calling All Senior Engineers...Advice Needed

[hopeful]

Hubby received an offer today to work in Abu Dhabi as a Senior Electrical Engineer, he has a good profile here in the UK and has 10-15 years experience in the field.

However the offer is out by a long shot and I was wondering if anyone in the smae field could give us there opinion on the offer. He's been offered 33,000 aed per month all in and in addition to this relocation of £5000 aed (drastically less than we were given to move 100 miles in the UK!), visa's paid and flights paid, but that is it.

With this we are expected to apy for everything....housing, which in AD we can expect to pay 200,000 aed at least for a 2BR, nursery fee's for our daughter, car, bills, groceries etc. Me being me, I've done an extensive budget and this figure just isn't doable, we'd be in the minus every month. He has gone back and asked for a higher figure, only to be told the figure he's asked for is more than his boss is being paid!! It wasn't that much more!

So I suppose my questions are, do you think 33k per month is acceptable for a senior engineer and family? do you think it may just be the company?

Any advice greatfully recieved.

[qwert97]

Originally Posted by hopeful

Hubby received an offer today to work in Abu Dhabi as a Senior Electrical Engineer, he has a good profile here in the UK and has 10-15 years experience in the field.

However the offer is out by a long shot and I was wondering if anyone in the smae field could give us there opinion on the offer. He's been offered 33,000 aed per month all in and in addition to this relocation of £5000 aed (drastically less than we were given to move 100 miles in the UK!), visa's paid and flights paid, but that is it.

With this we are expected to apy for everything....housing, which in AD we can expect to pay 200,000 aed at least for a 2BR, nursery fee's for our daughter, car, bills, groceries etc. Me being me, I've done an extensive budget and this figure just isn't doable, we'd be in the minus every month. He has gone back and asked for a higher figure, only to be told the figure he's asked for is more than his boss is being paid!! It wasn't that much more!

So I suppose my questions are, do you think 33k per month is acceptable for a senior engineer and family? do you think it may just be the company?

Any advice greatfully recieved.

Hopeful, since I am not an electrical engineer I cannot comment if the salary is at the market.

In UAE the biggest expense is accommodation and education for children. I would set aside approx 240K - 250K for that or approx 20K a month. Having said that you will have 13K remaining in which you need to manage cars, utilities, internet, phones etc. It is doable depending on your lifestyle but don't expect to save a lot. You need to be aware of one more thing- the annual rent is generally paid upfront so you need to arrange with your employer if he would help out on that.

[hopeful]

It might be doable in dubai but not in AD with the rental prices as they are. Believe me I'm a very thourough person and have created a spreadsheet with all the outgoings, different rent scenarios and salaries and I've not choosen to include the most expensive of everything and at 33k per month, with a rental of 200k a year, with all our other outgoings we'd be in the red!

In dubai it would be a possibility to get a two bed for 160-180k so then yes it would be a different matter but in AD this is not the case.