Philippines Retirement Destination - 10 reasons

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Sorry to disagree with this comment. It may depend where you live but for me living in UK, property in Philippines is comparatively very cheap. I would imagine that for anyone thinking of retiring in the philippines the cost of buying property or indeed renting would be very much lower than in almost every western country. Just my experience.

Maybe it's just that we have different understandings of what we call cheap.

A lot depends a lot on what you look for and where, and where you come from. If you replace a London place with a Phil place the latter will be very much cheaper. If you're from Anfield it won't be.

If you want a flat in Manila or Davao, then the prices (that I see on websites, resumably you can save if you look locally) won't be much different from flats in much of the UK (30-40k for a flat when we checked this winter, the flat that we got in the end would have been maybe 5-10k more expensive in Reading). Of course decent houses in the UK are ridiculously overpriced, so if you are looking for a decent house will be much lower in the Phils, especially if you go out of the cities. Houses elsewhere in the EU aren't as overpriced, though. Anyway, just because things are cheaper doesn't necessarily mean they are cheap, maybe they are just less expensive.

Of course there's the additional problem that as a foreigner your buying options are limited.

Depends what you mean by "VERY expensive".

Yes. The sum $2000 per month was mentioned in this thread. I would be surprised if that was possible - house, nurse, health insurance would eat much of it I'd imagine.

To be honest the article didn't focus on cost, it actually highlighted that the Philippines can offer high quality medical services, which is mainly so.
It also mentions care-quality, which is also good.
Look, a decent medical policy from UK would probably cost between £1500-£3500 per year generally, but don't forget that would also depend on pre-existing conditions and age etc etc etc.(there's a lot of etc's)

Yes. A lot depends on what one wants from the health insurance and if you insure in country or not, I guess. The mileage will probably vary wildly.

Does anybody here have experience with Bluecross or any other private phil health insurance? How reliable they are? We're thinking of setting one up for the family of my fiancee (brother, wife, 2 kids).

people actually "self-insure" for medical emergencies. Most older retirees are more concerned with support care and domicillary care as they get older.
Their wives can only be expected to do so much. But look, as you say yourself, labour costs are cheap. Means you can hire the care you want, even a full time fully qualified nurse if you need.
In the UK this is the biggest problem and most costly part of growing older. Think about it, but not too long or you'll get depressed and want to retire in Philippines.

I also noticed that there are more and more "retirement villages" in development which also seem to offer some great all round benefits and at comparative good costings too. Well worth it for some folks.

The practical issues of Medical and healthcare in the philippines is probably a topic worthy of it's own thread as there are so many important issue to consider.

Life is what you make of it.

Yes.


Btw: None of the above has much influence on my thinking regarding retirement in the Phils. The things that scare me away are:
1) Poverty. I really don't want to see that every day.
2) Corruption. Anybody can trump up any charges and if the right people are bribed you're in deep sh*t.
Of course there's also:
3) Why invest into someone/something who prevents my Asawa and Anak from being with me?