Should we move to London with young children? Here’s how we actually made the decision

What we found out:

Anti-immigration sentiment in the UK is more nuanced than the headlines suggest
Talking to people already on the ground is worth more than any news article
Getting the right pocket of London matters more than the general area
Everyone we spoke to said London is worth experiencing despite the challenges
We said yes while the kids are still young enough to take it in their stride

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There is a version of this post that is polished and confident, where I tell you we weighed the pros and cons, made a spreadsheet, and arrived at a clear-headed decision.

That is not what happened.

What actually happened was weeks of late night conversations, a lot of Googling at 2am, genuine fear about getting it wrong, and eventually, a leap. If you are sitting somewhere right now asking yourself the same question we were asking — is London actually worth it, especially with young children — then this post is for you.

The question nobody prepares you for

Before we got to the practicalities of schools and housing and jobs, we had to answer a more basic question: should we even do this at all?

We had been watching the news. The headlines about anti-immigration sentiment in the UK were hard to ignore. There were moments where we genuinely wondered whether moving to London as a Singaporean Indian family right now was the right call. Whether we would feel welcome. Whether it was safe.

This is where I want to be honest with you: the media had sensationalised a significant part of it.

How do I know? Because I stopped relying on headlines and started talking to people on the ground.

The most useful thing I did: reached out to someone I barely knew

I started with my personal network, which gave me maybe two or three contacts with London experience. Then I did something that felt uncomfortable but turned out to be one of the best decisions of this whole process.

I went through my social networks and found a university acquaintance, someone I had done exactly one group project with, who was living in the UK. We were not close. I was not sure she would even remember me properly. But I sent her a message asking if she would be open to sharing her honest perspective on life there.

She was wonderful.

She gave me an unfiltered view, the good and the difficult in equal measure. And then she went a step further and added me to a WhatsApp group of Singaporeans living in the UK.

That group changed everything.

Because suddenly I was not reading about London. I was hearing from people living it, people who understood exactly where we were coming from because they had made the same jump. They knew what it felt like to leave behind Singapore’s efficiency and safety and land somewhere genuinely different.

The lesson I took from this, which I will keep coming back to on this blog, is to not be afraid to reach out. Most people who have made a big move will help you willingly. They remember what it felt like to be on the fence. They want to make it easier for the next person.

What they told us about London right now

Here is the balanced picture that came through consistently across everyone we spoke to.

The concerns were real and they did not sugarcoat them. The weather can be as grey as advertised. The cost of living is significant, particularly housing. There are inefficiencies that will frustrate you, especially coming from Singapore where almost everything just works. And yes, there are parts of the current political and economic climate that are unsettled.

At the same time, we are making this move at a moment when many people are moving out of the UK. Brexit uncertainty, the economy, the cost of living. The irony is not lost on us.

But here is what struck me. Every single person we spoke to, without exception, ended their honest list of downsides with some version of the same thing: London is a place worth experiencing. The city is expansive in a way that is hard to describe until you have been there. It is a genuine melting pot of cultures, histories, and ways of living. There is always something to discover. And the quality of life for children, the parks, the museums, the different seasons, the sheer variety of experience, is something our contacts spoke about with real warmth.

Nobody told us it would be easy. Everyone told us it would be worth it.

The piece of advice I am most grateful for

One contact gave us a piece of advice that has shaped our entire approach to the move: getting the right pocket of London is everything.

Not just the right neighbourhood. The right street.

London is not one city. It is dozens of very different villages that happen to be connected by the underground. Two streets apart can mean a completely different feel, different school catchment, different community. She was emphatic: do not commit to a rental from abroad. Get there, stay in temporary accommodation, and see the neighbourhoods in person before you sign anything.

We are taking that advice seriously. More on that in a future post where I go deep on how we are approaching the neighbourhood search.

Why we decided to do it while the kids are young

In the end, the decision came down to something simple.

Our children are four years old and under a year. They are young enough to adapt, young enough to take the adventure in their stride, young enough to grow up thinking that big moves are a normal and exciting part of life rather than something to be afraid of.

We wanted to give them that. And we wanted to give ourselves that too.

Every person we spoke to gave us a balanced view. But they all summed it up the same way. So we decided to take the leap.

Not because we had all the answers. But because we had enough courage to go without them.

Practical starting points if you are in the research phase

If you are where we were a few months ago, here are some resources that genuinely helped us:

Singaporeans in UK Facebook groups and WhatsApp communities — search Facebook for expat groups specific to your home country. The Singaporean community in London is warm and active.
Rightmove and OpenRent for getting a real sense of rental costs across different London areas before you arrive. (Rightmove has a helpful neighbourhood guide feature worth exploring.)
Relocating to London guides — we found Relocate Magazine useful for understanding the broader landscape of moving to the UK as a family.
Wise — if you are already thinking ahead to the financial side of the move, Wise is worth setting up early. We used it ourselves for the visa process and it took about 10 minutes to set up from Singapore. (I earn a small commission if you sign up using my link, at no extra cost to you. We genuinely use it ourselves.)

Did this resonate with you? If you are in the middle of a similar decision, I would love to hear where you are at. Drop a comment below or reach out directly.

Next up: The UK visa process as a Singaporean — what nobody tells you before you apply.

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Some links in this post are affiliate links, meaning I earn a small commission if you use them, at no extra cost to you. I only ever recommend things we have genuinely used ourselves.