Why it’s so expensive to be single in the UK

Being single is often sold as the ultimate era of freedom. Spontaneous trips to Ibiza, main character energy, and never having to justify that 3am Deliveroo order to anyone.

But flying solo isn't all buying yourself flowers and writing your name in the sand. Thanks to the rising price of everyday essentials and a few tax traps, going it alone in modern day Britain is costlier than ever. 

Using the latest official data, we set out to discover how much extra it actually costs to be single today – from renting and bills to tax and retirement – and where that penalty hits hardest.

How many people live alone in the UK?

Of course, being single doesn't necessarily mean living by yourself. Many single adults live with parents, housemates or in shared accommodation – often because that's what's affordable.

But for most people, having your own place to call home is still the ideal scenario – and also the point at which financial penalties start to hit hardest.

There are more one-person households in the UK than you'd probably think.

Out of 28.6 million homes in the UK, around 30% are occupied by a single person, according to latest ONS figures. That's 8.4 million people, and an increase of 11% since 2014.

The majority of that is people over 65 – probably because we're all living longer than ever, and many of us end up single eventually, one way or another. 

For other age groups, the proportion of people living alone has remained relatively stable over the past decade or so, with only a 1% increase in people aged 25 to 44 living by themselves.

Going it alone but still at home

For younger people, being single these days rarely means breaking out on your own to a one-bed flat and a set of mismatched cutlery – instead, it often means skipping that step altogether.

More young adults than ever live with their parents – 10% more than in 2014, in fact, and up over one-third since the mid-2000s. 

Unsurprisingly, the biggest rises among 25-34-year-olds have been in places like London, where house prices have grown fastest.

While that might mean enduring unsolicited life advice and fridge-labelling politics, it can also be a very smart move – 14% of young adults living with their parents manage to boost their net financial wealth by more than £10,000 over a two-year period.

Where solo-living costs the most

For those who do eventually decide to fly the nest, the financial reality changes fast.

The average private one-bedroom rental now costs around £1,107 a month. On the take-home pay of someone earning the UK's median salary of £39,000, around 45% would go on rent alone.

​​Averages don't tell the whole story, though.

Wages and rents vary dramatically across the UK, and what's "affordable" in one place can be completely out of reach in another.

So to get a clearer picture of what it really costs to live alone in the UK's 30 largest towns and cities, we looked at two things:

• the average monthly rent for a one-bedroom property, and
• median monthly take-home pay, assuming a 5% pension contribution and Plan 2 student loan repayments (Plan 4 in Scotland).

Then, we calculated rent as a percentage of take-home pay, and the amount left over afterwards:

In a shock to absolutely no one, London comes out as the most expensive place to live alone.

The average renter would hand over around 60% of their take-home pay on a one-bed property – leaving just £1,274 a month from the city's median salary of £54,340 before bills enter the picture.

And that's a best-case scenario. Someone earning closer to the UK median of £39,000 would need to spend almost 80% of their take-home pay on rent alone – which, in practical terms, would make living alone in London completely unaffordable.

Close behind London is Edinburgh – where a single renter on the median wage would be putting around 52% of their take-home pay towards rent – and Brighton, where it would account for just under half.

At the other end of the scale, Middlesbrough stands out as surprisingly affordable for solo renters. A median earner there would need to devote just 19% of their monthly take-home pay to rent – leaving over £2,000 to cover everything else. Up the 'Boro.

The singles tax on everyday living

Of course, rent is only part of the picture – what about all the extra costs that come along with, well, living a normal life?

To pin down how much more single people typically spend each month compared with a couple sharing costs, we compared the average essential bills faced by both a single adult and a couple living in a one-bedroom home and leading a fairly typical lifestyle – drawing on specific data for costs that vary by household size like food and transport:

By our calculations, the average single person would have to shell out a whopping £669.50 per month extra compared to two people sharing costs (per person), or over £8,000 per year. 

That's:

• 50% more on council tax, even with a single-person discount
• Around 50% more on water bills
• Around 30% more on communication costs, like phone and internet
• Over 10% more on food.

The only area our singletons come out on top is transport, where they spend around 14% less compared to a couple per person. This could be due to couples going out more – or at least having the disposable income to afford to do so.

So why are singletons hit so hard? After all, it feels like living alone should be cheaper. There's only one person eating the food, using the shower, streaming the telly, and no kids leaving all the lights on in empty rooms.

One obvious point is that not many costs actually shrink when there are fewer people in a household. Even the ones that do don't scale down in the way you'd expect.

Take energy bills. A chunk of what you pay is a fixed standing charge, due every day regardless of how many people live there or how much energy you use. That adds up to around £300 a year before you've even boiled a kettle.

And if you live in a small flat, you still have to heat the same rooms whether there's one person there or two. The boiler doesn't know you’re single.

The same goes for things like phone and internet. They're largely fixed costs, and with no chance to benefit from shared data plans or loyalty bundles.

Food might seem like an obvious area where single people spend less. In reality though, that's rarely true. Food is almost never sold for one. Four baked potatoes. Eight sausages. A loaf of bread that goes stale before you've even made it halfway through.

For someone living alone, that often means you have to spend the same amount, and have more waste. And if you want to buy items singly, you'll often pay a significant premium. 

Most streaming services aren't any more forgiving, either. Netflix charges the same for a plan whether it's just you or a whole household, while Spotify effectively adds a £4-a-month premium for single users (again, per person).

Add it all up, and it's easy to see why living alone costs more than you'd expect.

Why tax bites harder for solo earners

The cost of being single doesn't just hit you when you spend. It plays a massive part before money even enters your bank account in the first place.

As we all know, in the UK, the amount of tax paid depends on how much an individual earns, not the total income a household receives.

For single earners, this means you'll pay more tax than a couple with the combined equivalent income, where a larger share stays taxed at lower rates or avoids tax altogether via two personal allowances:

Total household income	Single earner take-home pay	Couple take-home pay (income evenly split)	Extra tax paid by single earner
£50,000	£39,519	£43,038	£3,519
£60,000	£45,357	£50,238	£4,881
£80,000	£56,957	£64,638	£7,681
£100,000	£68,557	£79,038	£10,481

In other words, single earners often need to earn significantly more just to reach the same post-tax position as a working couple – and that's before you even factor in higher bills and housing costs.

Single parents are hit even harder

If you think that's bad enough, spare a thought for the UK's 3.2 million single parents.

It goes without saying that it's much harder to support a family on one wage, and the financial margin for error is much thinner. Sadly, two in five single parents live in poverty.

Yet the way the UK's tax system is set up means extra support is withdrawn at exactly the point single parents start to earn a decent income.

When one parent earns more than £60,000 per year, they start to gradually lose child benefit – and lose it completely once they earn £80,000.

The result is that a single person earning £80,000 with two children is a further £2,000 worse off per year than two people earning £40,000 each. 

In fact, it's possible for a household to have a combined income of up to £120,000 and still keep the full benefit. 

A similar principle applies to government childcare support. You can get up to £2,000 per child in tax-free childcare per year along with 30 hours of funded childcare for kids between nine months and four – provided you earn under the £100,000 cap. That could be a total loss of close to £13,000 just for one child.

Yet a single-parent family with a household income of £100,001 would get nothing, while a two-parent family with a combined income of £200,000 could still get the full entitlement.

Something to bear in mind next time you hear anyone criticising a single parent for choosing not to work full-time.

Household	Earnings	Total income	Child benefit	Free childcare hours	Tax-free childcare
Single parent	£80,000	£80,000	❌	✅	✅
Two parents	£40,000 + £40,000	£80,000	✅	✅	✅
Single parent	£100,001	£100,001	❌	❌	❌
Two parents	£100,000 + £100,000	£200,000	❌	✅	✅

But doesn't every country do it like this? Well, no, actually.

In France, income tax is calculated at the household level. Total income is added up, then "split" into a number of shares based on how many adults and children are in the home. 

Having a child increases the number of shares, which effectively pulls their taxable income down the rate ladder, so less of it gets hit at the higher rates than under a purely individual system.

Luxembourg gets to a similar place by giving many single parents a more favourable tax status than a child-free single adult, and topping it up with a specific single-parent tax credit.

The singles tax on retirement living

If you were hoping single people finally get a break once working life is over, have we got bad news for you. Unfortunately, the solo penalty doesn't stop once you hang up your lanyard.  

Pensions UK publishes benchmarks for the annual income needed to achieve different standards of living in retirement, from 'minimum' to 'comfortable', depending on whether you're single or part of a couple: 

Retirement standard	One person	Two people
Minimum	£13,400	£21,600
Moderate	£31,700	£43,900
Comfortable	£43,900	£60,600

At every retirement standard, a single person needs to save significantly more than each half of a couple to enjoy the same quality of life.

That's:

• 24% more to reach a minimum retirement standard
• 44% more to reach a moderate standard
• 45% more to reach a comfortable standard.

But what does that gap actually look like in real money?

Based on a simple set of assumptions – including full State Pension entitlement and 2% real annual returns over a 30-year retirement – here's how the pension pots required today might compare for a single person and a couple:

Those are huge differences to get to the exact same place.

And it isn't just a money problem – it's also a time problem. Assuming a £250 monthly pension contribution and a 5% pension growth rate, a single person would've needed to save for around 12 years longer than someone in a couple in order to enjoy a moderate retirement.

How much do you need to save for retirement?

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One final bill for going solo

There's a common misconception that inheritance tax is a tax on people receiving an inheritance.

In reality, it's a tax on the estate of someone who dies (with assets above a certain value). Whether that money goes to children, siblings, friends or the village church roof fund comes later – the tax bill comes first.

Surprise, surprise: the UK's inheritance tax system benefits couples more than individuals.

Assets left to a spouse or civil partner are usually exempt from inheritance tax altogether, and when the first partner dies, any unused allowance can be passed on.

In practice, that means a couple can combine two £325,000 nil-rate bands – and, if they're leaving a home to children or grandchildren, two £175,000 residence allowances – allowing up to £1 million to pass on tax-free.

In the 2022 to 2023 tax year alone, £5.98 billion was transferred to surviving spouses and civil partners on death.

Single people don't get that second bite of the cherry. With no spouse exemption and no way to roll unused allowances forward, they have just one set of thresholds, and anything above them is taxed at 40%. The result is that a single person's estate can hit the inheritance tax threshold far sooner, and a much larger share of it can end up in HMRC's hands.

That's right, even after you've clocked off for good, the tax system still assumes you should've found someone to split the bill with.

Bottom line

Maya Angelou once famously said that "you alone are enough." Emotionally, that's true. Financially, not so much.

Across housing, everyday bills, tax and retirement, the system consistently works better if there are two adults to share costs, pool allowances and spread risk. Live on your own, and you pay more – often not because you consume more, but because so many prices, thresholds and rules assume couplehood.

Even after you die, you could end up facing a heftier tax bill.

It's the reality of longer lives, later relationships, separations, bereavement – or simply never finding the right person at the right time. And as the number of one-person households continues to rise, it's a penalty that affects more people every year.

Independence may be priceless. Unfortunately, everything else isn’t.

Sources

We used a variety of different sources for our renting, salary, and everyday expenses calculations. If you're interested, you can find them all listed on our spreadsheet.

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