Tips

We rate this tip B tier: Google's help pages confirm every step today, and it saves minutes, not money. One Gmail inbox can send as an address on your own domain through smtp.gmail.com with an app password, set up as George Vanous did on Feb 15, 2024.

We rate this tip B tier: Linksys now documents the small "CA" link George Vanous used on Apr 10, 2023, and says its app no longer adds child nodes on these models. Open the router's web page, click CA, then Connectivity and CA Router Setup, and add the nodes from a browser.

We rate this tip B tier: it costs nothing and takes two minutes, and Microsoft, Nvidia and ASUS all document it. A fast monitor runs at 60 Hz until you raise the refresh rate yourself, as George Vanous found on a 165 Hz ASUS screen he had used at 60 Hz for years.

We rate this tip B tier: open the PDF with its password, print it to Windows' built-in "Microsoft Print to PDF" printer, and the copy that comes out has no password. Our own test on Nov 10, 2026 confirmed it, and showed what the copy loses.

We rate this tip S tier: the Housing line on a DEWA bill is 5% of a rent figure that Dubai Municipality will correct on request. George Vanous's notes record three rounds of requests; one cut the fee on two villas by AED 1,075 a month each.

We rate this tip B tier: a Dubai license that expired under 10 years ago renews without a retest, and the late fine is AED 10 a month, capped at AED 500. George Vanous renewed one 33 months late in under 30 minutes for AED 835.

We rate this tip A tier: a Dubai property blocked over late service fees stays blocked after you pay, until you ask the management company to release it. How to check the status with the Dubai Land Department, and how to pay the exact amount owed.

We rate this tip S tier: budget 6.4% on top of the price of a resale home in Dubai, not the 4% everyone quotes. George Vanous's notes list every check for an AED 4,000,000 apartment bought in cash, AED 4,255,080 in all.

We rate this tip S tier: if you typed your card into a fake Aramex delivery fee page, block the card that minute. George Vanous waited, and an AED 4.95 text became three fraud charges and a 22-day dispute.

We rate this tip S tier: filling a villa pool from the DEWA tap costs well under half of what tanker trucks charge. George Vanous paid AED 6,400 for trucks; the same 170 cubic meters from DEWA comes to about AED 2,645 at the Nov 2026 tariff.

We rate this tip S tier: Dubai Land Department registers a gift of property to a parent, spouse or child for 0.125% of its valuation, against 4% for a sale. George Vanous's notes disagree on who qualifies, so this page gives the official list.

We rate this tip A tier: cancel a paid subscription the minute you buy it and you keep what you paid for until the period ends, with no renewal charge later. Google Play, Netflix and Spotify say so on their help pages; free trials are the exception, and Apple words it less plainly.

We rate this tip S tier: read a cloud mining contract's maintenance fee and termination clauses before paying. George Vanous paid $30,846 for one in Nov 2017 and it returned 0.64 bitcoin, worth about $4,500, before the fee swallowed the payouts.

We rate this tip S tier: a borrowed crypto position with no preset exit can lose more in an hour than a careful year earns. George Vanous's notes record $90,000 lost on Nov 25, 2020 and a position $1 million in the red on May 13, 2021. One person's losses, not advice.

We rate this tip A tier: a self-employed borrower in Dubai is priced on the bank's valuation and the bank's view of the income, not on the purchase price. George Vanous's notes record a 4.0 million apartment valued at 3.2 million, and the rates and conditions he was quoted from 2019 to 2023.

We rate this tip A tier: add up what your card really paid before you believe its headline rate. George Vanous's notes record AED 1,545,811.16 of spend earning 11,021 points, 0.71%, and 0.2% on school fees; the banks' own pages confirm the category rates behind that today.

We rate this tip S tier: the dirham is pegged at 3.6725 to the dollar, so every quote can be scored against one number, and asking moves it. George Vanous's notes log quotes from 3.60 to 3.6713 between 2022 and 2025, and one phone call on a CAD 800,000 conversion worth AED 48,000.

We rate this tip A tier: Wio Credit pays 2% cashback on most spending but 0.5% on government, utility and real estate payments, capped at AED 2,500 a month. George Vanous's notes from Nov 2024 to mid 2025 list every limit he met after moving his banking there, checked against Wio's documents today.

We think Dubai keeps its housing fee at 5% of rent and still refuses the 0.125% gift fee to brothers and sisters, and that Google keeps app passwords alive. Vi.ki's own predictions about the fees, rules and products behind the tips, each with a date it can be checked by.

Helpful tips, one page each, from the notes George Vanous has kept since 2018 on living in Dubai, money, travel, computers and websites. Every tip gives his dated case and is checked against the official source, and carries our tier from S to D.

We rate this tip A tier: when a Canadian parent abroad replaces their own passport together with the children's, paying CAD 45 to keep the adult passport protects the children's applications, because the guarantor has to hold a Canadian passport. The page also covers who can be guarantor, the 12-month rule, the Dubai consulate and the signature that voids a child's passport.

We rate this tip B tier: an image that vanishes for some visitors may be blocked by its file name alone. George Vanous lost one to a name starting "adsense-" in 2020; today's EasyList no longer blocks that name, but it still blocks others, such as any name containing "-728x90.".

We rate this tip S tier: a listed price on a domain marketplace is an asking price, and an offer by phone can beat it. George Vanous's notes record a .gg domain listed at $8,540 that he bought for $6,700 in two days in July 2020, with the seller paid only after the domain was his.

We rate this tip B tier: turn off WordPress's page-load cron with one line in wp-config.php and let the server's own cron call it on a schedule. George Vanous's host counted 27,272 requests for wp-cron.php in his logs, and his notes add a trap of their own, a plugin's cron script that only runs from crontab after a cd into its folder.