Hello all, we are a family of 4 living in Dubai for almost 4 years now. Hubby works as a senior technology consultant for a global company based in Dubai and earns around 46k per month. His role means he is constantly involved in traveling around the ME, mostly KSA and he’s now reached a point where he is getting pretty fed up and burnt out.

He believes that the cost of living in Dubai has become too high and we are now in fact better off moving back to London in the near future, even if he found a job with less pay back in London (say around 85k in pounds per year).

He is unable to put away any savings here and says we made a big mistake moving abroad knowing that the school fees weren’t covered by the company. Im not sure I agree as I feel that other than uprooting the kids from their school, we are better off staying in Dubai because we would be paying a significant amount of tax in the UK even on £85k per year, let alone £100k. This is in addition to the cost of renting a 3 bed in a good school catchment in west London which would work out to be between £1800-£2000 per month.

Here’s a list of our current yearly outgoings:

115k in school fees for two primary aged children

175k in rent for 4 bed villa in a nice area (we are paying more on rent in order to be much closer to the school and save on getting a second car)

42k on car related outgoings

33k on groceries

24k on utilities/bills

8.4k on weekly cleaning and garden maintenance

The remainder is on recreation, eating out, annual trips back to the Uk, gym membership etc..

Just looking for some feedback, please no harsh comments. I am not very good in dealing with money management generally and leave it to the hubby but in this case I’m perplexed at what is best for us. Thanks!

DXBtoDOH thanks for your reply. I have posted in the main ME board as you suggested.

would still really appreciate your feedback on this once you get a chance in the next days or so, you guys seem to know your stuff!!