Looking for perfection is an endless quest. Once you accept that perfection is an illusion, you should aim for the utmost compromise that fits your lifestyle and life goals.

We are all different

What would be a perfect life? Some people would describe living in a large house with a pool and invite all their family and friends. Some would simply prefer a retreat in the countryside with several books with one’s partner. Or you would just enjoy sipping some cocktails near an infinity pool between two zoom meetings. There is not a single perfect place nor life. Everyone is different, and our tastes are as diverse. So, there is no single perfect life.

Free yourself from other’s opinion

You shouldn’t let the world, or your environment sets your perfect life. Indeed, you can easily get influenced by other’s opinion. Most of the time, it will be implicit and suggested by your surroundings. It is important to become aware of this syndrome, so you can avoid the “keep up with the Joneses” trap. When you see most your neighbours with their nice house, car and holidays, it is difficult to resist the thought “Why them and not me?”. They simply made different decisions than you. Maybe owning a large house and a brand new car makes them happy. Or it might simply give them (or you) an illusion of a perfect life. However, it usually comes with ties.

Most “FI” people that I know are low key spenders. They practice stealth wealth. “The Millionaire next door” is a must read. It will change your perception about wealth and appearance. In a nutshell, the author interviews millionaires, to understand their success. Without uncovering all the findings, I was surprised to discover that many millionaires are very frugal, live in a simple house and drive a modest car. It literally freed me not to feel guilty to be frugal. Being frugal is actually a blessing for a FIRE journey. Indeed, I have never been excited to wear branded products. Why should I pay brands to wear their logo? They should pay me to showcase and market their products! In the end, my worn out tshirt became my badge of the millionaire club!

Define your criteria

Everyone assesses an experience through its own lens. What I see as enjoyable (eating oysters or snails for example), might disgust you. The point is not to discuss culinary taste but simply demonstrate that we perceive joy and happiness differently. Thus, it is critical that you can set your own criteria. Do you prefer to live by the countryside, the sea and/or the mountain? How about the weather? Do you enjoy outdoor activities or rather stay indoor? All before are criteria that should help you select a geographical location. After that, you might include or exclude some places based on the availability of a hospital, international education, airport…? And the list goes on and on. You can have 5 criteria or 20. It is really up to you, and there are no wrong answer, because it is YOUR criteria, not someone’s else.

As world travellers, we have experienced living in many countries for at least a month. It is the minimal time for us to assess the liveability of a place according to our standards and interests. As you might have read in our other posts, we investigated and/or lived in several countries and cities: Hong Kong, France, Dubai, Thailand, Malaysia or Panama.

Each trip helped us to either narrow down or even expand to new countries. But instead of limiting our view to a specific country, we prefer to understand what are the criteria that we value the most. Based on the latter, we compromise what is the ideal place to live, acknowledging that perfection doesn’t exist.

Find your interests and passions

If you already have the answer to this question, this is great. Thus, you should by now have built your own world around your interest and passions. Nevertheless, like everyone, we have the tendency to label and put everything into boxes. But don’t fall into the trap of limiting your interests. Indeed, you may enjoy learning to play piano. Is it only about piano? Or is it about music instrument? Or is it about the learning process? Your interests may grow and/or evolve other time. It is a natural process, and you should embrace it. Remain flexible and adjust over time.

However, you might not have the chance yet to nail down your true fountain of happiness. Don’t worry, you at least realized that you needed something else in life than doing like everybody else. Simply list out the activities you enjoy doing (reading, running, learning, playing tennis. painting, singing…). Now try to allocate specific amount of time to the activities you enjoy, sign up for some groups or join some local meet-ups. You need to find out not if you would be comfortable spending your time on it, but rather discover that you don’t have enough time to achieve everything you want to. Time is scarce but the way you want to use it is limitless.

By now, you should have your list of criteria, interest and passions. That sounds great. However you might realize now that some might be contradictory or simply can’t be combined together. Perfection is an illusion. Thus, you will have to compromise and make some choices in your life. This is the reason why it is critical to know your criteria and how relevant they are to YOU to make YOU happy!

Life comes in a package

What I mean by life comes in a package, is that you must take the experience as a whole, with its pros (that you are looking for) and the cons (that you want to minimize). Of course, the more money you have, you easier it is for you to reinforce the pros and to evaporate the cons.

The Dubai package

The pros

As mentioned earlier, we usually travel to the city/country for some time before committing to relocate. We did online search, combined with a short trip to meet with friends and gather their feedback. On paper (or online as we should nowdays adjust), Dubai is THE place to be. The UAE Goverment is competent and has a vision for the future. They pump oil to finance most of their projects and build other industries. The weather is always hot and sunny. The country is surrounded by the sea and you even have mountains on the east side. And finally, taxes are 0%! Yes, you read it right: 0% income tax, 0% capital gain tax, and 0% interest tax. Lots of very positive arguments in favour!

The field trip

Thus, we came in May 2022 and weather was great. It was a sharp contrast with the bad weather we accumulated for months before. Dubai has the city life, social links, energy, good weather that we were lacking. So, we planned to come to Dubai during summer 2022 to finalize our residency application.

The reality check

Culturally, it is a very progressive and tolerant society. You can have a ‘normal’ western lifestyle without raising an eyebrow. Although you should still comply with local laws and customs. If you have a significant estate, please conduct your due diligence and make a Will (otherwise Sharia law will apply).

August and most of September are unbearably hot and we spend all our time indoor. October temperatures finally start to enter acceptable zone. As human nature, you realize that you really cherish an element of your environment when it has been taken away. So, we were very looking forward to enjoying outdoor activities like going to the beach, hiking in the mountain, playing tennis, riding our bikes, and going to the desert…

However, we missed to assess the air pollution level and the lack of healthy air in Dubai. You can see on the chart below the air pollution at the US Embassy in Dubai in 2022. The US Embassy is in the city center, thus you might say it is normal that it is polluted. You are correct, but it is one of the few with (reliable) historic data.

Based on the index standard, air quality around the US Embassy in Dubai used to be Moderate to Unhealthy for sensitive groups. But Dubai city center has become Unhealthy to Very Unhealthy in the last 6 months.

As a matter of comparison, I also looked at the air quality in Jumeirah Beach Residence (aka JBR) which is facing the sea. It can’t be any better than this. The JBR Air Quality is Moderate to Unhealthy through out the year. So depending on where you leave, the air is likely to be between this two locations.

We live in the outskirt of Dubai where we can see kilometres away if there were not all these sand in the air. But by looking thru the window in the morning, we can quickly assess the air quality. Moreover, when we go in the city, the view is blocked by buildings surrounding us, so we don’t easily notice the pollution.

Pros vs Cons

So by just living in Dubai, we realized that we treasure clean air and the freedom to go with our outdoor activities whenever we wanted to. As parents of young children, we feel the responsibility to provide them with a safe and healthy environment. Letting fine particles make their home in our young kids lungs causes us great distress. If we were younger without kids, we could cope with the pollution as we will be indoor in an office all day, and just travel in the region during weekends. However, as FIRE parents with lots of free time, and young children, the overall package of Dubai is not as appealing as we perceived it before we moved here.

Life is about compromise

Now that we acknowledged that the Dubai package wasn’t for us, we really had to re-assess our criteria and interests. We realize that there is no perfect place where all our criteria can be met, and we can practice activities of our interests and passions. If there is no perfect place, we have to compromise. We would gladly trade polluted air for some rain. Actually, we are missing the other seasons and weather variations. By compromise, I don’t mean an average or bearable place, but a overall package that I am still utterly excited to experience! The package could either be a brand new place, or a past one revisited with our new criteria. Stay tune for our next life chapter!

What is your “package”? What are the compromise you made to live the life you dreamt of? Please share and Happy Fire Cracking !

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