Two years ago, to this very day, Sara, the boys and I moved to Dubai. This is everything we wish we had known.
We have tried to put the whole lot in one place. The practical stuff first, then an honest conversation at the end about what we got wrong and whether we would do it all again.
Money: start here, before anything else
You have heard living in Dubai is tax free. That is right, and we are not going to turn this into a finance lecture. But there is a lot more to it than income tax.
We came from the Midlands. You get a lot more space for your money in Birmingham than you do in Dubai, which is obvious. People moving from London tend to have less of a shock, because of what they already pay per square foot.
Property is only one cost. Before you move, build the whole picture:
- Healthcare. Different here, and a meaningful cost if you want good cover.
- Education. You may not be paying school fees now. You will be here.
- Utilities, phone, internet, car, insurance. All covered further down.
Adam built a large spreadsheet, did the research, and worked out net net what it would look like for us as a family. Do the same before the dream takes hold.
"Vegas is the best place in the world at extracting money from you if you are a gambler. Dubai is the best place in the world at extracting money from anybody without a plan."
Our firm view: if you do not have at least 12 to 18 months of runway when you land, do not move yet. Build a buffer first.
Schools: do this before you choose where to live
If you have children, this is the most important decision you will make.
How to build a shortlist
Go to the KHDA website. It gives you a rating much like Ofsted, and you can filter by curriculum and rating. That is exactly how we built ours.
Our shortlist was Hartland International, Jebel Ali and Repton. We chose Hartland International for the boys.
The process, step by step
- Book an in person tour at each school on your shortlist. This gives you a real feel for the place and a chance to ask questions. We took the boys with us, because we wanted them to have a say and to feel part of the journey.
- Assessment. If you want to proceed, your children sit an assessment. Ours was around 500 dirhams, roughly 100 pounds. It can be done in person or remotely, coordinated between your UK school and the school here. Ours did it in person.
- Deposit. If a place is offered, you pay a 10% deposit of the annual school fee.
Top tip, and we cannot say it loudly enough: always choose your school before choosing the area you live in. Traffic here can be brutal. We are lucky now that we can walk to school, and it is honestly a game changer. We learned this the hard way when we moved to a villa community and moved back.
Our full schools section goes deeper on curriculums and comparisons.
Emirates ID: nothing happens without it
Banks, phones, car rentals, lease agreements, the lot. There are two stages and it is genuinely simple.
- Medical. A blood test and an X-ray. Adam has done it twice and was in and out within 15 minutes of his appointment both times.
- Biometrics. A separate building.
Your digital card arrives in one to two days. The physical card takes five to seven days.
Attestation: the mistake we made
This is the one that cost us.
Get your documents attested in the UK before you move. We did not. It took nearly 30 days once we were here, and around 700 pounds, for the boys' birth certificates and our marriage certificate.
You need these for visas. Doing it at home is faster, cheaper and vastly less stressful.
The order things have to happen in
Adam got this wrong and had to take an extra trip out to Dubai to fix it. The chain runs like this:
Emirates ID → phone contract → bank account → chequebook
On banks, we use Emirates NBD and Wio. Think of Emirates NBD as the HSBC equivalent and Wio as more like Revolut or Monzo.
Once your account is open, get your chequebook. Yes, in a place this forward thinking, you still need one, largely for rent. Things are changing, but life is much easier with it sorted.
Renting: the listed price is not the price
The annual rent you see on Bayut or Property Finder is not what you will pay.
| What to budget for | Detail |
|---|---|
| Broker fee | 5% of annual rent |
| Security deposit | 5% of annual rent |
| Payment method | Cheques. Fewer cheques usually means lower rent, more cheques usually carries a premium |
You may negotiate the headline rent down slightly, but how far depends on your broker and, more importantly, the landlord.
Driving licence
If you are coming from the UK, this is refreshingly easy, because the UK is on the auto swap list. No lessons, no theory, no test.
- Eye test: around 180 dirhams. Adam would describe it as an eye test in the loosest sense of the word.
- The RTA does the rest, in the same building.
- Total cost: around 250 pounds.
- Valid for: five years.
Bring your UK licence, your passport and your eye test result. You need a residence visa, not a tourist visa. If you are not from the UK, check whether your country is on the auto swap list.
Furnishing from scratch
We shipped nothing. We arrived with suitcases, which meant furnishing an entire home from zero.
Where we shopped: Home Centre, IKEA, Zara Home and H&M Home.
The genuinely useful bit: most places, including IKEA and Home Centre, offer free delivery and free assembly. If you are used to flat packing in the UK, you do not have to here. They are quick and they are very good.
The hidden cost: curtains
Curtains for every room cost us around 1,500 pounds, and Adam had not budgeted for them at all. There are plenty of providers who will come and measure up, show you samples, and be back within about 24 hours to fit. Great service, but budget for it.
Bills nobody mentions
DEWA
The Dubai Electricity and Water Authority. We have now lived in both a villa in Villanova and an apartment in Sobha Hartland, and for our family of four we budget around 2,000 to 2,200 dirhams a month. Yours will depend on usage and family size.
Watch for the municipality and housing fee on your DEWA bill. The calculation is: take your annual rent, take 5% of it, divide by 12. That number appears monthly.
Phone and internet
We use du.
- Mobile: 340 dirhams a month each, so around 65 pounds
- Home broadband: 550 dirhams a month, around 110 pounds
Across the two, that is roughly another 240 pounds a month to budget for.
Getting around
Dubai is not a walking city. If you are a family, you will need a car. Taxis are cheap compared to the UK, and there is the metro and buses, but a car makes family life far easier.
Use Waze, not Google Maps
This is a small tip that makes a real difference. Waze tells you which lane you need to be in. There are a lot of lanes here, and one minute you need to be across, the next you are coming off a slip road. Google Maps is not as good at lane management.
Zero alcohol tolerance
If you drive, you cannot drink. Not one. There is no margin here.
What you do instead is book a safe driver service through an app. A driver comes to you and drives your own car home. The cost is roughly on par with a taxi, sometimes a little more. So driving there and getting a driver back often works out cheaper than two taxis.
Buying a car
We bought a Jetour T2 for around 150,000 dirhams, roughly 32,000 pounds. Adam has owned some decent cars and rates this as the best value one he has bought.
- Insurance works differently. The car is insured, not the driver.
- Budget around 5% of the car's value per year for insurance.
- Finance is cheap, and rates are more competitive than the UK.
- But credit is hard if you are self employed, exactly as in the UK. Worth planning around if you are starting your own business here.
Ramadan
We were naive about this and wanted to educate ourselves properly, because we have moved to a Muslim country.
What changes:
- School hours. The boys finished at 12:45, so effectively a half day.
- Business hours. Gyms and many businesses move to Ramadan hours.
- Iftars. Restaurants and hotels do special deals for the meal breaking the fast. You do not need to be Muslim to attend. We were invited to several, which was lovely and made us feel part of it.
- Traffic gets very busy in the hours running up to iftar. Leave extra time.
On etiquette: be mindful about eating and drinking in public, keep music down, and follow the dress code, which is worth respecting here year round anyway.
Five places to go while you are still in holiday mode
When you arrive you will feel like you are on holiday. Lean into it.
- Dubai Safari Park. Best value for a family, in our view.
- Aquaventure at Atlantis. Not the cheapest, but you have to go.
- Kite Beach. Free, and brilliant for a run or just hanging out.
- Hatta Dam. A bit of a drive, so you will need a car, but well worth exploring.
- Hidden Dubai. Out in the desert. Great food, great evening.
And do not forget Abu Dhabi, about an hour and 20 minutes away. Car rental is cheap for a day. Go for Yas Island, Ferrari World, SeaWorld and the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque.
Apps to download
- Careem. Taxis, groceries, takeaways, more or less anything delivered.
- UAE Pass. The government digital ID app. Works with your Emirates ID for e signatures and makes life much simpler.
- Talabat, Deliveroo and similar. Check the offers on each, because the discounts differ even where the venues overlap.
- noon. Think Amazon for the UAE. Extremely fast, with an express option delivering in well under an hour.
- The Entertainer. An annual subscription, we think around 150 pounds, that unlocks buy one get one free offers on restaurants, bowling and plenty more. Some venues have reusable vouchers. Our favourites are Tribes, Trampo Extreme for the boys, and Paul.
- Privilee. Access to hotel pool days, gyms, classes and padel courts. Compared with gym memberships alone, we think it is good value.
The honest half
That is the practical stuff. Here is what we actually think after two years.
Winning the day
Most of Adam's work is in the UK and some in the US, which pushes his evenings later. But the trade is a properly structured morning.
"I can get up, go to the gym, do some deep work, and by 11 or 12 I feel like I have already had a successful day."
Friendships
This was the thing Sara was most nervous about, and it turned out to be one of the best parts of being here.
"The friendships I have made here are on another level. You get to know people quicker in Dubai, and they almost become your family."
A lot of that came from starting Sadeeqa, the women's community Sara set up here.
Stay in your lane
There is a reason Adam filmed part of this outside Louis Vuitton.
If you enjoy nice things, fine. But if you come here to keep up with the Joneses, understand that this place has what feels like unlimited wealth. There will always be someone spending more than you.
"Come with a plan. Know what your values are and stay in your lane. Otherwise this place, no matter how good it is, will chew you up and spit you out."
The job market is not what people think
There is a belief that everything here is paved with gold and opportunities walk into you. That is not the case, and has not been for ten years or more.
If you do not have a job lined up, or 12 to 18 months of runway, stay where you are and build one or the other first.
Quick tip from Adam, who works in talent: if you are job hunting for the UAE, change your location on LinkedIn to Dubai. It measurably changes how many conversations you get into.
Dirhams are not monopoly money
We fell into this for too many months. You arrive, you do not have a feel for the currency, and you just buy things.
Once we grounded ourselves in what a dirham actually costs relative to what we used to pay, we were shocked. Some things we paid 5 pounds for at home were costing us 15 here. You can shop smart, but first you have to stop treating the currency like it is not real.
Safety
This is hard to convey unless you have experienced it. Adam will leave a laptop set up in a coffee shop in Dubai Mall and walk five minutes to the toilet.
"As a woman, to feel safe walking alone at night and not worry about being attacked, that is such a nice feeling. And to know your children are safe here."
So, are we happy? And would we do it again?
Sara: 100%.
"What my life is like here does not even compare to what it was in the UK. You have always been busy with work and that was a lot of your life. Whereas I feel like I have a life here."
She puts it down to the friendship circle, the opportunities, and the things she now does: padel, learning mahjong, running. Getting closer to people faster, and not booking things months in advance.
Adam: also yes, for slightly different reasons.
Moving here together was a forcing function for staying a tight family unit. In the UK, everyone came home and dispersed into different rooms. Here, we do things together, and we still have not been everywhere we want to go.
Watching the boys grow up has been the big one. Reggie's confidence in particular, to the point that a teacher went out of her way to comment on how much he has changed. And the quality of life they have. We think they will look back and realise what a childhood it was.
The downsides, honestly
Family. Sara misses her mum, and her Peloton, in an order she declines to confirm. Adam misses his mum, his brother, and Arlo, who is by now unmistakably his mum's dog.
That is the real list. Neither of us regrets it.
How long will we stay?
Sara does not see us moving, ever, and is clear she does not want to go back to the UK. Dubai is home.
Which is quite the turnaround, because Adam originally framed this as a two year experiment to see how it went. Sara was the one saying burn the bridges, roughly three days after landing.
Worth saying, because it matters: unlike a lot of people who move here, we did not decide on a whim. We visited many times and researched it for years before committing. We were confident in the move, or we would not have made it.
Two years. Happy. No regrets.
If you have got this far, thank you genuinely. The idea of this was to give you a blackbook to read before you move that saves you money, pain and time.
If you want to go deeper, our complete guide to moving to Dubai with family pulls the whole process together, the neighbourhoods guide covers where to live, schools covers the decision to make first, and cost of living has the numbers.
Ready to start planning? Take our neighbourhood quiz to work out which part of Dubai fits your family, or have a look at the relocation package if you would like us to help you with schools, housing and the whole move.