to many people Dubai is a city of luxury pen houses Lambos beautiful beachfront Villas and the fanciest hotels in the world but this is just the tip of the iceberg most people live very normal lives doing normal things working normal jobs in this video I want to give you a sense of what is a realistic budget that you can comfortably live on here in Dubai including different areas where you can live different budget ranges and what to expect and by the way it's probably not what you think and of course the great thing here is
that whatever income you're Mak right now by coming to Dubai you're most likely instantly increasing your net income because by simply setting up properly in Dubai you have a 0% income tax and either 0 or 9% corporate tax depending on your income level if you are interested in moving to Dubai and you want to make sure you do everything properly you want to make sure you exit your previous country properly and you want to understand what the process entails you can book a free 45 minute consultation with my business partner down below who will walk
you through the entire process and then if you decide you can use our services and we can help you move here and slash your taxes all the way to zero but with that let's talk about the budgets so the first and biggest part of your budget is of course going to be rent so to get a very practical and realistic idea of what you're going to be spending I recommend you go to this site called propertyfinder.ae and here they have this price map that is going to show actual prices like the averages and the highs
and the lows from different areas around Dubai first of all we have the Dubai Marina and jbr which are know normally the main areas where a lot of expats like myself are going to be living in because you sort of get this sort of 24/7 vacation Vibe and you here you've got this artificial Marina with a lot of yachts and then you've got the beach right next to it everything is within walking distance including groceries everything like that so that is why I really like this area and I really like being around the water but
over in this area in the marina you're going to be paying on average 110,000 Dam a year but if you go just across this one Road between the marina and jbr the price is going to go up to 172,000 d a year this right here is the marina and you cross this one road over here the price essentially increases by like 50% or however much it is Marina is sort of a lot more residential you have a lot more people living here whereas jbr is a lot more touristy and if you want to go to
jbr to the beach really you're just crossing one road really but let's say you want to live in this end of Dubai and you want to go even cheaper you can go to jera Lake Towers which is right next to the marina this is going to be a slightly longer walk it's maybe like a 15 20 minute walk from the marina you essentially need to cross the entire highway I'm heing jlt at first glance it's very similar to the marina but it doesn't quite have the same feel I feel it's more corporate like more offices
rather than people living here but it is much cheaper and this water like I don't know looks a bit green I don't know doesn't feel the same as uh the marina water because the marina water is actually connected to the ocean this is not it's just sort of standing still this is cool parel cord by the way and over here you also have Blue Waters so this is like a small island that has the Dubai eye the ferris wheel but over here prices are pretty crazy so that is jbr and as soon as you cross
this bridge jbr Blue Waters the price basically doubles crazy it's a pretty nice area to walk around I do like it it's very like polished and fancy so for someone that might be the right choice in terms of the other main exper areas you've got downtown which is where I lived briefly at the end of last year prices are going to be similar to the marina at 130,000 dham a year right next to it is going to be Business Bay a slightly cheaper 105,000 dham a year this is sort of a slightly less luxurious version
of downtown a lot of big buildings in this end you've got a lot more locals youve got a lot more people working like corporate jobs for example because right next to downtown we've got DFC which stands for Dubai International Dubai International Financial Center that's basically like if you've ever been to London like the canary Warf of London where a lot of the big offices of the biggest corporation side so let's say you work at Investment Banking job or something like that you're probably going to be in this area personally unless you need to be there
for a job I wouldn't say it's worth it because you're really just paying the premium because a lot of the highest paying jobs are there but again each to their own and then you've obviously got areas like the Palm at 180,000 dams a year and mrb from close to there as well which is kind of like a more quieter version of jbr or you can try something like the jera Village Circle which is where I'm at right now the average rent is only around 75,000 DS a year and next to J vage Circle there's something
called the JRA Village triangle which is very similar it's bit of a construction zone still that's probably why it's still cheaper I think it will be a super nice area once it's finished but if you're looking to save on rent I know that a lot of people are living on this area and it's also the kind of place where a lot of people are investing into property it's not super walkable though I've been trying to walk around here and like there's a lot of just roads where it would make so much sense for them to
build like a walking PA next to it but they just haven't I guess I would have perhaps live here personally right now but if you're trying to save on rent this could be a great option then you go places like this like Dubai Hills this is going to be a lot more green a lot more like Lush like family kind of residential feel they also have my favorite Mall of the entire Dubai at Dubai Hills small this is going to be similarly priced to the marina and then even further out we have tons of other
communities that are going to be even cheaper so basically basally the further away you go from the coast the cheaper it's going to be so as you can see a realistic rent will drastically depend on where you live Dubai is a big foodie City the food here is is absolutely amazing pretty much anywhere you go at least in my opinion you've of course got a ton of amazing Middle Eastern food I'm a big fan of Middle Eastern food myself especially since coming here and again you've got the whole Spectrum you can get very cheap food
you can order on this app called Kareem and you can get meals for like 30 40 Dam and then on the other end if you want to eat at nicer restaurants you can expect to spend at least 100 ter per meal probably close to like 150 if you go on the fancy R and of course again you've got very fancy places you can spend like 300 400 500 1,000 really again just depends what I do is usually pretty simple I eat a very big like protein heavy meals that's extremely simple and cheap that I just
get from the grocery store then perhaps for lunch I order something for like 30 Dam then at night either I cook a steak myself or I just go out to some restaurant but just like with rent you can really go as low or as high as you want now what about some other costs that you might not have considered first of all it's going to be Healthcare now I know many people who are going to be coming from perhaps Europe or Canada are going to be used to free well free government Healthcare which is really
mistakenly called free because because obviously it's not free if you're making a lot of money you're paying a ton and ton of taxes for it here you don't have income taxes so it's not covered by that instead you pay a health insurance we're going essentially choose different packages for what you need basically so it's sort of like the US model except it's much much cheaper overall I know people have said that if you have a family maybe you're covering for many people it can get quite expensive but for me as a single person I pay
a th000 dhams a year not a month a year for like the most basic covers gym memberships can actually be relatively expensive I pay 250 dams per month for like a it's not bad but it's like a pretty basic gym I I expected in London for example I would got like a pretty nice gym for that kind of price so that's something to keep in mind and then you have transport so taxes are usually pretty cheap whenever I go from Marina to downtown the price is going to be something like 70 dams or something like
that that's like a half an hour drive from the airport to the marina is going to be like 100 that's like a 45 minute drive or something like that terms of driving here cars are extremely deep both to buy and to rent from my experience and because we happen to live in an oil producing country a perk of that is that gas is also extremely cheap I think it's like less than half the cost of what I'm used to paying in Finland or the UK so that's pretty great and again I'm repeating myself but what
you need to budget is going to depend on your lifestyle a very useful website is going to be something called numale where you can essentially compare different cities so you can take your city and take what you're spending there and just multiply it by the sort of cost difference between those two cities to get a very very realistic idea for you if you're curious about my budget I did make a more detailed video on that which you can watch right there but the kind of places I stay at If I'm renting annually I can get
for around 10,000 dams a month living in the Marina downtown although I have been renting shortterm a lot when I'm here so in reality the rent has been a bit more and perhaps in other 7 to 8,000 for everything else including food and other costs then we could first look at another scenario well let's say you don't care about living in the Nic areas let's say you don't care about eating out you make all your food at home you live in an area like this here in ABC you could feasibly get rent for around 4,000
dhams a month and then perhaps another 4,000 for all the rest of it which comes out to around like $2,000 a month so the great thing about Dubai is that you can really curate your lifestyle to whatever level of spending you're comfortable with and then over time as you increase your income you can increase that spending and go all the way to the luxury end if you really want to I would say though that if you are penny pinching you might consider whether living in Dubai is worth it because of course is not the cheapest
city in the world and if you're doing what I encourage everyone to do which is to have an online income where you can earn from anywhere you might look at places like Thailand Bali southeast Asia in general they have a lot of locations where you get so much for your money so that might be something to consider if you are looking to move to Dubai right now and you're coming here specifically to set up a company it can be a bit of a process there's a lot of sort of moving parts that you need to
figure out so what I did is I made this video right here is a full free guide on everything you need to consider all the way from from leaving your country to setting up a company here getting a Visa here making sure you're properly tax resident here everything you need to know just in that one video so if that is interesting to you go watch that video next and I will see you in the next one
