Nearly 1,000 business school graduates from 35 countries have voted Dubai as the best place in the world to live and work. And, really, I can’t argue with them: the emirate is dynamic, it’s politically stable, it’s warm and sunny, salaries are generally higher than they’d be back home, there’s no income tax and it has lovely beaches – for a business graduate with good job prospects, what’s not to love?
Dubai has all the “excitement of an emerging market and all the perks of an international city” Sam Barnett, CEO of MBC group, told Gulf News. Add to that fantastic job opportunities with top multinationals and a high quality of life, and it sounds like the ideal country in which to kick-start your career.
But, and this is a big but, an Economist Intelligence Unit report out last week warns those thinking of retrenching to the UAE to be aware of the “hidden costs”. It mentions, in particular, the high price of housing – not just rent, but all the associated costs, such as maintenance, service fees and utilities (in summer, a family in a reasonable villa can easily rack up a water and electricity bill of AED 5,500 [£1,000] a month) – and the price of education.
A British curriculum school can cost up to AED 100,000 (£18,180) per child per year, and even that doesn’t include extras such as uniforms, school lunches, school buses, school trips and extra-curricular activities, which quickly add up.
“While the UAE does still offer high salary packages and zero income tax, expats should not assume they are going to simply pocket the difference of the tax break, with everything else staying equal,” the report’s editor, Sam Green, told Arabian Business.
It’s perhaps one of the most sensible comments I’ve heard about the UAE in a long time. But there are other hidden costs when you live as an expat in the UAE – ones that aren’t perhaps so obvious: the extra amount of money you’ll be spending on airfares, for example – both to your home country and also to all the fascinating countries that are within reach from the UAE.
Then there’s Dubai’s “upgrade culture” to fend off: the slide away from that which is practical and functional towards everything that’s luxurious and convenient: a large four-wheel-drive, a private pool, live-in help, a beach-club membership, a few designer accessories, a Friday-brunch habit…
Factor in, too, the costs of exploring the UAE – there’s so much on offer here and most expats are keen to do, try and experience everything from fly-boarding and dune-bashing to taking high tea at the Burj Al Arab before they move on to their next destination – and many of Dubai’s more popular attractions don’t come cheap. If you fancy seeing Dubai from the “Sky” level of Burj Khalifa, for example, you’re looking at AED 500 (£91) a ticket.
But perhaps the most meaningful hidden costs of living life as an expat in the UAE are those you can’t quantify financially, and these are the costs that many people forget to consider: you’ll be living in a Muslim country governed by sharia; this involves accepting that you may not have the same personal freedoms as you have in the West.
In terms of friends, you accept that the UAE is a transient place; that good friends will constantly be leaving; that your time here will be punctuated with sad goodbyes. You must accept that your life in the UAE is dependent on your residence visa and that, if this is revoked for any reason, you, too, will have to leave.
And, finally, you understand that, however many years you spend in the UAE, however much of your life you live here, it can never be your forever home; that, for every year you spend building a life in the UAE, you lose a year building a permanent life elsewhere –this, perhaps, is the biggest hidden cost of all.
Annabel Kantaria is a journalist and author who’s lived in the UAE for 16 years. Winner of the 2013 Montegrappa Prize for First Fiction, her first novel will be published by Mira in May 2015. Follow her on Twitter: @BellaKay; and on Instagram: dubaipix