Sunshine, sex and stacks of cash… no wonder so many women are choosing to live abroad. But is it all pool parties and promiscuity? Cosmopolitan investigates
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As soon as she saw them, almost winking at her from the shop window, she knew they’d be hers. She’d just received her first proper paycheque – £1,500 –tax-free. That was to cover the rent on her huge villa (complete with pool), and leave change for the £400 pair of Louboutin shoes she’d just purchased, on a whim. Designer bag swinging from her arm, she almost skipped, beaming, back into the bustle of The Dubai Mall. Just another cashrich expat, in a sea of shoppers.
The thing is, Lauren Carver* wasn’t cash-rich at all. She was a 22-year-old creative-writing graduate a month into a new job, writing for a magazine in Dubai. Like most of her peers, she couldn’t get a paid job back home in London. But instead of slogging it out at unpaid internships, working a bar job in the evenings and on weekends to pay the rent, she found somewhere she could get a ‘foot in the door’. The fact she was being paid a whole lot more than her mates back home to work somewhere the sun always shined? Well, that was just a bonus.
Of course, the minute she arrived in what locals call ‘The Sandpit’, UK life became a distant memory. Gone were the rainy commutes and thankless job interviews. Weekends spent bingeing on box-sets and boozing at old-man pubs were replaced by all-day brunches at five-star hotels, shopping in designer malls and partying until sunrise. “I kind of lost my head the first month I lived there,” the now33-year-old says. “I spent my entire salary as soon as I got it. I’d just graduated and it felt ridiculous, but it sucks you in, the glamour of it.”
A world of opportunity
This story is from the July 2017 edition of Cosmopolitan UK.
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This story is from the July 2017 edition of Cosmopolitan UK.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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