Originally Posted by
AIMINGHIGH123
Living in London is so expensive. Even if I got BA my take home salary would be £4kish after tax and it wouldn’t go up much. My wife’s salary is about the same so we would have £8k. Take £2.5k off of that a month for flat running cost mortgage/service bills etc. Now nursery costs £1800 a month for each child. We may need a nanny as well for pick up from nursery so that’s going to add another £500 per month. Food etc £400 a month. Car running costs £600 a month.
Start adding these figures up and London is not cheap, haven’t even added holidays going out etc, we save nothing at the moment maybe with BA we would be able to save £1k a month. I say London because we wouldn’t live anywhere else. It’s just not an option. BA it takes about 8 years for you to have enough seniority to have some weekends off this is what I was told at a BA presentation. My mate who joined BA last year had a 5 month block with not 1 weekend day off. I only get to see my wife at weekends as it is as she works full time for an investment bank 50-60 hr weeks quite common.
Other option is EZY at least you can get a quick time to command and be able to live comfortable. Even on an EZY Captain salary take home is still only £7-8k a month.
If I go EK instantly our mortgage is covered no expense from me. I wouldn’t have to commute 2-3hrs a day to work. Nursery costs we wouldn’t have as my wife can look after the babies something she is really regretting not being able to do. If I did 10 years our mortgage would be paid so property alone £600-£700k would be ours. So we could technically spend all my salary and still £ in.
Now my wife wants to take time out from her banking job to spend time with the babies if she decides to go back to work she has contacts in Dubai, speaks Arabic and spent 10 years growing up in Kuwait (until someone decided to try and take it). Last time she was offered a job the salary was about the same as EK FO salary.
Yes if we stay in U.K. we would still have our property but it’s only a 2 bed flat. We have to move up. 4 bed houses start at £1.4 mill in our area. We can load ourselves up and eventually would be mortgage free after 30-35 years of both working full time but these early years with the babies would be lost. BA short haul would be the worst case. EZY can get Luton LGW to cut down my commute get on to a jet as I’m currently a TP operator and get an ok roster 5/4 but working until 65 remember.
The issues people have with Dubai on here our friends who have lived in UAE for between 5-15 years don’t see them as that bad. No offense but I showed them some of the complaints on here and they just laughed, these are friends we have known for a long time so have similar interests likes/dislikes etc.
We have both decided we don’t want to retire or spend any later years in the U.K if possible so ultimately want a way out. The cons for us far out weigh the pros and in the last 2 years Brexit shenanigans has accelerated a lot of negatives for us.
This is the situation we are in.
Whilst many parts of what you say have a basis in reality, many also have the view of someone who has not worked and lived the punishing rosters and extreme fatigue that EK heralds.
If if you believe that the mortgage is no cost to you then you are wrong. The housing allowance is only applicable if you buy a property in UAE. In the UK you pay your mortgage from your salary, here it is an add on, in effect it is removed from the salary if you live in, you are in effect paying it. Property prices are high, though not quite London high, unless you put down a huge deposit on a property you will not pay off a £600-700k mortgage in 10 years. That equates to £60000-70000 a year or 250,000-290,000 Aed a year (assuming 10% deposit and 0% interest) A captains rate is below 200,000Aed a year and an FO (which I assume you will join as, and will remain as for approx 5 years) is substantially lower than that. The UAE property market is also very different than the UK.
Dont think you will be here with plenty of time off, and will save heaps of money. You won’t. You will be tired and jet lagged 90% of the time, you will also be very limited on days off to be with family. Dubai is VERY expensive and getting more and more so, saving money isn’t a given especially as an FO. If you have children schooling is reportedly the second highest, behind Hong Kong, in the world.
You also seem to believe you will be able to bid for and get weekends of...... good luck with that one!
By all means come and look, but your post is naive or is from the higher levels of the bouncy castle.