Aiming I can only echo whats been said by others.
Regarding your wife working or not. Unless she's in a very specialised field she may not earn what you think she will. Lets just say the drive for cheap labour has spread to every corner of the UAE. Heavy restrictions on employing non locals in some disciplines i.e its impossible and for others employers here will not pay for experience as they can find a multitude of cheaper labour from the subcontinent. Experience means nothing here, cheapness rules!
Should you opt out and buy it gets worse ( I won't go into rent that a whole different story and full of pitfalls) but running a house is eye wateringly expensive. We've just forked out 15k AED for community fees for a three bed villa. Add in a maintenance contract at 6k due to shoddy work/construction and DEWA fees of 5% of the rental and suddenly the UK isn't that expensive. Food here is massively overpriced and of poor quality. Theres a reason most guys do their shopping overseas and its not that we like the inside of a supermarket! Your pub meal would be a steal here, as anything with alcohol will only be served in a hotel so budget on 600 AED+ for a decent meal with booze for two adults.
Have you figured on the trips back to the UK to keep your sanity, which you will need as dealing with the rudeness and incompetence here wears real thin after three months? And then theres the taxes.. sorry fees that keep popping up whenever you do anything to do with a government service!
I won't go into the rosters but others have been far more eloquent than I have. To think you can sleep off the constant fatigue that you will experience here due to the brutal rosters and time zone changes just beggars belief. No one has yet mentioned the company now only giving you 30 days annual leave instead of the contracted 42 days because we are so short of guys.
Lastly I'm pretty sure at your current outfit there isn't the constant fear of being sacked/demoted for doing something wrong. That sword of Damocles hanging over you is a huge issue and takes its toll on you every six months when you show up for your contract extension aka sim. The fact that the company fires people for making mistakes and sees nothing wrong with it should be ringing alarm bells for any sane individual! Just check out the other thread here with details on the firings/demotions.
Last edited by Rhodes13; 25th Feb 2018 at 13:44.