35-year-old American left the U.S. for the U.K. spends $2,532/month

In 2019, Chanel Rivers took a trip to London that would change the entire trajectory of her life.

Born and raised in New York, Rivers, now 35, says she was tired of the dating scene and worrying about her safety in the Big Apple.

She booked a trip to London with a friend and realized how comfortable she felt walking around the city, something she no longer felt in New York.

“I remember just walking around London and being like, ‘I feel like this is where I’m supposed to be.’ It was a feeling that came over me,” Rivers says. “In London, I just feel like my anxiety has lessened a lot, which is great.”

Shortly after Rivers got back to New York, she started figuring out how to return to London permanently, but the Covid-19 pandemic brought her plans to a complete halt. During the pandemic, Rivers met her now fiancé, Martin, an architect from Canada who was living and working in New York.

After four and a half years of dating, Rivers brought up moving to London again to her fiancé. She admits that the feeling of wanting to move didn’t go away, and she didn’t see herself being in New York long-term anymore.

“I considered Canada, and we did look at Vancouver, but it was not city enough for me. Being from New York, I needed a big city. London was always the plan for me in my heart,” she says.

Around the same time that Rivers brought up getting the move to London going, her fiancé’s job offered him a position in their office there. It was something she says was “very serendipitous but meant to be.”

Since Martin was already a U.K. citizen, Rivers only needed to apply for a partner visa, which was approved in March 2024.

Chanel is part of small but growing trend of Americans relocating to the U.K. More than 6,000 U.S. citizens applied to either become British subjects or to live and work in the country indefinitely from March 2024 to March 2025, the most since the U.K.’s Home Office began keeping records in 2004, according to The Guardian.

In October 2024, the couple moved into a two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment with a private garden in West London without ever seeing it in person. The rent was 2,400 pounds or USD $3,159 when they first moved in and has since increased to 2,515.20 pounds or $3,311, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.

The apartment was unfurnished, in a townhouse rather than a larger building, and didn’t have a doorman, unlike the modern one they lived in back in New York City. The couple didn’t ship any of their furniture over because it was too expensive. The first night they spent in the apartment, they slept in sleeping bags on the floor and used their suitcases as a dining table.

“We wanted something with character. We told ourselves we wanted something different when we moved here and we wanted something that felt very London so that we had a different living experience than we did in the U.S.,” Rivers says.

Rivers was able to keep her $120,000 a year job in event planning and marketing through the end of 2024.

After that, she started looking for a position in London, which she says helped her explore the city as she traveled for interviews and worked out of local coffee shops. Rivers says she never had homesickness or regretted the move, but she admits that she was still nervous about being in a new city. 

“I was so intimidated by London because it’s so big and I was kind of scared to go out on my own. I don’t know what happened to that brave girl from 2019, but I guess everything just felt so real now, and it was hitting me,” she adds.

Now that Rivers and her fiancé have lived in London for a little over a year, they have settled in nicely, she says. Rivers found a London-based job working as an event planner. Rivers did not want to disclose her salary, but says that although she did take a pay cut, she’s happy with it and spends less money than she did while living in New York.

“I’ve found that I generally spend less now, mostly because I’m not socializing as much as I did in New York. In London, life is a bit quieter but in a good way,” she says. “I still make time to see new friends and meet new people but I go out less. Plus, since I earn less here, I’m more mindful about where my money goes.”

Rivers and her fiancé also split their expenses proportionally based on their incomes.

“My fiancé makes the equivalent of what he made in the U.S., so he’s kind of carrying the team right now, which is great,” she adds.

Rivers’ share of the monthly living expenses breakdown is as follows, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It:

• Rent = 1,215 pounds or $1,599
• Cellphone = 49.70 pounds or $65
• Internet/Wi-Fi = 20 pounds or $26
• Water = 59.78 pounds or $79
• Electricity = 121 pounds or $159
• Groceries = 300 pounds or $395
• Transportation = 115 pounds or $151
• Amazon Prime = 8.99 pounds or $12
• Pet insurance = 25.21 pounds or $33
• Apple TV = $12.99

Rivers’ biggest monthly expenses are rent, groceries and electricity, she says. She commutes to the office three times a week and tends to buy lunch on those days.

Since moving to London, Rivers and her fiancé say they have also been able to take advantage of the city’s location by taking local day trips on the train and traveling to Ireland and Mallorca.

“It’s really nice to have easier access to traveling. I feel like in the U.S., you go on a trip once a year and that’s it. It’s nice that we can hop on a train and go to Paris for a night or hop on a plane and go to Spain,” she says. “The traveling is also a big part of why we wanted to move.

Despite it taking a while to get settled, Rivers says she feels they made the right decision.

“I’ve only felt like this is the right path and where I’m supposed to be. Even the mundane things I do here excite me,” she says. “I feel like I’m probably in a honeymoon phase but I feel every day that I made the right choice. I don’t think I see myself living in the U.S. now that I know what it’s like to live a lifestyle outside of that.”

Rivers says moving back to the U.S. probably isn’t in the cards for her, but she could eventually get on board with moving to Canada after living out her London dream for a few more years. 

“Canada wasn’t as exciting for where I’m at in life right now. I wanted something a little bit more exciting, like New York, but different. I think when I get older, if we were to move back and we wanted to be closer to family, then Canada would be the place we move to,” she says.

Conversions from British Pounds to USD were done using the OANDA conversion rate of 0.76 pounds to $1 USD on Nov. 11, 2025. All amounts are rounded to the nearest dollar.

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