Hey coffe Mug,
I read from your post on the main forum that you have 3 kids, here is my 2c worth.
When I joined 10 years ago, a class mate had 3 school aged kids.
The package was full B scale.
He had made a fair bit of dough from previous jobs and had three rental properties as supplementary income.
After approximately 4 years to upgrade, he had no rental properties, as he had to sell them so that he and his family could live a life somewhat similar to that which they had before.
He had a little more than half the savings that he had when he started.
He could never get the deposit together to afford to buy a house in which 5 could comfortably live so rented the whole time he was here.
A few things to think about.
The package he was on was well over double what is currently on offer (after 2 years rental allowance was about 125% of salary).
This was 10 years ago, that funny little thing called inflation causes a few problems here.
You will not afford a house with a garden for the kids to run around in, in the "suburbs", you may get a place with a small patch of grass, but that will conservatively cost you your entire salary per month, therefore there will be no savings.
On the bright side no savings means that you will be mortgage free for the rest of your career here as you will never be able to afford a house.
You can survive on very little money with respect to food here, but please remember that over 80% of the vegetables that are sold in HKG come from the mainland, where DDT is an acceptable pesticide. If you chose to forgo the option of local food and instead go for the imported stuff then expect a monthly bill of conservatively $HK8000/mth. Or just feed them the c[FONT='Calibri','sans-serif']arciogenic[/FONT] stuff.
Everything here costs (lots) if your kids like playing baseball, basketball, hockey, swimming, cycling, kung fu, lacross, cricket, rugby, american football, regular fooball it is all reasonably accessable, but costs....... a lot.
As alluded to in a previous post the cx education allowance is a bonus, however, an english speak school is not cheap, and the allowance only covers the tuition fees, all the other fees (of which there are many) are not covered so come from your pocket. Oh and don't forget to put aside extra for your tax bill as it is fully taxable. With 3 kids at school and the ammount cx will give you for that ,I would suggest doubling what a single guy would put aside.
To sum up.
If you have plenty of savings and are willing to loose a lot of it, come join the party.
If you are looking for a quick divorce, come join the party.
If you are willing to sell up and be mortgage free for the rest of your life, come join the party.
If your standard of living is just way too high and you want to downgrade, come join the party.
If not any of the above, wait, the package will get better or they may even have to go back to the expat DESO or DEFO route.
Don't fu*k your family over just to do the "wide body, international thing" you will be miserable and you are selling yourself so far short it is scary.