A proposal for the Wilde family
Project Bali
What if we spent two years in paradise?
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The Idea
Two academic years.
August 2026 to June 2028.
Move the family from Streatham to Bali. Theo starts school at a bamboo campus in the jungle. Cece joins at three. We live in a villa with a pool, a chef, two nannies, and a driver.
We save more money than we do now. The flat stays. If we don't love it, we come home. But we will love it.
A tale of two mornings
Monday in London
Alarm at 6:30. Grey sky. Get Theo dressed while Cece screams. No clean uniform. Breakfast is toast and chaos. Walk to school in the rain. Back home. Tidy up. Try to work. Pick up at 3:15. Park if it's not raining. Screens. Dinner. Bath. Bed. Repeat.
Monday in Bali
Wake at 6. Sunshine. Swim in the pool before breakfast. Chef has prepared fresh fruit, eggs, whatever the kids want. Driver takes Theo to Green School. Cece plays with the nanny in the garden. You do yoga. Or you sit by the pool with a coffee and do absolutely nothing. Because you can.
Home
This is what home looks like
These are real villas in Pererenan, currently listed at our budget. Not stock photos.
Villa Calma
4 bed, 4 bath. 450sqm. Modern build, enclosed compound, pool. IDR 148.5M/month (~$9,000). Pererenan, 10 min to Berawa Beach.
The Inside
Open-plan living looking straight onto the pool. Modern kitchen, high ceilings, tropical materials. Floor-to-ceiling glass. This is a real $9k/month Bali villa, not a render.
Casa De Gracia
4 bed, 4 bath. 400sqm. Pool, balcony, pergola, garden. IDR 80M/month (~$5,000). Even further below budget.
Our budget is $8,000-10,000/month. Villa Calma is at the top. Casa De Gracia shows what $5,000 gets. David Charter, our concierge, will source off-market options at this level and above.
Freedom
This is the bit that changes everything
In London, you do everything. In Bali, you choose what you do. The rest is handled.
Two Nannies
A live-in primary nanny and a part-time helper. School runs, bedtime, weekend mornings. You never struggle for a date night again.
Private Chef
Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Fresh, healthy, whatever you want. Indonesian, Western, Japanese. No Ocado. No meal planning. No cooking unless you want to.
Driver & Housekeeper
The house is spotless. The car is waiting. You don't clean, you don't drive in traffic, you don't do laundry. Ever.
Total cost for all five staff: $2,750/month. Less than a London nanny alone.
Education
Green School Bali
514 students from 40+ nationalities. WASC-accredited (the same body that accredits Stanford and Berkeley). The Class of 2025 received over 200 university offers. Alumni at 85+ universities across 40 countries. It's rigorous, it's just not conventional.
The campus is set along the Ayung River in bamboo architecture that's been featured in National Geographic. The curriculum blends academics with real-world projects: engineering, environmental science, entrepreneurship. Theo will learn to code, build things with his hands, and present ideas to an audience, all before he's seven.
Theo starts Year 1 on 12 August 2026. Cece joins Early Years when she turns three in February 2027. If we decide Green School isn't the right fit, Canggu Community School runs a full IB programme ten minutes from home. We have options.
It's not a hippy school. It's an engineering school that happens to be in the jungle.
The strategic case
This isn't just about lifestyle
Indonesia is the fourth-largest country on earth. 280 million people. Median age 30. The fintech market hit $21 billion in 2025 and is growing at 9-15% annually. The number of retail investors jumped from 2.5 million to 15 million in five years. Digital payments processed over 20 trillion transactions in January 2025 alone. It's the fastest-growing digital economy in Southeast Asia.
ShareMatch is building a platform for fractional ownership of real-world assets. Indonesia is exactly the market it was designed for: a huge, young, digitally native population that wants access to investment products they've been locked out of. Being in-country, understanding the culture, building relationships with local partners and regulators, that's worth more than any number of Zoom calls from Streatham.
This isn't a sabbatical. It's positioning. Bali gives us access to Jakarta (90-minute flight), Singapore (2.5 hours), and the entire ASEAN region. The timezone works for European calls from 4pm onwards. The cost base is a fraction of London's, meaning the runway stretches further and we hire locally for a tenth of London salaries.
The families who relocate to Bali aren't running away from something. The interesting ones are running towards something. Canggu and Berawa are full of founders, operators, and investors building real businesses from Southeast Asia. The network there is better for what we're doing than another founders' dinner in Shoreditch.
The Year
This is what our year looks like
Arrive late July. Theo starts Green School 12 August.
Two weeks to settle in. The villa is set up. Staff are ready. We find our rhythm.
Half-term: The Maldives.
Overwater villa on a private island. Snorkelling with Theo over coral reefs. Cece in the kids' club. A week of turquoise water and nothing on the agenda. 5 hours from Bali.
Christmas in England.
Two weeks with family. Business class. The kids see their grandparents. Then back to 30 degrees.
Half-term: Singapore. Cece turns 3.
Universal Studios. Night Safari. Gardens by the Bay with the light show. Hawker centres for dinner. Then Cece starts Green School Early Years. 2.5 hours from Bali.
Nyepi. Bali's Day of Silence.
The entire island shuts down for 24 hours. No lights, no noise, no traffic. You can see every star in the sky. The kids will never forget it.
Easter: Japan. 10 days.
Cherry blossom season. Bullet trains at 200mph. Kyoto temples. Theo eats ramen in Tokyo. A ryokan in Hakone with Mount Fuji outside the window. An experience that rewires how the kids see the world. 7 hours from Bali.
Half-term: Sri Lanka.
Elephants in the wild. Train rides through tea plantations. Ancient temples in the jungle. Surfing on the south coast. A country that feels like Bali's older, wilder cousin. 4.5 hours from Bali.
Summer: Australia & Fiji. Then England.
Fly to Sydney (6 hours). Opera House, Bondi, koalas. Then on to Fiji (5 hours from Sydney) for a week on a private island with the kids. White sand, warm water, the kind of holiday you thought only existed in magazines. Then 2 weeks in England before heading back.
Back to Bali. Year two begins.
Komodo liveaboard. Swimming with manta rays. He's six and he's done more than most adults will do in a lifetime.
Year two holidays
Oct: New Zealand. 10 hours. Queenstown, Milford Sound, glaciers. The kids see snow for the first time.
Dec: Christmas in England again.
Feb: Vietnam. 4 hours. Ha Long Bay on a junk boat. Hoi An lanterns. Street food for a pound.
Apr: Thailand. 4 hours. Chiang Mai elephants. Bangkok temples. Phuket beaches.
Jul: Borneo. 3 hours. Orangutans. Rainforest canopy walks. Then home via England.
Weekends: Lombok, Nusa Penida, Komodo, Flores. All under 2 hours. 17,000 Indonesian islands to explore.
From Streatham, our half-term options are Center Parcs and the Algarve. From Bali, it's the entire Asia-Pacific.
The Numbers
It makes financial sense too
We save on tax, spend on lifestyle, and still put money away. Including our usual holiday budget.
| London Now | Bali Proposed | |
|---|---|---|
| Tax on Will's salary | ~$340,000 (45%) | ~$246,000 (32.5%) |
| Net income | $416,000 | $510,000 |
| Housing | $0 (our house, no mortgage) | $100,000 |
| Full household staff | $45,000 (nanny only) | $33,000 (5 staff) |
| Schools | $0 (state) or $50,000 | $30,000 (Green School) |
| Holidays (our usual budget) | $126,000 | $126,000 |
| Everything else | $64,000 | $126,000 |
| Total lifestyle spend | $235,000 | $415,000 |
| Surplus | $181,000 | $95,000 |
Yes, London has a higher surplus. But in London, $235k buys a part-time nanny and state school. In Bali, $415k buys a villa with a pool, five staff, Green School, and holidays in Japan and the Maldives. The surplus is smaller because the life is bigger.
The honest answers
What you're probably thinking
"What about friends?"
We'll make new ones. Bali's expat community is full of families like ours, from 40+ countries, founders, creatives, people who chose a different path. The kids will grow up with friends from everywhere. And so will we. That's not a loss. That's an upgrade.
"Is it safe for the kids?"
Bali has one of the lowest violent crime rates in the world. We'll live in a gated compound with a pool, a driver, and a nanny. No scooters with kids. No traffic exposure. Safer than the South Circular.
"What about healthcare?"
BIMC Hospital is 15 minutes away with English-speaking doctors. Singapore is a 2.5-hour flight for anything serious. We'll have full international health insurance covering everything.
"What will I do?"
Whatever you want, and that's the point. You could train seriously (the fitness and wellness infrastructure in Bali is world-class). You could study something. You could start something of your own, the expat community is full of women who built businesses there. Or you could just be present with the kids in a way that's impossible when you're also the cook, the cleaner, the school-run driver, and the laundry service. The staff don't replace you. They free you.
"Is it like Dubai?"
No. Dubai was infrastructure and air conditioning. Bali is culture, nature, and community. The expat scene here isn't bottle-service brunches, it's founders, artists, and families who chose substance over show. There are temples and ceremonies every week. The kids will grow up understanding a different culture from the inside, not just looking at it from a hotel window.
"What about our home?"
It stays. No mortgage. A 4-bed Victorian house that's not going anywhere. We lock the door, set the alarm, and come back to it in two years. It's our safety net, our exit plan, and probably worth more when we return than when we leave. Nothing is being given up. Everything is being added to.
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Why not somewhere else?
We looked hard at the alternatives
Barbados
West coast, near Sandy Lane. 8.5 hours direct from Gatwick. English-speaking. British legal system. Cricket and rum. On the surface, an easier version of "abroad."
We researched it properly. Looked at property on the Platinum Coast ($10-15k/month for a 4-5 bed villa with pool). Costed Codrington School (the only credible international option, IB curriculum, 170 students). Mapped the staff market, the cost of living, the healthcare.
But four things killed it:
Safety: Barbados recorded 50 murders in 2024, a 158% jump from 2023. Its homicide rate hit 18.2 per 100,000, the highest in its history. Robberies more than doubled. Gun violence is surging. Indonesia's national homicide rate is 0.4 per 100,000. Bali is 45 times safer.
Hurricanes: Category 4 Hurricane Beryl made direct landfall on Barbados in July 2024, the first Category 4 to hit the island in recorded history. Six months of the year (June to November) you're in the hurricane zone. Bali has no equivalent weather risk.
Schools: One real option (Codrington), 30-40 minutes each way across the island. If it doesn't suit the kids, there's almost nowhere else to go. Bali has six international schools. If Green School isn't right, we switch to CCS the next term.
Cost: Barbados imports almost everything. Groceries are 40-100% more expensive than the UK. Electricity is $0.35-0.40 per kWh (among the highest in the Caribbean). A family of four spends $1,500-2,500/month on food alone. In Bali, you spend half that and eat better.
Travel: From Barbados, your holiday options are other Caribbean islands (beautiful but similar) and Miami. From Bali, it's Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, the Maldives. There's no comparison.
Barbados is a wonderful holiday. For two years with young children, it doesn't stack up.
Abu Dhabi
This was the frontrunner on paper. Zero personal income tax. Cranleigh School on Saadiyat Island, rated Outstanding by ADEK, English National Curriculum, combined annual fees of around $39,000 for both kids. A 5-bed villa with pool on Saadiyat for $10-13k/month, ten minutes from school. Full household staff (nanny, housekeeper, driver) for under $3,000/month. We know the UAE. We lived in Dubai before the kids. The infrastructure is world-class.
On 28 February 2026, the US and Israel launched strikes on Iran. Iran retaliated with missile and drone attacks across the Gulf. As of April 2026, Iran has fired 438 ballistic missiles and over 2,000 drones at UAE targets. Most were intercepted, but debris has fallen in residential areas near Abu Dhabi airport. One civilian killed, seven injured. Strikes have hit Dubai International Airport, Jebel Ali Port, and residential buildings in Abu Dhabi and Sharjah.
The Foreign Office has withdrawn British Embassy dependents and advises against all but essential travel to the UAE. Over 4,000 daily flights have been cancelled across Gulf airspace. Expats are leaving.
We're not ruling it out forever. If the conflict resolves and the region stabilises, Abu Dhabi becomes the strongest option financially. We'll revisit. But committing to a two-year move with a five-year-old and a two-year-old into an active conflict zone is not something we're willing to do. Bali is the safe, smart choice for right now.
The small things
Date night in Bali
The nanny is live-in. The driver is waiting. You walk out the door at 7pm. Dinner at a world-class restaurant is $60 a head. You're home by 10. No booking a babysitter two weeks in advance. No spending $200 before you've eaten. Every week if you want.
Sunday in Bali
The chef makes brunch. The kids swim. You read a book by the pool. At 11 you drive to a beach club. Potato Head or Finns. The kids play in the sand. You have a cold drink and watch the sunset. The driver takes you home. Dinner is ready.
Sunday in Streatham: Streatham Common. Soft play if it's raining. It's always raining.
The plan
How we get there
Research. Virtual tours. Applications.
Apply to Green School and CCS. Virtual property tours with David Charter's team. Visa process begins. School availability confirmed. All from Streatham.
Commit. Sign the lease. Confirm the school place.
Visa finalised. Staff hiring starts. Villa secured. Shipping arranged. It's real.
Wind down and fly out.
Close up the house. Ship essentials. Say the goodbyes. Arrive Bali late July with two weeks to settle before school starts.
Theo starts Green School. Term 1 begins.
The villa is set up. Staff are in place. The pool is warm. He walks into a bamboo classroom in the jungle. The adventure starts.
August 2026 - June 2028
If not now, when?
Theo is five. Cece is two. In five years, secondary school prep starts and the window closes. This is the moment. Two years. One adventure. The rest of our lives to be glad we did it.
Made with love. For Hayley.
Project Bali, April 2026