker basket. Sometimes, I even take a list and tick things off.<\/p>\n Another city expense I\u2019ve ditched is the obscene cost of transport. In the city, I didn\u2019t drive, and relied on trams, trains, Ubers and buses \u2013 which all added up to hundreds a month. I\u2019d go to see a friend on the tram (an affordable \u00a35 or so) then I\u2019d get a cab back, which would inevitably be between \u00a318 and \u00a326, no matter which bit of the city I was visiting.<\/p>\n Where I live now, there is simply no public transport. I picked up a female hitchhiker the other day, because she\u2019d failed to realise there were no buses and was going to miss her ferry. The one local taxi doesn\u2019t travel as far as our house, and it\u2019s a 50-minute drive to the nearest station, which has chickens scratching on the platform and offers two trains a day. Long story short, wherever we go, we walk or drive. We save money on fares, and it also means one of us isn\u2019t drinking<\/a> \u2013 so we save booze money, too.<\/p>\n On a wider scale, we rarely go on holiday, because where we live is so beautiful, it\u2019s hard to think of anywhere else we\u2019re really desperate to see. A holiday at home means a trip to the nearby wild west coast, or an afternoon repotting tomatoes in the large garden. I used to swish off to Majorca or Paris on a credit card if I wanted a break. Now, I think, \u201cooh, is it warm enough to sit outside with a cardi on?\u201d <\/p>\n It\u2019s harder to meet people, but I joined a local yoga class that let me meet women roughly my age. Once I knew them, it was easy to meet friends of friends, too. It\u2019s a case of getting involved in the local community \u2013 I once hosted the village hall quiz night, and have plans to join the local library group.<\/p>\n Of course, living here has its downsides, expenses-wise. Studies by the Scottish Government have found that living in remote rural Scotland (that\u2019s me) can accrue costs up to 30 per cent higher than elsewhere in the UK. <\/p>\n It\u2019s true that there\u2019s nobody in our area to fit a smart meter, and if we didn\u2019t have an electric car we\u2019d spend fortunes on petrol. I also know living somewhere so remote isn\u2019t for everyone \u2013 and I\u2019m very lucky that I no longer need to be in the city with all its myriad spending opportunities<\/a>. <\/p>\n Then again, what do I spend all the money I save on? Generally, going back to the city every few weeks. But at least these days, I never drink champagne before I go clothes shopping.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Life in Scotland costs about \u00a3342 less a month than in England. Plus, free prescriptions, cheaper public transport…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":133013,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5009],"tags":[748,487,126,4884,388,712,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-133012","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-scotland","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-cost-of-living","10":"tag-features","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-lifestyle","13":"tag-scotland","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114573678022432272","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133012","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133012"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133012\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/133013"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}