Author: Joseph Wagdy

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Credit/Debit cards fraud – A solution? – How to protect yourself

Now that the main methods by which fraud is conducted, here are some steps to help protect yourself. Let me tell you that in my nearly 17 years in UAE I have been almost a victim to 2 fraud attempts in my 17 years in UAE. The 1st was from the US while the 2nd was from UAE. Both affected my UAE issued credit cards.

The 1st fraud attempt took place in Jan 2020. It was a result of me ignoring common sense pure and simple. When we were visiting New York, I visited a gas station in Staten Island which clearly looked dodgy but the car was low on fuel, i was tired from driving and wanted to get home fast so I ignored common sense. The gas machine was asking for CCV/PIN so I put the PIN a couple of times and when it didn’t work. I then decided to go visit another gas station thinking that one was not working properly. Later, thank God, I discovered I was putting the wrong PIN. This incident resulted in a thief who successfully copied my credit card info but had the wrong PIN/CCV. As a result, when the thief tried to pay with my card online in a US store, the payment was rejected due to wrong CCV. I got a SMS of the rejected payment due to wrong CCV and of course called my bank and changed the credit card.

The 2nd fraud attempt took place in May 2023 when someone at 1 AM decided to use my credit card and buy something worth 47AED from a website. The payment went through without OTP so that thief decided to add my credit card to his/her UAE Amazon account and use it to pay for something worth nearly a 1000 AED. I was saved by Amazon who rejected the payment. I woke up on a call from the bank’s credit card security team at 1 AM asking me if I make the transaction as Amazon flagged it fraudulent. As expected I called my bank and changed the credit card and I got the 47 AED back as well.

The “thief” here most likely got his/her hands on the credit card information from a security breach at an online stores which saved my card information including the CCV.

So, the steps below does not offer 100% protection but they will make it harder and harder for you to become a fraud victim and minimize the loss if any.

One last thing, protection and security walk hand by hand with inconvenience. The more secure something is, the more inconvenience will be faced when using it. It is all about trade offs. Both have a price which you should be aware of (as in loss of credit card benefits for example) and ready to pay. So here we go

  1. Setup credit card spending limits. All banks now offer monthly and even daily spending limits which can be configured through their apps on your phone. For example, ADCB allows their customers to configure both daily and monthly spending limits while HSBC on the other hand allow their customers to only configure monthly spending limits for each of their credit cards. So, use this feature according to your needs and your panic level. For example, I have my ADCB cards set to 500 AED daily and 5000 monthly while my HSBC cards are setup to 1000 AED monthly. Then I adjust those limits accordingly if I need to exceed them and then revert them back to their old values once I am done. The good thing is that you get to keep all the benefits offered by the credit card The bad thing is the inconvenience this causes if you go to pay something and discover the you need to adjust the limit.
  2. Consider getting and using one of the prepaid credit cards. Those cards are topped up depending on how much you need. For example, Al Ansari Exchange offer such a card and you can top it up via a bank transfer using online banking from your phone. This is similar in a way to setting spend limits on your credit cards The good thing is if you suffer any fraud transaction(s) then only what you have in the card is lost without any further loss. The bad things are The inconvenience this causes if you get to pay something and discover the you need to top up the card. You lose all of your credit card benefits (cashback, airmiles, discounts,….)
  3. Consider using contactless payment solutions (Google Pay, Apple Pay, Samsung Pay) which hides your credit card details from merchants. They generate unique tokens (think of it as masked credit card numbers) to be used for each single transaction and can not be used more than once. The good thing is you do not need to carry your credit cards with you The bad things are Now you need to make sure your login credentials to such payment solutions are secure. To mitigate this risk, consider enabling MFA via either SMS or an authenticator app on your phone to login to such portals to make it much harder to gain access even if your username/password were compromised. The potential loss of credit card benefits (i.e cashback credit cards). You need to check with your bank if using these methods to pay your bills will cause any loss in benefits.
  4. Stop using your debit card for any purchases especially online ones. Debit cards have direct access to your bank accounts. Using them is just a BAD idea waiting to happen.
  5. Use RFID-blocking wallet which can help protect you against identity theft and fraud that might arise from electronic pickpocketing.
  6. Avoid using “Free” VPN apps on your phone. Do not try to login to your banking app while those “free” VPNs are running and connected. If you need a VPN then get a paid service where you can be sure some level of security is there. If VPN is a must for you then I would suggest to consider either PureVPN or Hotspot Shield. Still would advise against login to online banking while using those VPNs or any other VPNs.
  7. Configure WhatsApp not to download any media automatically to your phone.
  8. Do not respond to WhatsApp messages offering you free stuff, money or even a job.
  9. Make sure to use original software and Operating System on your devices. Any pirated software means it was tampered which also means there is a very high probability it might has something offering a backdoor to your device allowing an attacker to either spy on you or remotely hack your device (an example would be to install a hidden app on your phone to read your SMS messages without your knowledge)
  10. Make sure you invest in your devices security. I would suggest you buy Norton 360 or a similar application for both computers and tablets/phones. There is a Norton 360 10-device license for 70$ annually (60$ for the 1st year). Though this may sound expensive to some, I can assure you it is worth every benny if configured properly on all your devices.
  11. Use common sense. Do not open/respond any messages or open any links that you receive on SMSs even if you are actually expecting a “package”. If you are expecting something, then get the carrier phone number from their official website and call them personally.

Always remember that humans are the weakest link in any security system. If you take all the above-mentioned precautions but you are using pirated software or Operating System on your computer/tablet/phone then you are just asking to be hacked. If your computer has no antivirus protecting you from the dangers of the Web, then it is just a matter of time for you to be hacked. The same applies if you are using a jailbroken iPhone or an Android phone that was tampered with (as in installing APKs apps outside Apple or Google stores). It is no longer a question of if but a question of when.

Make it harder and too much trouble for a thief to robe you even if it causes some inconvenience to you. It is all about tradeoffs. So it would be better to suffer some inconvenience, which can be mitigated, rather than suffering a fraudulent transaction that takes forever to solve and may not get the full amount back.

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Credit/Debit cards fraud – The Nightmare – How does it happen

Now that the main reasons of why this is happening I will go through how does fraud happen? To answer that, please understand that there is no magic wand by which credit/debit card information can be obtained by anyone. Anyone preforming credit/debit card fraud must have your card’s data by using one of the below 3 main methods.

  • Method 1: A leak from inside the entity issuing the card
  • Method 2: A leak from your computer/tablet/phone
  • Method 3: A leak from you personally

There are other methods but they are very rare in UAE due to the presence of CCTV cameras nearly in every corner. So tampering with an ATM, for example, is just unheard of in UAE. To be a victim of credit/debit cards fraud then mainly one of the above mentioned must happen.

Method 1 : A leak from inside the entity issuing the card

In method 1, to be fair, a leak from inside the financial entity issuing the card is very difficult but not impossible. People do not know that though the bank’s call center staff can see their security questions and their answers, they can’t see several other sensitive date. Those with access to all other details of credit/debit card sensitive information (PIN, CVV,….) are very few. Such leaks are very rare because the identity of the leaker will be found out easily in a very short time.

Most leaks are a result of either the 2nd or 3rd methods on which I will go into details below.

Method 2 : A leak from your computer/tablet/phone

In method 2, some kind of software (aka trojan horse) gets installed on your device and it is later used to transmit your keyboard actions to whoever is controlling it. These kinds of software depend on you using either pirated OS or application or has misconfigured some of the security settings on the device. They depend on fooling you enough to accept and open something simple as a word document or a PDF file or a to open a link. If the device in question is secured, then these attempts will result in many warning messages and popups alerting you that something is trying to change some settings on your device which should be enough for you to take action and stop it.

This method however is where the vast majority of leaks take place in UAE mainly because a lot of people buy and use 2nd hand phones/tablets which could have been previously hacked. The same applies to computers using pirated OS and/or applications or if the security settings on your device are turned off. In addition, very few invest in securing their devices further by using powerful antiviruses and not the free ones which offers basic levels of protection.

Method 3 : A leak from you personally

Method 3 describes itself. It is a leak from you personally. It happens when people ignore common sense. For example, people handing over their credit/debit cards along with PINs to others in order to process their payments. An example of this is when people hand over gas station workers their cards and provide them with the PIN to pay on their behalf. Another example would be when people hand over their cards to their kids and give them the PIN numbers! A child has no grasp of the dangers surrounding that plastic card and can be fooled much easier than you.

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Credit/Debit cards fraud – The Ugly Truth – Why does it happen

Suffering from fraud is ugly and painful. Banks in UAE take a significant amount of time to investigate cases and resolve them. In most cases, the full amount is never recovered. Let alone that banks force victims to pay the full bill (in case of a credit card fraud) till the issue is investigated and resolved. Victims on the other hand have to wait for up to 90 days or more to get anything back.

So why fraud happens? Well, it is not rocket science. The most important 5 reasons as to why fraud happens in UAE are

  • Privacy and data protection is virtually nonexistence in UAE. There are no PCI/DSS style laws in UAE forcing merchants to encrypt their databases. The Central Bank in its notice dated 21 May 2019 ((CBUAE/BSD/C/2019/2094)) mandated all Financial Institutions operating in the Cards payment ecosystem to comply with PCI DSS but there is no mention about merchants to force them to do the same.
  • There is no law preventing merchants from keeping your credit/debit card information without your consent.
  • For the sake of easy, quick financial transactions and to save costs most bank’s payment gateways will let certain payments through without OTPs if the payment is below a certain value.
  • The vast majority of online merchants in UAE do not invest property in security. Most of them use very powerful platforms to build their online stores BUT many fail miserably, either out of ignorance or to save costs, in configuring their security properly.
  • Naive consumers who either ignore common sense or assume things that do not exist.

If we mix those reasons together, we get a recipe for a disaster. I truly hope things change in the future. I actually see the UAE on a path that ends with enacting laws in that regard to help reduce fraud and forcing merchants to take things seriously and invest properly in their security infrastructure. I just hope things progress a bit faster.

In the next article, I will discuss the main methods by which fraud is conducted.

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The gap theory – A summary response

The purpose of this article is a summary response to the gap theory and the likes. The bible states in the book of Hebrews that 

By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. (Heb 11:3)

I think the above verse is clear enough. From this verse alone we understand that by faith

  1. The universe was created by the word of God.
  2. What is seen was not made out of things that are visible.

From this point of view, I will try to search in the Word of God to answer the questions of how and when the world was created? and when did Lucifer fell? and whether or not there was an older creation?

The gap theory was introduced by a Scottish preacher named Thomas Chalmers in 1814. It has spread widely mainly since the eighteenth century, as an attempt to explain or understand the bible and the story of creation specially from the perspective of science. This theory started taking root specially after

  • James Hutton coming out with his theory about the age of the earth in the late 1700s
  • Charles Lyell work on subject of the age of the earth in the early 1800s
  • Charles Darwin work on the subject of Origin of Species and Natural Selection in the 1800s

After the emergence of these theories, and the subsequent theories dealing with evolution and the likes, and the failure of churches and believers in general to discern what is happening and deal with it from a biblical prospective, many attempts began to reinterpret parts of the bible from the perspective of science instead!.

In summary, the gap theory states there was a time difference between verse 1 and number 2 in the first chapter of Genesis. The theory states that during that time difference, there was another creation on earth. That creation either died due to the fall of Lucifer or was subjected to judgment by God. Also during that time period, Lucifer fell. As a result of all this, the earth became “without form and void” as stated in Genesis 1:2. This was followed by God re-creating everything. The Gap Theory, has the following build in assumptions

  • The age of this universe is billions of years old and so is the Earth
  • All things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation. In other words, uniformitarianism
  • To explain the fossil history, the theory assumes there was an earlier creation before Adam. That creation died either due to God’s judgment or due to the fall of Lucifer.
  • Fall of Lucifer before the creation of Adam

Here are what the Bible says regarding those assumptions

  • The Age of the universe and Earth
1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2 And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. 3 So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation. (Genesis 2:1-3)
11 For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. (Exodus 20:11)
13 “You are to speak to the people of Israel and say, ‘Above all you shall keep my Sabbaths, for this is a sign between me and you throughout your generations, that you may know that I, the Lord, sanctify you. 14 You shall keep the Sabbath, because it is holy for you. Everyone who profanes it shall be put to death. Whoever does any work on it, that soul shall be cut off from among his people. 15 Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, holy to the Lord. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day shall be put to death. 16 Therefore the people of Israel shall keep the Sabbath, observing the Sabbath throughout their generations, as a covenant forever. 17 It is a sign forever between me and the people of Israel that in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested and was refreshed.’” (Exodus 31:13-17)

From these verses alone we learn

  1. God created the Heaven, Earth and all that is in it in only 6 days.
  2. If there was a time gap between verses 1 and 2 in Genesis 1, then the creation didn’t take 6 days. This is saying God is lying and that defy His nature as per Numbers 23:19
  3. The assumption that there was an earlier creation that got wiped out and then God had to create everything again is false because the bible is very clear that we are still on the first earth as per Rev 21:1 which states “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.”
  4. When digging into the language and comparing “without form and void” in Genesis 1:2 with the aforementioned paragraph in Jeremiah 4:23-25, we note
    1. The part mentioned in the book of Jeremiah has nothing to do with creation, as it speaks of a city on which the judgment of the Lord came
    2. There were no mountains according to the book of Genesis until at least the third day (Biblically the the mountains rose during and after the flood)
    3. The word “void” in Genesis 1:2 doesn’t mean destroyed but rather it means empty.
    4. The passage in Isaiah 45:18 doesn’t conflict with the story of Gen 1. The way I understand it, it is as God saying “I didn’t create the earth to be left empty! . I filled it” and indeed He did
  • Uniformitarianism
3 knowing this first of all, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own sinful desires. 4 They will say, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things are continuing as they were from the beginning of creation.” 5 For they deliberately overlook this fact, that the heavens existed long ago, and the earth was formed out of water and through water by the word of God (2Peter 3:3-5)

Does that passage sound familiar? Are all things really continuing as they were from the beginning of creation? How about the flood and its effects on the environment?

There are loads of evidence all over the place that things in the past WERE NOT continuing as they were from the beginning of creation. Just 2 simple examples and you can dig more if you want

  1. The great Sahara desert (geology)
    • The great Sahara desert is estimated to be no more than 4200 years old. If the earth is billons of years old, why can’t we find a bigger desert anywhere on the planet?
  2. The pakisaurus (biology)
    • The pakisaurus dinosaur weighted approx 30 to 40 tones. The problem is that their nostrils size were that of the modern day horse. so how did the pakisaurus breath if the atmospheric pressure and composition were the same as it is today?
  • Pre-Adamite creation and judgment

The bible is very clear as to when did death enter and rule over the world. 

21 For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. 22 For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. (1Cor 15:21-22)
12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men[a] because all sinned (Rom 5:12)
14 Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. (Rom 5:14)
26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death. (1Cor 15:26)

Death entered and ruled the world by the sin of man (Adam) and not due to the fall of Lucifer of a pre-adamite creation. Also we learn that Death is the last enemy to be destroyed. Please note assuming that death ruled before man’s sin is a heresy.

  • Fall of Lucifer

The bible isn’t shy when it comes to talking about Lucifer. In fact, the bible details

  1. Who he is
  2. What his rank was before his fall
  3. Where he was before his fall
  4. The cause his fall

The only thing that isn’t written in black and white is when did he fall. However, it isn’t very difficult to conclude the approx. time from the available evidence.

So let’s begin

12 “Son of man, raise a lamentation over the king of Tyre, and say to him, Thus says the Lord God: “You were the signet of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. 13 You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering, sardius, topaz, and diamond, beryl, onyx, and jasper, sapphire, emerald, and carbuncle; and crafted in gold were your settings and your engravings. On the day that you were created they were prepared. 14 You were an anointed guardian cherub. I placed you; you were on the holy mountain of God; in the midst of the stones of fire you walked. 15 You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created, till unrighteousness was found in you. (Ezekiel 28:12-15)

From this passage alone we learn

  1. He was in Eden (location)
    1. Since he was in Eden, and since Eden was created in day 6 according to Genesis 2:8, then he could not have fallen before day 6.
  2. He was in Eden right before his fall (location)
  3. He was anointed as guardian cherub. (top rank of angles)
  4. He fell due to unrighteousness being found in him.
4 “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. 5 Who determined its measurements—surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? 6 On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone, 7 when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy? (Job 38:4-7)

From this passage along we learn that all the Sons of God (AKA angles) shouted for joy when God laid the foundations of the earth (Day 3 of the creation when the dry mass appeared). And since Lucifer is an angle, one of those Sons of God, he was there shouting for joy at least in day 3. So no way he had fallen by then.

31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. (Genesis 1:31)

From this verse, we learn that God said EVERYTHING was VERY GOOD at the end of Day 6. This will not agree with the assumption of a fallen angle(s) before even day 1 as suggested by the gap theory.

From all the above evidence, one can safely conclude that Lucifer fell sometime after day 7 of creation.

The Arabic version of this study can be downloaded below

النسخة العربيةDownload

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Building a GPU based Crypto Mining Rig

To build a multiple GPU crypto mining rig, you need to consider the following

  1. Density vs price
  2. The number of GPUs per rig
  3. Power supply
  4. Cooling

It is obvious that the more GPUs, the more the cost associated. The good thing about density, is that you have higher hash rate with less cost compared with building multiple rigs to achieve the same hash rate. The bad thing is that it involves paying for the whole thing at once specially the GPUs.

Currently there are 2 GPU manufactures. AMD and Nvidia. Each has their own line of GPUs however it is important to note that there are 2 kinds of Nvidia GPUs. They are LHR GPUs and the none LHR GPUs

  1. AMD
    • RX580 with 8GB of memory
    • RX5xxx XT
      1. RX 5600 XT
      2. RX 5700 XT
    • RX6xxx XT
      1. RX6600 XT
      2. RX6700 XT
      3. RX6800 XT and RX6900 XT
  2. Nvidia
    • None LHR GPUs
      1. GTX 16xx with 6GB family of cards
      2. RTX 20xx with 6GB family of cards
      3. RTX 3060
      4. RTX 3080
      5. RTX 3090
    • LHR GPUs
      1. RTX 3060
      2. RTX 3060Ti
      3. RTX 3070
      4. RTX3070 Ti
      5. RTX3080 Ti

LHR stands for Lite Hash Rate. It is a technology introduced by NVidia in some of its very successful GPUs to foil crypto miners and get more graphics cards in the hands of gamers. This technology lower the productivity of the GPU significantly and get it produce half of it is full potential on average. There are 2 versions of LHRs currently in the market. V1 of LHR affects only Ethereum mining while V2 potentially affects all mining operations.

Few important points to consider when buying GPUs

  1. Each GPU regardless of manufacture has
    • Its own power consumption profile
    • Expected hash rate depending on the algorithm (what crypto currency to mine)
  2. Please note that Nvidia RTX30xx family of cards, there are LHR and none LHR cards of the same model (for example, RTX 3060 and RTX 3080)

To get an idea about the expected hash rate and power consumption per card, I would encourage you to visit WhatToMine website. Please note that the value you see on the website are estimates to what you might get. Your power draw might be up by 10% more and your hash rate might be lower or higher depending on the manufacture and the infamous silicon lottery

The silicon lottery is basically the quality of the manufacturing process which results in same cards models from the same manufacture scoring different power draw and/or different hash rates.

Now that you know the basics of GPUs, lets talk about building a mining Rig. A mining Rig is just similar to a desktop computer but with multiple GPUs connected to the motherboard. In a normal desktop computer, you have the following key components inside the case

  1. Motherboard
  2. CPU (aka processor)
  3. RAM (aka memory)
  4. Hard disk drive (aka storage)
  5. GPU (aka graphics card)
  6. GPU Risers
  7. Power supply

The good news is that all normal motherboards out there support up to 6 GPUs. To connect more than 6 GPUs, you will need specially motherboards designed for mining. Those mining motherboards can support anything from 6 up to 19 GPUs (under special conditions).

I can’t proceed without mentioning the queen of mining motherboards which is the ASUS B250 MINING EXPERT. That motherboard has 19 PCIe slots to connect up to 19 GPUs. However please note to utilize the full potential of that motherboard, you need to use a specific combination of GPUs from different manufactures (please refer to its manual for details)

For a low density build, you will need

  1. A 6 GPU frame to mount all the different components. You can either buy a ready made frame or build one out of wood.
  2. A regular motherboard (no need to go fancy at this stage since mining motherboard can be expensive)
  3. The cheapest CPU (processor) you can find that would work with your motherboard.
  4. 8GB of RAM
  5. 120GB SSD
  6. 6 GPUs
  7. 6 GPU Risers
  8. Power supply(s).
  9. OS (To make it very simple, I will be using Windows 10)

For a high density build, you will need basically the same components except

  1. Bigger frame to hold the number of GPUs you need
  2. Specialized mining motherboard that can handle the number of GPUs planned
  3. Potentially 2 or more power supplies.
  4. Extra GPUs
    • Please keep in mind that AMD drivers support up to 12 AMD GPUs
    • Please keep in mind that Nvidia drivers support up to 8 Nvidia GPUs connected at the same time
  5. Extra GPU Risers

Regardless of your rig size, please note your power capacity depends on which GPUs are being installed since each GPU model has its own power consumption profile. To illustrate the power point, below are simple examples showcasing the power consumption issue for different GPUs.

If you are building a rig to mine Ethereum (ETH), then a single Nvidia RTX 3080 none LHR edition graphics card – when overclocked and power tuned properly – will consume approx. between 215 to 255 watts of power depending on the manufacture. Another example is the Nvidia RTX 3080Ti graphics cards which will consume anything from 280 watts up to 310 watts depending on the manufacture. AMD RX cards tend to consume less power in general but produces far less hash rate. To illustrate the point of power consumption verses hash rate when mining ETH see below table

GPUApprox. power consumption (Watts)Approx. ETH stable hash rate (Mh/s)
Nvidia RTX 3090320110
Nvidia RTX 3080 (none LHR)25598
AMD RX6800 XT16062
AMD RX6900 XT16062
Approx. power consumption vs approx. ETH mining hash rate

From the table above, it is imperative to calculate the power consumption properly and make sure of the following

  1. To know the approx. power consumption of your GPUs in advance
  2. You plan to have 20% extra power capacity available
  3. Your power socket(s) and wall wiring can handle the power draw otherwise you can blow up your power circuit or worse burn down your house.

The final point that many ignore is cooling. Those GPUs when mining, produce a TON of heat. You need to have a plan to keep them cool otherwise you will end up with lots of issues ranging from stability to potentially bricking your GPUs. To get an estimate about the sort of heat generated by those GPUs, get the sum of their power consumption in Watts and convert it to heat. So for example, a rig that consumes 2000 watts per hour, will be generating heat equivalent to 2000 watts hair dryer running continuously. This sort of heat will in a very short time raise the temperature of room and if left unchecked, will crash the rig or worse damage your hardware.

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Keys to success part 1 – Having a budget

For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’

Luke 14:28-30

To be successful, you need 3 things.

  • A budget
  • Discipline
  • A well defined goal

Everything starts with a plan. The bible teaches and encourages us to have a realistic plan for anything we need to accomplish. People come to UAE for a variety of reasons. However regardless of the reason(s), I think we all would agree that the common goal is hoping to make some money for use later in life (think retirement for example). What many fail to understand is that stability isn’t exactly synonymous with UAE. I would strongly advice that you must always have 3 month exit plan (consider the next 3 month to be your last 3 month in the country)

The 1st key to success starts with a budget. Many come and unfortunately forget the key principles to success . Those principles can be summarized in the following 3 points

  1. Have a balanced budget.
  2. Live within your means.
  3. Avoid debit that doesn’t generate value/income.

The aim of this article is to discuss those 3 key points in hope they would help the reader in setting proper and realistic budget and a plan.

Having a balanced budget

Not having a budget, specially in UAE, is major cause of pain for countless many. Drawing a spending verses income budget seems to elude the majority though it sounds very simple. To do one, all you need to are:

  1. Have basic knowledge of Excel
  2. Documenting where your currency is being spent on a daily/monthly bases.
  3. A cup of tea/beer/coffee.
  4. An hour of quite time.

Many feel that regardless of budgets, their income seems to evaporate literally. It is as if there is a black hole sucking all the Dirhams in their bank account, isn’t it?. Many set up budgets that later proves to be useless. From talking to several people, I came to the conclusion that many struggle between what they wish for and what they really do. Thus many end up with budgets that looks nice on paper/excel however they are useless.

The key to having a successful budget is being truthful about your spending and goals. Detailing your spending will open your own eyes to things your never noticed before. Another thing is that you need to understand that life in UAE ,and Dubai in particular, is based on the WoW effect. Everything is designed to WoW you and fool you into chasing luxury. Life in UAE can and will bankrupt you if you are not paying attention to your spending regardless of your income level.

The basic items of any budget for a family of 4 (2 adults and 2 kids) would be

  • Charitable contributions
  • Car loan installment #1
  • Car loan installment #2
  • Personal Loan(s) monthly installments
  • Rent
  • DEWA/SEWA/FEWA
  • Home DU/Etisalat
  • Groceries
  • Husband mobile phone bill
  • Wife mobile phone bill
  • Home A/C
  • Home cooking gas
  • Home waters bottles
  • Fuel
  • Car #1 insurance renewal
  • Car #1 RTA inspection and registration
  • Car #1 service
  • Car #2 insurance renewal
  • Car #2 RTA inspection and registration
  • Car #2 service
  • Child #1 school/nursery
  • Child #1 school misc. (uniform, bus…)
  • Child #2 school/nursery
  • Child #2 school misc. (uniform, bus…)
  • Eating outside
  • Shopping (cloths, shoes, watches, phones…etc.)
  • Entertainment for the kids
  • Entertainment for the adults (anything else that does not involve kids)
  • Vacations (hotels, air tickets….)
  • Annual subscriptions (Clubs, TV…..etc..)

Your aim from the above mentioned budget is to make sure the overall annual spending on the above mentioned items is BELOW your total annual income. I have built an excel sheet with the items above. Click the Download button below to download the file and feel free to modify it to fit your needs and use it.

UAE basic budgetDownload

Living within your means

This is a controversial topic. When I tell people they need to live within their means, many look at me either as if I am snatching something from their hands or that I am talking gibberish. I will try to explain what I mean by living within our means.

Now that you have wrote down your family budget with your spouse, you need to trim it down. Your aim is to have at least 10% saving annually if not more.

There are some tips to how to achieve the 10% saving target. Those tips will help you understand if you are over spending on any of those 30 items (or any other items).

For example, lets take the big ticket items. The biggest item of all is RENT. Although the standard globally for rent to income ratio is at 30%, you should not never pay more than 25% of your annual income toward rent. Please consider that the 30% rule is set mainly to help landlords with their investments returns and not necessarily to help you with your savings expectations so be smart.

Based on the above, a Townhouse/Villa or an apartment? You need to understand the cost associated with each of these choices. For example a Townhouse/villa might be way more expensive to compared with an apartment and I am not only considering rent here. Other associated items are DEWA for example. Your DEWA bill for a Townhouse/Villa will be higher than an apartment with the same number of bed rooms. The same applies to everything else like maintenance, A/C bill… etc. The choice is finally yours but please sit down and think about the associated costs and consider the 25% rule if you really want to save.

Now for a family, the 2nd big ticket is EDUCATION. Education in UAE is expensive. It can even be in certain circumstances cost more than rent! All of us want our kids to have the “best education” however this “best education” is an elastic term. Generally speaking, regardless of assistance level from your company regarding this topic, you should be realistic about your choices and their associated costs. For my family, 10% is our max spending on education being school or nursery. This rule helped us greatly in filtering school/nursery options for our daughter. That rule helped us choose the school and before than the nursery for our daughter. Today she goes to Raffles World Academy and before that she was in Pre-KG at Odyssey nursery (5 days a week from 8 AM to 2 PM).

I would suggest an annually balanced budget for a family of 4 should look like

  • 20% rent
  • 10% Education
  • 10% Food
  • 8% Utilities (DEWA + Internet + Phone bills + TV subscriptions + A/C + gas + water)
  • 2% Fuel
  • 15% Loan installments (car loans, personal loans….etc..)
  • 5% Shopping (cloths, shoes….etc.)
  • 10% entertainment and family trips
  • 3% Dinning out
  • 2% car related expenses (insurance, registration, service… etc.)
  • 15% saving

Avoid debit that doesn’t generate value

Debit is sort of a way of life in UAE. From buying a car to paying rent or paying for your kids education, you will be tempted to get a loan here and there. There are, however, few rules that helped me over the years since 2007 when it comes to taking in debit.

  1. Never take ANY loan of any kind that you can’t not close in 1 year.
  2. Never take a car loan with a 5 year payment plan.
    • With an average 2.5% in annual interest, a 5 year car loan will acquire approx. 13% in interest alone. Add the % of car value depreciation and % of annual inflation rate over 5 years, and you will be at a deep loss regardless of how much you can sell your car for after 5 years.
    • Considering the car value and your income and debit ratio, I would suggest you never take a car loan with anything more than 3 year payment plan (I personally take 2 year payment plans)
  3. Never take a personal loan more than your gratuity amount
    • So you have been in UAE for sometime and you have been working for the same company for sometime, and now want to take a personal loan. This is OK however the golden rule is you must always have 3 month exit plan. Based on this rule, never ever take a personal loan that is more than your end of service gratuity amount plus interest.
  4. Never take a personal loan with a payment plan over 1 year.
    • The average % for a personal loan is 5% (flat rate). Nov consider taking a personal loan at that rate over 3 years, let alone 5. For 3 years, you will be paying principle plus 15% in interest. Similar to car loans, if you add the % of annual inflation rate over that period, you will discover you will be nick deep in losses even after paying the loan back.
    • Full disclosure. I personally have personal loan @ 4.3% flat rate which I used to setup a small investment portfolio abroad. It is less than my gratuity amount plus interest and the loan is being paid back over 1 year. This way I am actually making money out of the loan rather than losing money. (This concept will be discussed in details later in another article about investment tips)
  5. NEVER EVER let your total monthly loan installment cross 30% of your monthly income.
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Currency creation

To best understand the process through which currency is created, watch the following magnificent YouTube videos by Mike Maloney

The Biggest Scam In The History Of Mankind – Hidden Secrets of Money Ep 4

Once done with the above video, please watch the following magnificent YouTube video by Mike Maloney

Where Does Money Come From? – Hidden Secrets Of Money Ep 5

I strongly urge you to watch the whole series of Hidden Secrets of Money done by Mike Maloney which will open your eyes on how the entire financial system works. The playlist for all 10 episodes is below

Hidden Secrets Of Money by Mike Maloney (all 10 episodes)
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Financial education

I had no clue about how the financial world works till June 2017. I was a regular person who is content with his salary and thought that savings alone is the safest thing to do. So I had a budget for the family and I was saving monthly a portion of our income. This went on for years. This was the case till one day in June 2017 when my wife told me about the crazy grocery prices in Carrefour. In that evening, she told me the price of 1KG ( 2.2 pounds) of tomatoes jumped to 12 AED (approx. 3.3 US$) and that hit me because a few days earlier the same 1KG price was below 6 AED (1.63 US$). That price difference shock me and made me determined to know and understand what is going with the prices and why – on the long run -prices go up and never come down.

This lead me to come across the following people who helped me a great deal understand the ugly face of today’s financial system. Those people are

  1. Mike Maloney
    1. I honestly urge you to watch his produced episodes titled Hidden Secrets of Money
  2. James Rickards
    1. Watch his interview with London Real published in 2017 on YouTube titled The Road to Ruin
    2. Watch his interview with London Real published in 2019 on YouTube titled PROJECT PROPHESY: Does This Government “Secret” Affect You?
    3. Watch his interview with Grant Williams published in 2019 on YouTube titled Predicting the Currency War and the Case For Gold
    4. if you love reading, then read his books.
  3. George Gammon
    1. Follow him on Twitter
    2. Follow his YouTube channel and watch his 3-step videos to educate your self on how deep the rabbit hole goes.
  4. Brent Johnson
    1. Follow him on Twitter
    2. Watch his The Dollar Milkshake Theory video on YouTube
  5. Peter Schiff
    1. Follow him on Twitter
  6. Harry S. Dent
    1. Follow him on Twitter
    2. His book The Demographic Cliff is a must read. The book is available on Amazon.com
  7. Dr. Chris Martenson on the impact of pandemics on economy
    1. Follow him on Twitter
    2. Follow his YouTube channel

To understand the system farther, both me and my wife decided to venture into online trading. We opened an account with Plus500 in July 2017. We deposited 11500 AED using part of our savings and traded only Gold, Silver and Bitcoin. This went on for several months till I discovered the ugly face of online trading. Our investment grew to nearly 30K AED. Later when I decided not to listen to my inner voice and ventured into the S&P500, we lost around 9K AED. Though over all we were successful, we didn’t like what we discovered in the derivatives markets. It is totally immoral and not ethical. We reached the conclusion that it is worse than gambling. For example, in a Las Vegas casino – by law – the casino must have cash equal in value to the amount of chips on the gambling floor. This isn’t the case in the derivative market. When you buy Gold, Sliver or anything else, you don’t really buy the real thing and rather a claim on that ounce which has been sold to several other people at the same time. This is why I say it is worse than gambling. We decided to cash our 22K AED and leave this trading thing by Sep 2017 and never do it again.

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Facebook Groups

Below is a list of very active and very important Facebook groups that have helped us as a family a lot since I became a member. Their membership is free. They are very active and their Admins are active and work hard to keep the content, and even posts, relevant. I have no affiliation with them beyond being a member. I get no currency incentives and no payment of any kind to list them here. The whole purpose of the listing is to help you using the same tools that helped us.