How And Why The Philippines - Cost Of Living

Before I get into life, living, and Filipina's, I'm going to get a few things out of the way. Cost of living is one of them. But first I want to apologize for the way pictures are loaded onto the site - I can't copy and paste to these postings, and I don't know HTML so I can't change around how the page is laid-out. At least, not yet.
Right, the cost-of-living is ridiculously cheap compared to the States (or Europe). I lived mostly on the west coast of the U.S., and the California lifestyle begins and ends with large amounts of money.
In San Diego, in 1990, for instance, I rented a two bedroom house in a bad neighborhood for $600 a month, and I considered myself lucky. Never mind all of the other expenses for power, phone, garbage pick-up, and so forth. Iit costs a lot to live there.

HOW and WHY I moved to the Philippines... It Could Happen To You.
The abbreviated version:
I was injured while working on a construction job in 1984 and my earnings fell to only receiving workers compensation; and my wife at the time had to start working full-time to help cover costs. But I was on workers compensation for over six years; and it didn't take long before all savings and anuities were wiped out. Like too many American families, we lived month to month with nothing left over after the bills were paid.
With a permanent back injury, I was out of the rat-race for good and was, in 1990, sent to the retirement farm, and Social Security Assistance payments became my only means of income.
Before long, with little money to satisfy my wife's taste for what the green stuff could provide her, I soon had no wife, and had to find a way to live alone on SSA. In America that's just about impossible unless one decides to turn over his or her life to the bureaucrats and feed at the trough of Medi-Cal, general assistance, an assisted housing allowance, welfare, ad nauseum.

The puppet's life is not for me. I might be a half-broke down, half-old guy with half-zeimers, but I have some pride left. I left California and tried to live cheaply in a small town in Arizona. It was cheaper, but still not cheap enough. I realized that I was priced out of the American dream. I didn't want to spend my end-days as an invisible man pushing all of my earthly posessions in a grocery-cart down crowded lonely streets.
I had internet service, so I started researching the possibilities of moving to another country where I could live within my means. You may be doing that very thing yourself as you read my blog for similar infomation.
My initial interest was in Costa Rica. It's still close to the States, the government is stable and the country ecologically enlightened. The weather is magnificent if one lives on the Pacific side of the mountains, and the Tico's speak Spanish - an easy language to learn and very grammatically similar to English. I'd be there at this moment if I could.
But I could see that American developers had also discovered Costa Rica, and though I could have afforded to live there in 1995, before ten years had gone by I knew I would probably find myself looking for another cheaper country to move to.
If you're going to become an expatriate and you don't have much money, you'd be smart to plan to move only once. You may find yourself trapped somewhere you don't want to be.

Okey-dokey... look elsewhere. I remembered the Philippines from when I was in the Navy in the 1960's. The weather's pretty good, though more humid than Costa Rica. The humidity is not overly bad, relative to the rest of Southeast Asia. I remembered the women as being very beautiful and extremely loving and loyal, and having a preference for older men as husbands - but more on that later.
I set my efforts to researching the Philippines, and it proved to be viable as a long-term retirement spot.
While on the Internet, as you must have discovered by now while researching the Philippines yourself, you will eventually be bounced to Personals sites like Yahoo; pen-pal sites, etc. Meet Filipina's for love and romance!
I originally thought to use some of those sites to get free access to people who could tell me first-hand and truthfully what life in the Philippines - and real time cost-of-living - was like. That can work well. Other types of sites have their own agenda to get you to go to the Philippines - MONEY. But local people are the real deal.
As you may have guessed, I started a long-term email relationaship with one particular woman and, long story short, visited her and married her before I really got to know her well, but from from letters and email's. Another time I'll tell you why that's usually a terrible idea, but briefly, though you may get truthful info about the Philippines, you probably won't get much, if any, honesty about the girl on the other end of your email's. It's far better to move here first, and for many reasons I'll describe later. One very important piece of information to consider, however, is that there is no divorce in the Philippines, and getting an annulment can take from a minimum of 3-years to 15-years. The Catholic church has a death-grip on this country and virtually everything is filtered one way or another through the church.
My own annulment case is 3 1/2-years old and growing older. Make a mistake in your choice and it can become a mighty big headache for you.

Cost-of-Living: All rates are based on P56=$1.00 (USD)

You now know that I live here and support myself entirely from my Social security benefits, so you also know, then, that it must be pretty cheap to live here. Well, that's both true and not true. Yes, you can live here cheaply, but how do you equate that to quality of life?
For instance, I'm living in a compound of rental houses with a caretaker on the premises. That's common for foreigners; we need to protect our possessions. A stand alone house can and will be be a target to thieves. This is a very poor country, and most have very little or next to nothing. For a huge number of people, basics such as food are a daily chore to find. Hunger is common, and many go hungry often. As a foreigner, you absolutely will be viewed as rich, and what you have in your house will be highly desirable to many. So living in a stand-alone house without a full-time live-in housekeeper is not a great idea. After being here awhile that will change with experience and wisdom.
A full-time live-in housekeeper would cost you about P2000 to 3000 ($40-50) a month, but she will do everything you need done, from cleaning the house, cooking your meals, washing clothes and dishes, ironing, sweeping and caring for the yard, shopping, paying your bills, and more. I had a part-time house keeper who did all of those things for P1500. She worked for me for 2-years and I grew to trust her. I later learned what a very talented actress she was. I discovered she'd been deceiving me all along and was skimming money in some pretty ingenious ways and more than doubling her income. Rule number one for those living in the Philippines: keep your eyes open and trust no one.
My telephone bill for unlimited local calls is about P800 ($14). The Internet is not so cheap. You will still have to pay by the hours of usage: 50-hours of time will normally cost around P1400 ($25). When you exceed your time/contract the rates go up to at least P25 per hour which can quickly turn your $25 monthly fee into $45 or more. It happened to me enough times.
The Internet is your life-line to your home country. Snail-mail is just too slow, and you may find that a lot of your mail never arrives, opened prematurely -and illegally - by postal workers.
Mail: Corruption is a way of life in every facet of the government of the Philippines. The mail service workers are notorious thieves. Lots of foreign men send money (foolishly) to Filipina's through the mail, or those who live here receive retirement and pension checks; OFW's (Off-shore Foreign Workers - Filipino's) and Filipino expatriates living in places like the U.S., collectively send billions of pesos and presents home to their families. Most of the money is sent through wire services, but a lot is just put into envelopes and boxes and mailed. The mail workers know that all too well and very often treat the mail office like their own private candy store. There's been a number of instances where I never received letters from my mother and others. Anything of importance should be sent by Fed-Ex or another courier company.
Do your banking online. Before you leave your home country, you have a lot of preparations to do. The smartest thing you can do for yourself is to keep your home bank account if you bank with a large international company such as Bank America who have a website and have foreign offices. Keeping your bank account at home will better protect your money. The Philippine banks don't have the same protections, such as F.D.I.C., that you enjoy there. Only 100,000 pesos of all of your accounts in one Philippine bank is guaranteed. That's only $1785.00!
In addition to better protections at your home-land bank, your interest rates will be better, also.
You will want to open two accounts here - A dollar (pound, franc, etc.) account and a peso account. Since first writing that, I have dropped my Peso account and only have a dollar account. The peso fluctuates constantly. If you pay attention you can increase your income by selling dollars.
If you have a dollar account, then you can deposit your home-land checks just as you do now, and only dollars will be deposited by the bank to that account. Later you can exchange (sell) them for pesos at a time when the exchange rate in is your favor and make a small profit.
If you deposit your country's money as pesos, then the deposit will reflect the exchange rate of that day of deposit only! If the exchange rate rises in your favor the following week or month your pesos will still only be worth what they were the day you deposited them.
Your peso account should offer ATM services. You'll have to ask for it; it's not automatically given to you with any account like it is at home. Having an ATM card will allow you to access extra money when you need it, if you're traveling or shopping in places like Manila or Cebu. And you will have to make trips to Manila to shop if you live in other outlying areas such as Palawan.
You won't need to bring a lot of checks with you. You'll probably be making most all of your purchases and bill payments with cash. I have only used about 12 checks in the 3+ years I've been here, and they've all been deposits to my bank account. I only move money from the States every 4-5 months. Since the cost of living is so much less in the Philippines, and the banks here, with the exception of a few of the largest banks, aren't all that safe (bank closings), you're better off depositing enough money to live on for 4--6 months. Leave the rest at home.
In June, 2005, I was notified by the Philippine National Bank (PNB) that they will no longer accept foreign check deposits above $2000 USD. So now I have to deposit two checks where I used to only deposit one. THat means I have to use 8-12 checks a year.
Be sure to notify all of your banks, credit card companies, etc., that your are moving to the Philippines and that they should expect to see all transactions reflecting that. Otherwise they may think your cards have been compromised by a thief and close your card accounts. You should also tell them that they should not see activities in your home country. And notify them before you make a trip home that you're returning to your home country for a visit so they won't refuse payments or close down your cards.
You have to think about all these things. It's important to keep things flowing smoothly. Just getting on the phone or driving to the BofA office won't be so simple when you're 8000 miles from home!

DSL (broad band) has recently been introduced by the national telephone company, PLDT. I had it installed last month, and I now have full-time unlimited Internet access. It costs P2000 ($35) for installation and P2500 ($45) a month for 125 Kbps (yes, BIG K= megabytes) of speed, and P3000 ($54.50) for 200Kbps. It works very, very well. It sounds expensive, but it actually turned out to about the same as buying blocks of time from an dial-up Internet company, since I almost always exceeded my time allotment.
There's no charge for garbage pickup, but lots of trash winds up strewn on the street and is ravaged by hungry dogs, who aren't pampered (or even neccesarily fed) as they are in the States. Dogs and cats mostly fend for themselves. Six months ago, in 2005, the city introduced rolling garbage cans with lids and now have new garbage trucks that automatically lift them. The streets are much cleaner. Things are improving. But the dogs, already skin and bones, are looking anorexic.
Electricity is comparably inexpensive. My monthly bill normally runs about P1300-1700 ($23-30). Besides the refrigerator, TV, PC, weekly ironing, and other standard stuff, I run two fans all day and evening everyday, and I run one of those fans 24-hours non-stop in the bedroom. It's always hot or very warm year-round, save for the cool days when it rains. The air is sweltering and, for me anyway, sleeping would be difficult without the fan moving the air. So don't bring your winter clothes when you move here!
Although I have an A/C in the bedroom I don't use it much, but that's just because I don't much like A/C. When I do use it, that's when the electric bill goes to P1700 and beyond. There've been cost increases in 2005. Not by much, but still rising slowly.
Rent and the typical house: I have a one bedroom house that my darlin,' Celine, and I share. You'll see a photo of it - or what you can see of it in the picture. Carpentry skills here are mostly that of a mid-level imbicile. For the most part, 'skilled worker' is a contradiction in terms.
Houses aren't built by developer's as they are in the States. Each one is individually built by someone without much knowledge; plans and blueprints will not often be employed.
Most houses built for Pinoy are built by the owner and his entire family, and the house will be made of bamboo and rattan with a covering of nipa leaves as the roof. The interior wood frame-work will be plainly visable. Tree trunks are a popular frame-bracing technique in places like the living-room.
Houses built for use by foreigners loosely resemble American building techniques.
There's not a level floor(cement) in my house. Nothing else is level, either. The walls, conventional in that they have sawed wood and are covered with plywood have very little interior cross-bracing and they undulate (they're wavy). There's very little uniformity in board size. Most everything is cut using a hand saw. Few "craftsmen" use power tools. Cement is hand mixed on the ground in the dirt and carried to the "pour" one bucket-load at a time.
You can have a well-made, beautiful two story American style 4 bedroom, two bath house built. It would normally cost about one to two million pesos. Man, that sure sounds like a lot of Dough-ray-me! But, do the math... at current exchange rates, P1,000,000 equals $17,857.00. Not bad.
A stove is commonly a portable two-burner affair set on a counter-top or small table and fueled by a propane tank on the floor. There's no oven. You can purchase a U.S. style stove/oven, but it's not that easy to get. It would probably have to be bought in Manila and shipped. I usually baked my food in the States, and I miss it. Now, I fry using olive oil.
The kitchen sink will, more often than not, be made of ceramic tiles (which tends to leak at the corners) and the single tap will be an outdoor-style spigot that would commonly be used in the West for a garden hose. There will very rarely be hot water. Hot water tanks are as rare as Cadillacs (I've never seen a Cadillac here). Who needs hot water when it's always hot?
If you want hot water, the typical choice is to install (at your expense) an electric P.O.E., or Point-Of-Exit water heater. It has to be turned on to use and works pretty well.
Once a week, Celine cleans the sinks and counter-tops with soap and hot water from the stove. Also bleach is used to kill germs.
I should add that I've never once gotten sick from anything, not even a cold.
The C.R. (Comfort Room): Otherwise know as the bathroom.
There are far more gravity toilets in the Philippines than the conventional flush toilet. I have no love for them and never use a gravity toilet if I can help it. For the uninitiated, a gravity toilet almost always sits away from the wall, most often all the center of the room. The size of these toilets is very small and there is no seat. The release of one's bowels is done in the method of one in the woods; one must squat over the toilet. Flushing the gravity toilet requires having large plastic drums (55 gallon) in the C.R. - this is standard throughout the Philippines. A pail is used to pour water into the toilet to "flush" it.
Most foreigners won't have to use them often, thank goodness.
Zippers down! One thing that truely disgusts me is seeing, and smelling, the common practice of men pissing anywhere they please. No Pinoy gives it a thought because everywhere one goes one will see it happening. Public bathrooms are virtually non-existent! The tricycle - motorbikes, "cabs," that are the Taxi's of the country - drivers stop and piss on the side of the road. They make little effort to hide. Even in the center of town you will see men pissing on the ground.
In front of the super market, three blocks from city center, some thirty to fifty tricycle (trike) drivers wait for shoppers to emerge. There is no public bathroom for them to use, and they're not allowed to enter the store where there is a C.R. for the customers. There is, however, a small 4-square-foot patch of dirt where a few small shrubs struggle to survive, because those poor bushes are drowned daily in urine. The stench is horrific when walking past the dirt patch with bags in hand to get into a trike for the ride home. The smell of urine is noticable when riding along the boulavards of any town.
I live three kilometers from city center. On any given trip to and from town, I can expect to see at least one, and as many as six men standing on the side of the road, zippers down, relieving themselves.

Showers are rare. Bathing is normally done by filling a bucket with cool water from the CR spigot and using a small plastic pail with a handle to pour the water over oneself. Of course there's a toilet; a little smaller than U.S. size. But then Pinoy (Filipino's) are smaller than most westerner's. There's a sink, but with only one tap for the cold/cool water.
Water is commonly supplied by a tank that sits about 30-feet in the air atop a girder platform. Water pressure is low, maybe 3 or 4 LBS psi. If you have a shower the water would usually just fall on you, not spray. I don't know what water costs, as water is included in my rent.
When I first got here I thought I would die from either a heart attack or the chills when I bathed. That water was cold! After six months I didn't give it much thought anymore. You adapt. Three years on, I like the cold water baths; it feels very refreshing. That coming from a die-hard hot-shower addict!
Drinking water should be purchased. I wouldn't recommend drinking tap water anywhere. There's no public (or private) sanitantion systems in the Philippines that I personally know of, though I guess there is some sort of sanitation system in places like Manila, Cebu or Davao. I do know, also, that there's lots of raw sewage run-off into the fowl smelling dead rivers that pass through Manila. Almost every house in the country uses a septic tank which leeches all waste into the ground. And most all tap water is pumped-up from that same ground into the raised tank that sends the water to the country's houses. The water is also heavily calcified. When I first arrived I used tap water for coffee and cooking, until I noticed the thick coating of calcite inside the kettle and on the pots.
There's lots of treated drinking water services and the water is cheap; two 2.5 kiloliters (about 10-gallons each) bottles cost around $1.50.
Again, my rent is P4000 ($71). I've seen a few really nice houses that were being rented by other foreigners with more money than I have. One was a 3-bedroom, 2-bath, with a large kithen and living room. The livingroom had a sunken floor covered with Epil wood - that's Teak wood to you. Epil/Teak grows here.
The property, with about half an acre of land, was fenced and covered with Bermuda grass. There were lots of trees, and Bougainvillea plants growing all over the house and porch. It was quite pretty and built with a much higher standard than the one I'm in. It would fit in anywhere in the States, and maybe even pass most state codes, as well. The rent for that house was P10,000 ($179) per month. That's too steep for me.
Food costs are less than in the States, maybe by half, perhaps less. I can't say anymore with accuracy since I've been gone too long.
If you're willing to go to the palengke (pah-leng-kay) - open market - to buy your meat it's less costly than going to the one-and-only supermarket on Palawan, but all the meats and fish lay out, unchilled, exposed all day to the open air and flies. The smell is pretty bad.
Fruits are cheap. Way cheap. A banana costs one peso (about a penny or less). And you can buy 30 or more different types of banana's. One, very delicious, tastes just like strawberries!
The supermarket is not as well laid out, or as aesthetically beautiful as you're used to. Nor is it filled with endless choices. In the three+ years I've been here it has constantly improved, however. There's quite a few products from the States you would find familiar. There's an import section that has some good product offerings. Of course, the import goods are more expensive. Milk comes in half-liter boxes and all of it is UHT treated ( I think that means, Ultra-violet Heat Treated), so it may or may not be in a chiller. It's mostly full-cream milk, though there's also skim milk offered. It doesn't taste at all like what I was used to in the U.S., but it's not bad, either.
In Februay, 2005, NCCC began selling yogurt/fruit cups. They're expensive at P38 each, but I love 'em. Then American Fresh orange juice appeared for about two months - I was in heaven! Then, as with most products, it disppeared again.
Recently. fresh strawberries from Baguio, appeared for a few weeks. It was the first strawberries I'd seen in four years. I made a pig of myself. I'm hoping they come again next year. Last week - July, 2005 - Kiwi's showed-up for one week. Now that's a fruit worth loving. Again, they were the first in 4-years. When will I see you again? When?