New research has revealed that Bangor is the best city to live in the UK if you’re on minimum wage for couples and the second best place to live on the minimum wage if you’re single.

New research from MyVoucherCodes has analysed the average cost of living, to work out how much it costs, on average, to live in each city, revealing how much money is left over each year after covering essentials.

Here’s what the researchers looked at:

● Average rent (1-bed house)
● Food shop
● Transport
● Utility bills
● Internet contract
● Council tax

The research is divided into ‘couples’ and ‘single person’ as the prices can vary depending on whether you live with, and split your living costs, with someone else.

The UK national minimum wage for those over 25 currently stands at £8.21. This means those working in minimum wage jobs take away £16,009.50 a year for a 37.5-hour working week, but how far does this actually go after covering living expenses?

Researchers looked at each city in the UK, according to Wikipedia, although they chose to exclude some with extremely small populations which have usually only been granted city status due to having a cathedral.

– Average rent for each area on Zoopla to get an average cost of renting a property per year.

– Using Numbeo, collated information for each area on yearly essential shopping cost, local transport costs, utility bills per year and internet contract cost per year.

– Using data from each area’s council website, the cost of council tax for a Band A property for 2019 to 2020 was found (applying the 25% discount that single people are entitled to).

– To calculate the average annual living costs for single people, we simply added all of the annual costs together.

– For those living with someone else, the rent, utility bills, internet contract and council was divided by two (as these would be split with the other person in the house) and added them together with the essentials and transports costs.

– Once we had both average living costs we subtracted this from the annual minimum wage salary (which we calculated as £16,009.50 based on 37.5 hours worked a week on £8.21 per hour) to show how much disposable income a person would be left with.

Here’s how the numbers look for a single person …

Top 10 UK towns and cities and the average cost of living per year:

Just one of the top five UK towns and cities is in England, with the rest spread across Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. None of the top ten cheapest are in the South, with the majority in the North of the UK.

1. Dundee – £10,893.22
2. Bangor – £11,243.58
3. Perth – £11,401.02
4. Wolverhampton – £11,402.89
5. Belfast – £11,467.87
6. Stoke-on-Trent – £11,505.29
7. Bradford – £11,746.10
8. Derby – £11,769.25
9. Sunderland – £11,830.66
10. Sheffield – £11,947.58

The 10 worst UK towns and cities and the average cost of living per year:

In the top five cities, you couldn’t actually afford to live on the minimum wage salary of just over £16,000. It probably doesn’t come as a surprise that all of the five most expensive towns are in the South of the UK. In fact, only two cities in the top ten most expensive are found outside the South of England: Edinburgh and Chester.

1. London – £28,090.16
2. St Albans – £18,757.04
3. Oxford – £18,181.83
4. Brighton & Hove – £17,518.82
5. Exeter – £17,268.41
6. Edinburgh – £17,083.35
7. Bath – £17,078.05
8. Cambridge – £16,417.92
9. Truro – £16,138.65
10. Chester – £15,785.81

And here’s how the numbers change if you’re in a couple (it’s important to note that all these figures are still per person)…

Top 10 UK towns and cities and the average cost of living per year:

All the living costs in the top five drop by around £3,000 when you begin to split costs between two people. The main change is Stoke-on-Trent take Wolverhampton’s fourth-place spot and Bangor move into the top spot, however, there are only slight changes to the top five.

1. Bangor – £7,067.30
2. Dundee – £7,342.27
3. Belfast – £7,489.52
4. Stoke-on-Trent – £7,621.46
5. Perth – £7,681.80
6. Wolverhampton – £7,730.35
7. Preston – £7,780.54
8. Newport – £7,834.02
9. Derby – £7,900.23
10. Sheffield – £7,911.11

The five worst UK towns and cities and the average cost of living per year:

Similarly, with the five worst towns and cities, there isn’t much change in the top five ranking, other than Truro entering and Exeter falling into sixth place. The surprising factor here is that even with lots of your costs halved, the UK national minimum wage still doesn’t cover your living costs.

1. London – £16,296.52
2. St Albans – £11,558.63
3. Truro – £11,442.16
4. Oxford – £11,095.04
5. Brighton & Hove – £10,893.53
6. Exeter – £10,735.38
7. Bath – £10,626.07
8. Cambridge – £10,477.78
9. Edinburgh – £10,444.75
10. Chester – £10,346.38