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Expats Can Expect Perks in Qatar

One of the first things you properly ask to know as an expat when you move to a new country is, ‘Is it going to be expensive?’ If this country is Qatar, there are perks that will help keep your expenses down.

Cost of living

Thanks to high revenues from the oil and gas industry, the Government can subsidize the cost of water and electricity heavily, allowing you to keep household expenses down easier. This works out well when it comes to buying household goods, electronics and furniture, which tends to be a little more expensive in Qatar but cheaper than importing them.

Housing

Non- nationals in Qatar can buy a property for 99 years in specific areas of Qatar and can extend this for another 99 years. They will be granted permanent residence and can also transfer the property to their heirs.

If you want to buy a property, you can apply for a home loan in Qatar from HSBC to finance the purchase. The good news is that you won’t be subject to property tax, making it easier to pay loan costs, interest rates or other expenses associated with buying a home. Prices in the more popular locations tend to be higher and the waiting lists are longer, so you may wish to consider somewhere slightly less popular. The cost of petrol in Qatar is inexpensive, however, making it cheaper to use the car to get out and about.

Working in Qatar

Have you been lucky enough to secure a job in the wealthiest little country in the world? Expats who have been relocated to Qatar to work normally have a senior role and earn a better salary. Your employer will also help you to secure your work visa and residence visa (yes, you need them!), which saves you a lot of hassle, and they will be your sponsor while you’re in Qatar.

Much better than all of this, you are not subject to income tax to the Qatari Government. You may, however, be subject to taxes in your home country.

Healthcare

Maybe you’re worried about the cost of healthcare while you’re out in Qatar. Don’t worry, for whether you have a job or otherwise, this is relatively inexpensive because the Qatari Government heavily subsidizes welfare services. Besides, most employers who have hired expats will normally have arranged health care provision for them.

If, however, you don’t have an employer or your employer hasn’t taken care of health care provision for you, you can apply for a HamadCard. This will entitle you to highly subsidized health care and dental care at Hamad Health Corporation.

Shopping for Bargains

While you’re out shopping, at some point you’ll probably have to, or wish to, haggle as part of the culture! You can negotiate yourself a bargain, but once you do so avoid paying for it by credit card. This way, you stop yourself from paying possible surcharges and undoing all that hard bargaining!

So now you can pack your bags, knowing the perks you can look forward to while you’re out in Qatar: affordable health care, fuel and utilities, tax-free income and the chance of permanent residence. Oh, and don’t forget about the weather, of course!

Happy Thanksgiving Plus

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.  Thanks for reading.  I am honored that many of you are still stopping by even though I haven’t been the most prolific writer during the past several months.

We are heading to Illinois to spend time with family, but have to make it a one day trip to get back to take care of the puppies which are six weeks old.  So it will be a quick trip with about 5 hours spent on the road, but I have some reading with me to keep me occupied while my son drives.  In fact, I am typing this right now from Interstate 74, but won’t be making this too long so I don’t get car sick.

Speaking of family, we (my wife, brother, and mom) went to visit my dad in the nursing home last evening.  He has Alzheimer’s and had a major stroke this past weekend.  He is essentially unresponsive and can’t swallow anything so he won’t be taking any medications or food. I doubt that they will be able to get water in him either.  He has a living will so we won’t be doing anything heroic.  I would expect it will only be a matter of days.

The good news is that he was pretty healthy until two years ago when the Alzheimer’s set in pretty hard.  And he had been able to live at home until 6 weeks ago so these last stages have occurred fairly quickly and won’t be a long, drawn out process.

Carnivals

Moving on to a more pleasant note, here are the carnivals that have included articles from my blogs over the past few weeks.  Again, I am having to catch up:

Back From Honduras

Taking 10 days out of your life and losing all contact with everything that you normally do is quite a change to the system.  I am thinking that it was a good thing, but it sure makes for a lot of work to prepare for the trip and to catch up once home.  I think I had a total of about 30 minutes worth of internet access during my time there which was just enough to delete all the worthless emails that I get so I didn’t have to do quite as much upon returning home.

No Internet Access Here--Just Donkeys

But I still have a stack of snail mail to sort and I really need to work on mobilizing some traffic to my blogs since September 2012 was the worst month for traffic that I had seen in a long time.  I had quite a bit going on during the first part of the month which meant less content, and I didn’t publish anything on Cash Flow Mantra or Grand Per Month while away.  So, I will need to get back at it, start publishing and interacting more so I can see a turn around during the fourth quarter.

I have quite a few adventures to share about my trip along with some observations.  These should provide for some interesting content for the month here on CFM.  In the meantime, I need to catch up on some links for carnivals and start attacking that stack of mail—

Carnival Links