Salary Negotiations - Toronto to London, UK

I have a job offer, but I want to get an idea of the relative value of the package based on the salary I earn here...
For full-time in Canada for my career (software consultant), I make at least $100K. Unfortunately, it is a niche market and I have had to travel all over the place.
I have a full-time job offer in London, but I am concerned that the value of the offer is not even close to what I make here - £60K.
My biggest concern is that my standard of living will take a massive hit. I am not expecting to find comparable housing and I don't intend to purchase a car.
Obviously the perks are the opportunity to travel and the adventure.
However, I am 40 years old and I don't want to come out of this experience set back in terms of my retirement, etc.
I don't want to move all the way there (an expensive proposition unto itself) and then end up having to nickel and dime.
I have read the stats and the comments about people living there on £12K -- but I am not a student. I have to support a teenager. I guess I have been spoiled by my own success.
Any opinions would be highly appreciated...
Bliss

Holy cow, I have typed out a response and it got cleared by the browser. Let's try again.

Like you, I find myself in the same situation. I am lucky enough to make, total package (with car and bonus), over $100K Canadian. When I started researching similar positions in the UK, what I saw in recruiters' sites was 45-55K pounds. This is not even what I should make there according to the exchange rate (i.e. over 60K pounds).
Having visited the country and researching the apartment rentals, I know that in "number" the prices are all the same - but alas they are in pound. Consider that lunch would cost about $10 here and 10 pounds there. 2bdr rental in Toronto suburbs is $1000 and in London burbs is 1000 pounds.
Mathematically, this means costs go up, salary goes down - enough of a swing to result in quality of living being cut clean in half.

I also have a family and responsibilities. I can't bum around on a student budget. I am not planning on diving into mass consumerism like we have here in Canada, but the belts will need to be tightened a lot more than one would expect.

Is it worth it??? That's where I am not convinced. Losing a few years of pensionable earnings, losing network/contacts, losing seniority at work... scary. When I come back, will this count? Or will my future employer think it worthless and I am back to where I was before I left - and therefore have to start climbing the ladder again.

If proportionally I was financially the same (with exchange accounted for costs and salary remain similar) - OR even if I had to take a 10-15% cut in my quality of life... I would be ok... But the excitement of being in a foreign country and traveling is outweighed by the practicality of reduced savings and a strong negative impact to the bottom line.

Unfortunately I am as unclear as you are (leaning towards no more often though) - and I have already paid $1300 for the work visa - an expensive way to find out...

Wow what a nice outcome for pay in the uk.
I've been living in the uk for many years and been working for the last 9 years.
My average wage £15 and half grand and that is a care assistant job. Lunch is average of £6 for lunch in a deli, and you don't have to add tax ontop what is advertised, like Canada.
There are alot of meal deals in local stores costing only £3.
THe uk is very much about bringing pack lunchs even in offices.

My boss and her husband have a household income of about £40k.

Thanks... I am very relieved to hear that it is a good wage. It is such a long way to go and I was afraid that I would end up in a poorer financial position overall.

Hi,
60K is a good salary here and probably fairly equal to 100k CDN. I'm currently on £35k and was looking for jobs in Canada from 60-70k. They don't have the same kind of packages here though, things like dental aren't included (but then again that's a whole different ball game over here anyway). The last post by Guiderj is right you can get lunch for £5 easily. I had dinner at a pub the other night with a friend and 2 meals were £7 and a bottle of wine was £5. That wasn't central london but close to the M25.

Some things are more expensive, but some things are cheaper. And consider the fact that the exchange rate was 2.4 when I got here.

Good luck

£60K is actually equivalent to about $96K CAD. So really you'd be missing out on $4K gross per year.

The most accurate calculator I found for take-home pay is this:
listentotaxman . com (sorry won't let me post links yet).

What I did, was set up a chart and list my current income - both gross and net. I then listed all of my expenses and came to my final monthly income. I then took a range of salaries from the UK from what I've been able to gather from my job and made charts....I used the above website to determine my net take home pay. I then researched all of my expenses (flats, food, tube pass, etc.) and listed those expenses and figured out my final monthly income.

I then took what I made in CAD $ and converted it to £ and I took my £ income and converted it to CAD $ to see how they compared. I found that if I were to get the salary that I want (even my most minimum salary that I would take) I was still saving more in the UK than I am here in Canada (not by much....but it's still more!).

You can't go by straight exchange rates when it comes to salaries. It doesn't work that way. I thought it did too but I do have a friend in London who I've been talking to as he thought the same thing when he lived in NZ.