SOPs,
I'm glad you stand to be corrected. There are numerous ways one can stay in Dubai whilst not working for EK, FZ et al.
For starters if you wife happens to be a doctor, lawyer, accountant, teacher, dentist and quite a few others. Then she can sponsor you and the children.
If you own a house in Dubai you can be resident solely based on that.
Lastly you could have two jobs, you can start your own business doing management, IT or even aviation consulting. You can get visas based on that.
As for the money. I don't work to earn money so that I can spend it. I don't care about the money. I have pretty much everything that I want already. I care about the experiences to be had in life such as nice holidays with my family but everything else I really don't care that much about as I have it already.
However I do care about flying planes. If I had $10million. I would spend it buying planes and flying them myself.
I only need money as it gives my family the things that they need. So I don't care if I die as my family get the life insurance. If I live then they get my salary. Seems like a win win to my family from my perspective.