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Trends in Moving to the PH
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Why are many now migrating permanently to the Philippines?
alabamabirddog
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Why are many now migrating permanently to the Philippines?
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Hello. I am a lawyer in the Philippines and I have had a lot of clients who are from the US and the UK who have migrated to the Philippines. They are living as permanent residents and have made the Philippines their retirement home. Here are some of the reasons they gave me which I will share here: The standard of living is low in the Philippines so their retirement money buys more in the Philippines than it would in their home country. If they get a basic pension of about $2000 a month, that is like P100,000.00 in the Philippines. They can buy a condo or rent one and live in comfort. They can even hire someone to do the household chores.They love the weather here. It's mostly sunny, and when it gets too hot, they can usually afford air conditioning in their homes. When it does rain, it does so for just a few days at a time. Most of them hate the thought of coping with winter at their age, shoveling snow from the driveway or shoveling their car out from being buried under a ton of snow.They settle outside Manila, some in the provinces where the beach is a 5-minute walk away, the mountains are in their backyard. The Philippines is a country of great biodiversity and it doesn't cost too much to experience natural wonders here. Some retirees who have worked hard all their lives want to explore nature, enjoy the beauty of nature, and live near it.I know a few expatriates who have established businesses in the Philippines. I know one who has built a bar and restaurant. I know one who started a small sushi place. I know one who runs a bed and breakfast. They find it easy to start a business using their retirement money as capital. Some of them marry Filipinos and run the businesses with their spouses or partners.Some retirees actually find love in the Philippines. They marry Filipinos and have children. It is easier to support a family and to raise children in the Philippines. A good education costs cheaper in the Philippines than in their home countries.For foreigners who have found partners and spouses in the Philippines, they usually also find an extended family. In the Philippines, we have very few nursing homes. We tend to care for the elderly members of our families in our intergenerational homes. The extended family system is the Filipinos' social support. Some foreigners without immediate families in their native countries, because they are divorced or widowers, want to grow old surrounded by some kind of family, even if it is an adoptive family or a family by affinity. They do not want to die alone in a nursing home so they establish a family in the Philippines.It is easy to get medical treatment in the Philippines. Again, hospitalization in the Philippines is a fraction of what it would cost in other Western countries. Medications here do not cost as much, either.It is easy for foreigners to live in the country because Filipinos understand English. One of the official languages of government is English. TV programs are in English. The news is in English. Traffic signs are in English, as well.Most Filipinos are hospitable and welcoming to foreigners. We are not generally hostile to foreigners. Foreigners find it easy to be socially mobile in the Philippines.The food in the Philippines is cheap and there is a great variety of cuisines they can enjoy. The Philippines has local as well as imported food available in the market.The Philippines has been marketed as a retirement destination. It is more fun in the Philippines.
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It is a great place to live on a budget. There are draw backs the chances of your foreign insurance being accepted are next to none. If you are a foreigner, you can buy a condo, but not land and the resell market in condos is next to nothing with as many as keep being built. However with that said if you can adapt to the weather and are in relatively good health and have a retirement income it is a wonderful place. I have a nice comfortable 2 bed 1 bath house in a gated subdivision I rent for P6500 or roughly $130 my water bill has never been over $5 and my electricity runs about $40, though if I ran my aircon all day every day it would be another $100 to $150. /*Believe it or not you can get by with just a fan and cool drinks*/ My fiber internet and home phone runs P1900 or $38. My HD cable with HBO is $20. Streaming services are about the same price as in the US and an additional $10 to $15 for a VPN app is needed to watch all the American shows, but worth it both for cyber security and because some things like my American bank throw fits when I try and log in from abroad. Incidentals I live in the northern area of Davao. Downtown is 30 minutes by taxi and costs me around $3 at the worst of times. My most expensive taxi ride was $10 going from my home in the north to a restaurant in the southwest of the city while fighting rush hour traffic and that was $10, it was $6 on the way home well after midnight. Tricycles can be had at the bottom of my hill for p20 anywhere close like the street market, 7–11 or the Jeepney terminal. A Jeepney is 20 minutes to the mall or 45 to downtown and costs me P10 or about 20 cents to go into downtown. When you hear about the mall here n the Pinas, that is where everything is located from the hardware store to the grocery store and everything in between since it is much easier to cool a mall than a bunch of small buildings like an American strip mall where you would find all the incidental places in. My wife and I spend P5000 once a month and another P1000 to P1500 per week on groceries. We don’t eat excessive amounts of food or a lot of expensive meats at home. We save that for going out to nicer restaurants. This is actually more food than we need, so we send things home with her mother when she comes to visit about once a month. A luxury buffet costs about $12 per person for lunch or $15-$18 for supper and on the weekends but well worth it. A luxury buffet will have huge amounts of delicious meats often including roast beef, lamb, lechon, and fine seafood. My favorite midweek lunch buffet has grill it at your table and Peking Duck, as well as some other duck offerings. My other two favorites have beer on tap and custom house made soft drinks /*sugary but very tasty*/. Non-luxury non-buffet places can be had for half the price or less. We go to the big night market about once a month and eat barbecue, drink beer, and sample all the other treats for less than $20 in total. Movies are $5 or less and while they don’t have every US movie, they do have the major ones played in English at the nice mall theaters. I used to pay 3 to 4 times as much for a similar theater in the US. The wife and I go to the karaoke bar, eat and drink for about $20 in total Kerry Baldwin points out if you have kids here it will be a bit more, but not a lot more. My figures are from before we had relatives move in with us, but even with her 2 sisters, her aunt and her 5 kids our fixed costs are only about $100 more than his.