How much do we actually need before we go?
Every question a family asks about the money side of Dubai, answered with real rents, published school fee ladders and our own invoices.
Buying Property in Dubai: The Complete Step-by-Step Process (2025 Guide)
Dubai Tax-Free Living: Myth vs Reality – What Every UK Family Needs to Know
Furnishing a 3-Bed Apartment in Dubai: Where We Shopped & Every Cost
Jetour T2 Review: Is This Dubai's Best Value Family SUV? (Plus How We Bought It)
How Much Does It Cost to Set Up a Business in Dubai? (Real Quote Breakdown)
Spring Meal Kit Review: Is This the Best Way to Feed Your Family in Dubai? (2025)
10 Things We Wish We Knew Before Moving to Dubai (After 1 Year as a Family)
11 Must-See Spots in Dubai for First Timers (2025 Guide)
2 Years in Dubai: Everything You Need to Know Before You Move
3 Months in Dubai: When the Holiday Feeling Ends and Real Life Begins
6 Months Living in Dubai: Expectations vs Reality (The Honest Truth)
Building a Career in Dubai: Real Estate, Relocation & The Mindset for Success with Kam Hutchinson
How to Convert Your UK Driving Licence to Dubai: Process, Costs & Tips (2025)
Dubai After 90 Days: The Honest Truth About Family Life and Costs (2025)
Dubai Life Admin Week: Driving Licence, Emirates ID & The £714 Attestation Lesson
How to Get Your Emirates ID: The Complete Step-by-Step Process62 films of the move itself, free on the channel. These are not links; they are where the numbers come from.
Three numbers, and then a date
A worked example, priced live by the engine you would use: two adults, two children at The Winchester School, a villa in Arabian Ranches 3.
52 priced lines behind these figures · 12 from our own invoices · 8 published tariffs · bands, never points
Cheque one, the deposits, the agency fee and the first term of school can all land in the same month. Rents moved 8 to 12% last year alone. One wrongly attested document cost us £714. Runway puts every one of these on the table a year before you sign anything.
Calculators answer once. This keeps answering.
Eighteen months is a long time to trust one answer. Runway is the loop you come back to: decide out in the real world, then come home and watch the money follow.
Where you stand, on one screen
Your number or the honest placeholder it earns, one sentence on how the plan is doing, and the one thing worth doing next. Nothing is guessed for you. Until you choose a school, an area and a home, the figures wait, and say so.
The costs nobody warns you about, in the order they hit
Cheques at signing, the deposits, the agency fee, school registration, shipping, the landing weeks. Laid out in the order the money actually leaves, so nothing ambushes you.
Your path to the number
Tell it what you have and what you honestly save, and it answers with a month. The maths runs in your browser, and your money numbers travel only one way: locked with your password before they sync, so we store a copy we cannot open. And if the answer today is not yet, Runway never scolds. You get three doors: save more, move the date, or trim the plan, and a date either way.
The monthly ritual
Without a date, the move just rolls and rolls. The ritual is thirty seconds a month that keeps the date honest: what is the pot today? The plan answers with what your month did to your date, kindly, in both directions. Months where nothing moved get the honest boring truth: the date holds.
Decisions made elsewhere, priced here
Nobody picks a community from a screen. You will watch the videos, ask friends and fly out to look. Runway is where changing your mind is cheap: swap the school or the area and the whole plan reprices in a tap. The school decision is the one you will lose sleep over, so every school is priced at the year groups your children will actually be in, with the school run to all 33 communities already measured.
And the day it is all for
When your line first crosses inside your target month, Runway marks it properly, shows the decomposed total so you can check it really is enough, and hands you the plan as one page to show the person who is not in the room. Made for couples: the readable page carries the plan, never your money, unless you choose to add it.
And after you land, it keeps going
The day you arrive, the same screens turn around and answer the next question: are we alright here? The hero flips to how long your cushion holds, a normal month here gets measured against the one you planned, and the settling-in list (Emirates ID, Ejari, DEWA, the bank account) is already scheduled from your landing date.
Built by a family who kept the receipts
We are Adam and Sara. We made this exact move with our children and filmed the receipts: two years of it, on @ourdubaidiary.
The facts, for the one who checks
Researched ranges with a source on every line: 12 of the 52 cost lines carry our own invoices, 8 are published tariffs, and everything is re-checked quarterly with the dates shown. The example above is priced by the product's real engine. £149 once, no subscription, and a 14-day no-questions refund.
- you are a UK family with school-age children
- you are six to eighteen months out
- one of you needs the numbers before saying yes
- you want the whole move outsourced end to end
- you are still choosing between five countries
- you want regulated financial advice
- you want a guaranteed exact figure. Anyone promising that is guessing
Exactly as it looks the day you open it
£149 once. Yours for good.
Not another subscription. One payment buys the pass outright: the planner, every quarterly data refresh, and everything we ship next. Nothing renews in the background and there is nothing to cancel, because there is nothing running.
Year one of the example above runs £55.3k – £87.8k; the pass is what it costs to get that number right before you commit to it.
- The three numbers and the date: what to have in the bank, what a normal month costs, what year one costs up front, and the month you can actually go
- All 47 school fee ladders and 33 communities, priced at the year groups your children will really be in, repricing the whole plan on every swap
- The monthly ritual for the long middle: thirty seconds a month and an honest answer about what your saving did to your date
- Hand-checked data refreshes every quarter (last October 2026, next January), included for good, plus every improvement we ship
- The plan as one readable page, made for the other adult in the decision, with your money left off unless you choose otherwise
- A question desk inside the product, answered by us, not a support bot
14-day money-back guarantee, no questions. Try it on your real life first: if it is not right for your family, one email gets the whole £149 back.
Nothing renews because nothing needs to: the pass is yours, and so is every refresh we publish.
The pass is the same engine Sara plans from in The Relocation Package (£949): everything here, plus consultation calls with her, viewings arranged before you land, and WhatsApp support for the wobbly bits. If you want a person as well as a plan, that is the door. If you are happy doing the driving, the £149 pass is the whole planning core, nothing held back.
The questions families ask us first
▸ Is this financial advice?
No. It is lived experience and research: researched ranges, published tariffs and our own invoices, arranged so your family can make its own decision. Nothing here is regulated advice and we never pretend otherwise.
▸ Where does my money data live?
Locked, everywhere. Your money numbers are encrypted with your password on your own device before they sync, so your plan follows your account to any machine while the money stays unreadable to us. Your password is the only key, which is why we cannot reset it the way other sites can; Backup & privacy inside the product keeps a second copy in your hands.
▸ What happens when Dubai prices move?
We re-research the catalogue every quarter by hand, and your plan reprices against the fresh data with a note about what changed and what it did to your date. Rents moved 8 to 12% in 2025; pretending otherwise is how other calculators lie.
▸ Is this a subscription?
No, and that is deliberate. £149 once and the pass is yours: the planner, the quarterly data refreshes and everything we ship next. Nothing renews in the background and there is nothing to cancel.
▸ We are a couple. Does this work for two of us?
It is built for exactly that. One of you will drive the tool; the other gets the plan as a single readable page: the month, the numbers and the life you priced, with your private money figures left off unless you choose to include them.
▸ We have not fully decided to move yet. Is this too early?
It is exactly the right time. The most expensive version of this move is the one you commit to before you know its real cost. That is what the first fortnight is for: finding out whether the numbers work at all. If the honest answer is not yet, or not ever, that is the pass doing its job, and the 14-day guarantee covers you either way.
▸ Why not just use a free cost-of-living calculator?
Use them, honestly. They are fine for a single guess at a single moment. What they cannot do is price your actual school at your children's actual year groups, sequence year one in the order the money leaves, reprice everything when you change your mind, or walk with you for the eighteen months between deciding and flying. A calculator answers once. This is the plan you live in.
Ready when you are
£149, one payment, yours for good. If it is not right for your family, the first fourteen days are money back, no questions.
Just dreaming for now? That is allowed. Runway will be here when the dream gets a date.