The first ninety days in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh or Doha take more money than anyone tells you, in a currency you have not learned to feel yet. NetWorth+ holds the whole picture — what went out, what comes back, and what is only lent to a landlord.
Month one
Where the money went
In short
NetWorth+ is a free Android app for tracking money during a relocation to the Gulf. It separates costs that are gone for good — agency commission, visa medicals, shipping — from money that is only parked, such as a rental security deposit or a utility deposit, which it can hold as a recoverable asset rather than as spending. It handles two currencies at once, so savings left behind in your home country and a new dirham or riyal account are part of one figure. It never asks for a bank login, and it can read bank alert SMS on the phone with your permission once your local account is open.
Deposits
Held as recoverable, not spent
Currencies
Home and host, at once
Setup
Works before your salary starts
Cost
Free, no ads
The problem
It usually is not. It is front-loaded, partly recoverable, and impossible to read while it is happening.
In the first three months you will hand over a security deposit, an agency commission, a DEWA or SEWA or ADDC connection deposit, an Ejari or municipality fee, a year of internet, a bed, a fridge, and the balance of a flight you booked before you had a salary. Your bank balance falls off a cliff and stays there.
Some of that money is genuinely gone. Some of it is sitting with a landlord and will come back when you leave. Some of it bought objects that still have value. A normal expense tracker files all three under the same heading, which is why month one looks like a catastrophe and month seven looks like a mystery.
How it handles it
A security deposit has not been spent, it has been moved. Hold it as a receivable and your net worth stops pretending you set fire to it — and when you move out, the refund reconciles against it.
Savings at home in rupees, pounds or pesos and a new account in dirhams or riyals belong to the same person. Both are counted, each at the rate on the day it moved.
Visa medicals, attestation, shipping and the first flight are frequently paid back by an employer. Photograph the receipts as you go and the claim assembles itself instead of being reconstructed in March.
Rent in one to four cheques a year has a way of arriving unannounced. Schedule them once, on the dates you actually agreed, and they stop being an ambush.
In practice
Your home account and whatever you arrived with, then the local account when it opens. Until then, cash and a foreign card are perfectly valid accounts.
Agency commission is spending. Security deposit is not. Making that distinction on day one is the difference between a useful record and a depressing one.
Rent cheques, the annual internet contract, the visa renewal. They are already known — the only question is whether you find out from your ledger or from a bounced payment.
From then on the card swipes and salary credits fill themselves in on the phone, and you approve them rather than typing them.
Reference
| Cost | Typically recoverable? | How to record it |
|---|---|---|
| Rental security deposit | Yes, at the end of the tenancy | Receivable asset |
| Utility connection deposit | Yes, on closing the account | Receivable asset |
| Agency commission | No | Expense, one-off |
| Ejari / tenancy registration | No | Expense, one-off |
| Visa, medical, Emirates ID | Often reimbursed by employer | Expense, tagged for claim |
| Furniture and appliances | Partly, at resale | Asset, if you want to be strict |
| Shipping and excess baggage | Sometimes reimbursed | Expense, tagged for claim |
This is a way of organising your own record, not advice about your tenancy contract or your employment terms. What is refundable is whatever your contract says is refundable — read it, and record what it actually says.
Photograph every receipt as you get it, including the handwritten one from the furniture shop in Karama or Batha. Text recognition runs on the device, so the amount and date are captured without you typing them, and in eleven months when the landlord queries the deposit you will have the record and they will not.
Where this applies
The choreography is the same across the Gulf and the paperwork is not: Ejari and DEWA in Dubai, Tawtheeq and ADDC in Abu Dhabi, SEWA in Sharjah, Ejar and the SEC in Saudi Arabia, and their equivalents in Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman. The app reads the local currency and local bank alert formats in each.
NetWorth+ also covers India, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, the United Kingdom and the United States. Currency handling is not limited to the list above — three-decimal dinars and zero-decimal currencies are treated correctly rather than being forced into two decimal places.
Questions
Keep reading
Dirham alerts, salary here and savings somewhere else.
Read moreRiyal alerts, a pegged currency and family in another country.
Read moreIf the first flat is a shared one, this is the page you want.
Read moreOnce there is something left over, this is where it goes.
Read moreThe longer version of this, for people already a few years in.
Read moreA rough first figure in the browser, before you install anything.
Read moreSeparate what is gone from what is parked, count both countries, and start the record while it is still small.
Android. No bank login. No ads. Message reading is optional and off until you switch it on.