I'm Peat from Wales, my fiancée(unofficial) and I want to get married . On this site, after digging a bit, I was surprised to find most posts seem to be against settling in the Philippines is this the case or should I dig deeper ??
Welcome to British Filipino Peat, its a matter of preference really regarding moving to the Philippines, personally I wouldn't move there until retirement or can afford to retire as it is very unlikely you are going to find work paying the same salary as the UK The health service too is another one of my major concerns, my concerns are not necessarily other peoples concerns. Its all about pros and cons with a little bit of risk management thrown in
If you are seriously considering retiring in the Philippines then the members here already there can give you lots of advice. One important things to remember about the Philippines, a foreign National is not allowed to own property there.
Thanks again! BTW this site runs on open source methinks , I was 100% linux but I had to get the-can't-do-without-now-skype !
Hi Peat and welcome here Your main question regards the site being against the idea of settling in the Philippines, well in recent times it certainly seemed that way, however we have number of members who are ex-pats doing precisely that living in the Phils and enjoying it. Both opinions are represented here but we had one voice who was particularly dominant regards the 'negative' view of the Philippines. It is certainly true that it is not for everyone and you have to be completely honest with yourself and objective in making a choice to retire there, for me I will retire there eventually, so I am 'pro' Philippines but I am not blind to the dangers and downsides, so yes dig deeper or start threads to ask specific questions in that regard. I'm afraid not, it is closed source commercial software although in practice it can be edited by the end user however that is probably not such a great idea as it would prevent easy version upgrades. The forum software runs on either Linux or Microsoft platforms but is currently, and will remain, on Linux for the foreseeable future, please note that as you are a new member that the site is moving very soon to http://www.british-filipino.com Oh and my handle on here oss, just for clarity does not stand for Open Source Software Me I'm a Microsoft developer, I've not done much practical development on any Unix platform since the days of Sco
Hi and Peat I agree with Timmers' point of view. I also think some people may not be so keen to live there since the exchange rate is no where near as favourable as it used to be I suspect that if it ever got back to £1 = PHP90+, there could be more people buying PHP and moving there.
Even if it got back up to that kind of Exchange rate Mike local inflation has already eroded the purchasing power that would represent, our memories of the heyday of 100 peso to the pound are also memories of a time when rice cost less that 16 peso a kilo it is closer to 40 peso a kilo now, many other things have suffered the same kind of inflation. For example hotels, in 2004 you could get a great room in a quality hotel for 2000 peso a night about 20 quid even in a resort like Boracay you could manage those kind of prices, now the same hotels in Manila are closer to 4000 peso a night at a much poorer exchange rate. Many many things have suffered at the hand of local inflation over the years, but overall the cost of living is still probably a bit lower than here, just not to the very obvious extent it was some years ago. Wouldn't stop me moving there though
The health service there is actually very good and it is also cheaper than the UK, however that only means cheaper than UK private medical care, the reality in the Philippines is that everything medical related is going to cost you.
Only the healthcare aspect would put me off...especially as I'm over 60 now. I would need to have that sorted. In years gone by I never really gave it a thought, but fortunately never needed to use it either. I have lived there for several years at a time in the past....without problems.
I was running Ubuntu until earlier this year and had Skype running no problem. However Microsoft now owns the product and may well not update the Linux version as quickly as they're updating the Windows version. You say you might wish to retire to the Philippines: that's eminently do-able and they key is to choose your location with considerable care, taking into account natural disasters (volcanoes, earthquakes and typhoons), health needs (if you (will) have them, best to be in or near a big city), safety and family. Taking all of those into account, Davao ticks all the boxes for me. Have you visited - if so, where?
But his view was mostly moulded vicariously as he had very little experience of actually living here: he visited twice for what, 15 days?!
Hello Peat, Welcome aboard. If you like some bedtime reading you might be interested to read my reflections and experiences on relocating here to Davao City. Take a look here:- http://www.british-filipino.com/index.php?threads/reflections-on-my-philippines-retirement.11159/ I've not lived here long arriving only in November 2014 but you might find some of my writing helps in developing your thought processes. How many visits have you made? which part of the Philippines did you go to? Have you experienced daily life here? There is a culture shock involved. Just how life impacting depends on you. For me it's been easy..........so far. We are still renting accommodation. Somewhat expensive but we'll not buy our retirement home just yet. Good luck in your quest.
Thank you all for your welcome! I must confess that I am totally new to this type of site , so please excuse me for any lack of decorum in my replies. I shall have to dig much deeper....! My reference to open source was casual .. no time or inclination to explore OSes !
