For many professionals, a move to the UAE begins with a two- or three-year plan: advance a career, build savings and return home in a stronger financial position. As careers develop and families settle, that departure date often moves. Eventually, a financial plan built around a temporary posting may bear little resemblance to the life it is supposed to support.
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This deserves attention because the years spent extending a stay can also be some of the most valuable years for building wealth. Residents should not have to reach a final decision about where they will settle before making proper provision for their future. By then, opportunities to put higher earnings and savings to work may already have been missed.
Our Money on the Move research, which surveyed 450 affluent and high-net-worth UAE residents in May 2026, found that 55 per cent have stayed abroad longer than they expected. Some 44 per cent now expect to retire in the UAE. The implication is significant: financial decisions made on the assumption of an imminent return home may need reconsidering well before someone formally decides to stay.
The opportunity is considerable. Among respondents, 96 per cent earn more and 97 per cent save more in the UAE than they would at home. Seven in ten expect living abroad to bring their retirement forward by at least three years. These findings reflect the scope residents have to improve their long-term financial position, as well as their confidence in the future they can build here.
But a higher savings rate does not, by itself, tell someone whether they are on course for the retirement they want or prepared for their family’s future needs. That depends on what the money is intended to achieve, when it will be needed and how it is managed in the intervening years. The financial advantage of living abroad needs a plan behind it.
As a stay lengthens, those questions tend to involve more than one country. A resident may earn and save in the UAE while retaining pensions, property or investments at home, funding children’s education elsewhere and supporting relatives overseas. Decisions about retirement, tax and succession become interconnected – even when the assets themselves are managed separately.
The risk is that arrangements which made sense individually no longer work well together. A property bought in anticipation of returning home may serve a different purpose if retirement in the UAE becomes more likely. Investments may need reviewing if future spending is expected in another currency. Family circumstances can change while succession arrangements remain based on decisions made years earlier.
None of this requires UAE expats to predict exactly where they will be in 15 years. It does require them to distinguish between decisions that genuinely depend on their eventual
destination and those that need attention regardless. Retirement will need funding wherever it takes place, and education costs follow a timetable that cannot always wait for greater certainty.
There is evidence that respondents recognise the value of acting earlier. According to the Money on the Move survey, nearly nine in ten believe obtaining the right financial advice sooner would have improved their investment returns and savings.
On average, they estimate that earlier advice could have helped them avoid US$56,410 in missed financial opportunities. These are respondents’ own estimates, but they reinforce the case for addressing financial questions while there is still time to influence the outcome.
For residents, the starting point should be a long-term view that allows for more than one possible future. The savings uplift available in the UAE can then be directed towards clear objectives through a consistent, diversified investment strategy suited to their circumstances. Advice should consider assets and obligations across the relevant home and host markets, including how different rules interact.
That plan also needs revisiting as careers, family commitments and residency intentions evolve. A decision to remain for another few years is a useful moment to consider whether the original assumptions still hold, rather than simply extending the same arrangements.
The UAE is giving many expats the means and confidence to build a more prosperous future. Making the most of that opportunity requires financial planning to keep pace with the lives they are building – before a temporary stay has quietly become a lifetime.
The author is the Head of Business, St James’s Place Middle East.