Moving overseas to be able to afford to buy in the UK

[rafinaport]

We both currently work in London. Despite earning a very good wage here, we don’t earn enough to buy what we’d need/want.

We are considering moving to a low or no tax country for 2-3 years to save a decent chunk of money to put into a house on return. We were thinking of either Hong Kong, Bermuda, or the Cayman Islands. Have people managed this? Or in reality do you still spend as much living in these expensive locations.

Hmm, you'll probably need to go somewhere a lot less glamorous to make big savings.

We did it (through chance - Both of us up for redundancy, DH got a phone call asking if he'd go to KSA), and saved enough to pay off the mortgage. Others lived the high life, and saved very little. You need two things - somewhere that pays a high enough uplift, with a low enough cost of living, and you need to be able to carry on living a similar lifestyle and not get wowed by the potential lifestyle.

I just moved back from HK after 14 years. As pp said, yes it is possible to save money there ( we did) but it’s also possible to just spend it all on a really good standard of living, lots of travel and going out a lot. A couple of things to be aware of.

Unless you speak mandarin it is a lot harder to get mid tier jobs in finance or law than it was

Tax is 15% flat BUT rents are really high- we were paying the equivalent of gbp 8k a month for a 4 bed 2400 Sq ft apartment on HK island- not fancy by UK standards- think v 80s kitchen and bathrooms. Housing there really isn’t. However, you can go a lot cheaper if you live off the island in Kowloon, NT or outlying islands. On Lamma or Mui Wo you can get a house for gbp 3k a month but downside is you need to get the ferry to work.

if you have little kids you can save a lot on childcare vs Uk but downside is that unless you want to stay long term, local schools aren’t really an option and you’d need to pay for that so school age kids could cost you more.

if you like outdoors stuff like hiking, trail running, sea kayaking etc you can have an amazing social life at basically zero/ low cost. However if you get into the brunch scene you can spend it all v quickly.

I have also lived in the ME and I much prefer HK as somewhere to live but there are places in the ME where you would save more just by virtue of hardship posting salaries and zero taxes.

Bermuda is very expensive.
1/ It's a tiny island, only 25 miles long by 5 wide at the widest part.
2/Nearly everything has to be imported.(possibly not potatoes, grapefruit or avocados.)
3/A lot of very wealthy people live there (and even more holiday there.)
4/ Enormous cruise ships call in nearly every day at the capital Hamilton, disgorging yet more wealthy tourists.
So, prices are high, rentals are expensive and while your income may be tax-free I don't think you get free healthcare. Liquor is cheap, though.

On the plus side Bermuda is very pretty, has many lovely four and five star hotels, amazing restaurants and nice but v.expensive shops.
We had family who lived there for a couple of decades due to the husband's job. Every so often the wife would find it so claustrophobic she had to have a weekend break in Miami or Boston to escape. Social life is fairly constrained.