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The Pros: Benefits of Living in Qatar Expanding Your World View
I admit that the main reason I moved to Qatar was for the money. But after living here for over two years, I would say that the biggest benefit I’ve gained during that time is the experience of working and living in a totally different culture than what I was used to. I learn so many things every day, just by walking around Doha or by talking to my colleagues who are from India, Egypt, the U.K., Australia or the Philippines about what their lives are like back home. I also enjoy learning how things are done here in Qatar, as crazy as this country seems sometimes. The biggest benefit I've gained from moving here, without a doubt, has been expanding my view of the world.
I love living here, in this massive melting pot of the world, and learning about different cultures. I’ve traveled all over the world these past 15 years, as I’ve described on this website, but living here in Qatar has greatly expanded my perception and understanding of the world more than anything I’ve ever done, by far. Living here is certainly stressful at times but I think it’s healthy to push yourself outside of your comfort zone once in a while. Higher Salaries This is the main reason that most foreigners move to Qatar, or to any Persian Gulf country. There’s a lot of oil money here and the government doesn’t hesitate to spend it. I earn a lot more here than I could anywhere in the U.S. for what I do (computer mapping). In fact, when you add in the fact that salaries here are tax-free, I’m now earning more than twice what I made at my former jobs with Metro or Otak in Portland. No Taxes Speaking of that, there are no taxes here for anything thanks to the oil money: no sales taxes and no income taxes. It’s strange to look at your monthly paystub and realize that the company didn’t take anything out of your paycheck. If you earn, say, $5,000 per month, your monthly paycheck will be exactly $5,000 and not something less. If you’re an American and have a Qatari bank account here (like most Americans do, including me), you have to register with the U.S. government each year on Tax Day, April 15. However, you don’t have to pay U.S. taxes on your income unless you make an outrageous amount of money. Unfortunately I don’t have that problem! Other Financial Perks There are a few other financial benefits of living in Qatar. First, many companies provide "expats" (expatriates, or foreign workers like myself) with one paid flight home each year. Rather than actually paying for your plane ticket, most companies will give you a bonus of about $1,000 each year to cover the cost of your ticket home.
Second, if you work in Qatar for two years or more, the Qatar government will give you a bonus as a percentage of your salary when you leave the country, known as the "Qatar gratuity." In my case that will be several thousand dollars and I’ll receive it after I leave Qatar for good. Many countries in the Persian Gulf offer this same bonus, also as a way of saying “thank you” for working here. Safety
Another big advantage of working in Qatar is that it’s very safe here. The main reaction I get back in the U.S. when I tell people that I moved to the Middle East is concern for my safety. Many Americans think of the entire Middle East as homogenous and universally dangerous, and they don’t separate in their mind Afghanistan from Iraq from the U.A.E. from Saudi Arabia from Qatar. In fact, those are very different countries with very different situations. I would never travel to Afghanistan or Iraq, given the unsafe conditions there. I don’t think I would even travel to Saudi Arabia, given its extreme conservatism (Saudi is the most conservative and oppressive country among the Gulf States).
But the U.A.E, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman are, in my opinion, totally safe places to live and work. Women can walk alone in downtown Doha, Qatar, a city of a million people, at midnight and feel totally safe. That’s partly due to the Muslim culture, which emphasizes peace, but also partly because everyone who works here is privileged to do so and knows that if they break the law, they’ll be sent either to prison or, just as bad for some people, back home.
I feel much safer in Qatar than I do anywhere in America, given the ubiquity of guns in the U.S. and, as a logical consequence of that, all the crazy gun violence there. For some Americans it’s a logical consequence, I should say, while for others apparently it’s not. When folks back in America say to me, "But it's so violent over there in the Middle East," I usually laugh and reply, "Look around you." Free Health Care Health care here is free for all Qataris and most expats, including myself. My friend, Tom, an American from Seattle, broke his arm last year while riding his bicycle in Doha and went to an emergency room. After a few hours of treatment and a cast on his arm, he was charged absolutely nothing. In the U.S., he would’ve been billed hundreds if not thousands of dollars for the same treatment.
I described an even more outrageous example of the difference in health care costs in my last update. As I described, during my trip back to America in the fall of 2013, I went into an emergency room in Dallas, Texas to get treated for pneumonia. They treated it but then billed me $12,700 (!) for my four-hour stay. And then to top it off, my insurance company in Qatar agreed to pay only about $5,000, so I had to pay the balance of $7,700. Yikes!
I read the fine print of my international health insurance policy in Qatar and learned that the company pays 100% of my health care costs anywhere in the world “except in the United States,” as it explicitly states. They’re smart, I guess, because they realize that health care in the U.S. is a rip-off. If I had been treated in Qatar, my bill would’ve been exactly $0. I even thought about waiting until I got back to Qatar to have my pneumonia treated, but if I had done that, it could’ve progressed into something more severe. That’s how my mom died in 1999, from refusing to go to the hospital for a breathing problem that eventually got much worse.
That brings up the whole issue of how messed up the American health care system is. Americans like to brag that, “We have the best health care system in the world.” No, we don’t. America has the most EXPENSIVE health care system in the world, but in terms of quality, it’s ranked only about #20 in the world.
I learned my lesson from that brief-but-expensive trip to a Dallas hospital. Now, before I fly back to the U.S., I always buy supplemental health insurance to cover any health costs incurred while I’m visiting the U.S. If you’re an American living overseas, I advise you to do likewise before you go home to visit America.
Above left: I went to the Sheikh Faisal Museum on a weekend with my American colleague, Tom. An hour west of Doha, it's one of the few tourist sites in Qatar. Unlike the UAE, Qatar isn't much of a tourist destination. There's not a lot to do here unless you work. Above right: Inside the impressive Sheikh Faisal Museum. I'm guessing the Sheikh liked planes and old cars.
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