Retire in the Philippines...

CJ NV · Jan 10, 2014

Is there anyone retired from the Philippines here?.Am I in the wrong place?.I really felt left out...

Daly City RN · Jan 26, 2014

I am a Filipino American registered nurse who have "retired" from my acute care hospital nursing job a little over five years ago after working for over 27 years in a large trauma center in Northern California. I am now working part time outside of hospital setting and it is a lot less stressful! (I did not retire in the Philippines, but please continue reading)

About ten years ago I had plans to retire in the Philippines and dreamed about all the beautiful places in the Philippines I wanted to visit. When my spouse and I vacationed in the Philippines we looked at a couple of luxury condos in Makati where we could possibly buy a unit. I was pretty excited at first, but reality set in after we realized we were pretty comfortable and felt protected in our luxury hotel. We had hired drivers to shuttle us to wherever we wanted to go. Everyday we ate in different restaurants and we thoroughly enjoyed fine Filipino foods. But we realized that if we were going to settle in the Philippines it would not be like taking a vacation anymore and we would not be sleeping in the comfort of a luxury hotel room. The extremely chaotic traffic, undisciplined drivers, air pollution, high crime rate and pretty crowded cities put a stop to my dream of retiring in my country of birth.

However, I know of a Fil-Am couple who sold their 4-bedroom house in the U.S., they moved to the Philippines and they bought a luxury condo near NAIA. I heard that they are having the time of their lives in their golden years. Their health is good at this time but if they live long enough, realistically their health will eventually decline as they age. Unless you live right across a top notch Philippine hospital, I have serious doubts about being taken by ambulance to a good hospital in a timely manner as they do it here in the U.S. The traffic in Metro Manila will slow down any ambulance responding to a medical emergency. This should be taken into consideration by you.

Nurses in acute care hospitals in California, by law, cannot be assigned more than five patients in Med Surg units. In the Philippines, nurses even in private hospitals are given 15, 20 or more patients! As a nurse of more than 30 years of work experience in the U.S., I know that hospitals in the Philippines are less safe because of overworked nurses. If you need emergency blood trasfusion, you better find someone who matches your blood type who is willing to sell his/her blood to you. My cousin needed blood transfusion when he traveled to the Philippines. He was told that the hospital did not routinely stock blood and my cousin had to buy blood from a blood "donor."

it is not all negative though. As you may know very well, labor cost in the Philippines is very affordable. You can hire domestic helpers to clean your house and to cook your meals. If you need caregivers, they are also pretty affordable. I like waking up in the morning and not have to cook breakfast because the maid does the cooking for you, every morning! You never have to clean toilets ever again. Your pension paid in U.S. dollars goes a long way in the Philippines.

And that is pretty nice!

CJ NV · Jan 28, 2014

Thanks Mr.Daly City RN for your comments.It's so enlightening.At first I didn't think of it that way but as I kept on reading your post,I finally realized the important point I'm missing.All I kept thinking is the last part of your post,the affordability of retiring there rather than here....