Questions about Cost of Living in the Philippines

[have2fly]

How much is cost of living in Philippines right now? What are the best cities to live with family-suitable girls, clean streets and decent food?

[publicduende]

How much is cost of living in Philippines right now? What are the best cities to live with family-suitable girls, clean streets and decent food?

This question has been asked a million times

Short answer: there is no one size fit all lifestyle in the Philippines.

Renting a luxury 1BR condo in the most modern business district in Manila (Bonifacio Global City) is at least $1,500 a month, and then you're surrounded by buildings, infrastructure, shops and restaurants that wouldn't be out of place in Singapore. Since almost everything there is more pricey, for a decent lifestyle with cleaning service twice a week, a couple of restaurant meals a week, quality clothing, mall shopping, drinks and partying with your newly-found, well-educated Filipinos and international friends, you would need at least $2,500 a month. Well, make it $3,000 if you have a girl to routinely impress While that's still lower than what you would pay in Singapore, Hong Kong or - heaven forbid - NYC or London, it would not even qualify as living in the Philippines: you are essentially living in a bubble, populated by the creme de la creme of locals and expats.

On the other side of the spectrum, you have what many old retirees on a $1,200/month pension do. They hook up with a brown-skinned, uneducated girl from the deep countryside in Mindanao, they rent a modest house or, if they have a chance and some savings, they build it, and live there frugally. If you buy your groceries and beers from the local supermarket or roadside stalls, if you almost never even venture into town for as much as a mall dinner, you can live comfortably with that $1,000/1,200 a month.

It all depends on what you want your life to be. The closer your lifestyle approximates that of the average poor or lower-middle-class Pinoy, the less you will spend, but the more you will need to compromise in terms of first-world living standards and items, and the more you will be exposed to financial uncertainty if something unexpected happens, like a disease that requires hospitalisation and hospital bills, which in the PH are not cheap.

About the girls, in the Philippines there is no definition of rock bottom for poverty. Even the most destitute Western man, with absolutely nothing to show for, will be able to find a woman who is even more destitute than him and will accept to be with him because, in her eyes, it will be still an improvement.