Advice needed on Salary in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

Trapezius wrote:

Excellent package, that puts you at upper-middle class, or upper class, depending on who is classifying.

Housing, budget about 3-4k for an excellent apartment, or 6-8k for a small villa in a Western-style compound.

Food, bills, Internet, phone, etc, about 2-3k, and this includes eating out a few times a month.

Car, depends on what you want.  A Camry or similar starts from about 75k or 1.5k per month for 5 years plus about 20k down.  BMW 5-series or MB E-class, about 150-200k, similar Lexus a bit cheaper.  Check http://www.toyota.com.sa for prices of Toyotas as well as to calculate monthly installments.

In my opinion, I would not consider this package a good package in Riyadh, as Riyadh is expensive compared to all other cities in Saudi. The minimum decent apartment in a nice neighborhood will be around 45 k/ year. You have to take into consideration, that you as a Canadian family will not be enjoying living in an apartment, especially if your wife will be staying at home for a while. You will be missing any social activities, the best option for you would be living in a compound, which will cost you at least 2.5 x this amount, ( taking into consideration that you might be on a waiting list that might approach 6-8 months). If I were in your chose, you should bargain this package with them, ask about separate housing allowance, ask about the home tickets, coz you are entitled at least for a once per year ticket, ask about transportation allowance, hopefully when your child grows, you will also ask for schooling-

Good luck

collage wrote:

Thanks alot Trapezius.

The apartment you mentioned , would they be very clean and pretty much brand new? I have tried to look online but not many options. I have heard that its better to look for them once we get there as alot of them are not listed.

Sorry in my initial post I meant annual returnn ticket is not included but we are not that concerned as we will probably be travelling locally

Does anyone any idea on Bonus paid by banks in KSA?

Thanks alot

Ops posted at the wrong discussion, sorry for both

dbehary wrote:

Trapezius wrote:

Excellent package, that puts you at upper-middle class, or upper class, depending on who is classifying.

Housing, budget about 3-4k for an excellent apartment, or 6-8k for a small villa in a Western-style compound.

Food, bills, Internet, phone, etc, about 2-3k, and this includes eating out a few times a month.

Car, depends on what you want.  A Camry or similar starts from about 75k or 1.5k per month for 5 years plus about 20k down.  BMW 5-series or MB E-class, about 150-200k, similar Lexus a bit cheaper.  Check http://www.toyota.com.sa for prices of Toyotas as well as to calculate monthly installments.

In my opinion, I would not consider this package a good package in Riyadh, as Riyadh is expensive compared to all other cities in Saudi. The minimum decent apartment in a nice neighborhood will be around 45 k/ year. You have to take into consideration, that you as a Canadian family will not be enjoying living in an apartment, especially if your wife will be staying at home for a while. You will be missing any social activities, the best option for you would be living in a compound, which will cost you at least 2.5 x this amount, ( taking into consideration that you might be on a waiting list that might approach 6-8 months). If I were in your chose, you should bargain this package with them, ask about separate housing allowance, ask about the home tickets, coz you are entitled at least for a once per year ticket, ask about transportation allowance, hopefully when your child grows, you will also ask for schooling-

Good luck

Hello Debehary,

Thanks for your feedback. Although We are Canadian but we have lived early years of our lives in KSA so Adjusting to the culture of women staying at home will be challenging however not impossible for us. With this information do you think we can have a good life and save as well. We are not into driving luxury cars at all

Thanks

Trapezius wrote:

@collage
I second dbehary's suggestion to negotiate and ask for tickets and a transportation allowance, and if they can give a separate housing allowance, that would be the cherry on the cake!  If they can't give all those, they should give at least another 2k per month to cover those partially.  But I believe yearly tickets are supposed to be provided by law.

LOL were you searching for housing online... can't blame you, but when it comes to such matters, this country is far behind all developed countries, and even behind some undeveloped countries.  There is pretty much no way to search for housing before you get here.  You will have to stay in temporary housing and look.  However, if you want to live in a compound, you can search for those online using some intensive googling, but still, you can't reserve or book anything.  Plus, compounds do have waiting lists.

I don't know about specific bonuses that banks pay, but all expats receive an End of Service Benefit (ESB), which accrues as 50% of your last monthly package for each of the first 5 years, and then 100% of your last monthly package for each year thereafter.


@dbehary
I live in Jeddah, and I assumed Riyadh is similar in terms of housing costs.  Still, your estimate of 45k per year is within my estimate of 3-4k per month.  As for compounds, at least in Jeddah a 2-room apartment/villa can be had for 70k to 120k, typically 90k-100k.  If compounds are slightly more expensive in Riyadh, I wouldn't know.  Perhaps members of this forum who live in compounds in Riyadh can enlighten us.  (collage, you can also search on this site using the search box for discussions on Riyadh compounds)