With the rising costs in UK, the strikes and protests, as well as Shell announcing £39.9 billion profits, it seems immoral that people should be struggling with monthly household bills, especially energy bills. It has now been announced increases in interest rates and the increase cost of water facilities here in UK. Question being how costly or cheaply would you say it is to live in Philippines these days. Obviously there is the added cost of medical care if needed, but apart from that, what's your average outgoings per month, living modestly with the occasional restaurant outing, not including rent or ownership of a property.
Eating out is much cheaper over here also booze is miles cheaper, food more expensive, diesel and petrol cheaper, Beach life fantastic and free(unless you include table and chairs). Electric P12 per kwh, gas about P1,000 depends on size of the bottle, Public transport cheaper, bikes, cars, trucks, much cheaper. Weather priceless. Filipinos great people not like the grumpy lot in the UK.
For us, with no rent, we are 850 - 950 USD. A portion of that is due to constant maintanace and upkeep of the property outside municipal services. Also, our furbabies eat REALLY REALLY well. Also, you will NOT find my wife doing laundry like this:
Wife and I have many Friends (thankful for that) so every week we get on average 4 invites to a buffet lunch or dinner due to a multitude of celebrations. That amounts to all you can eat or drink. Have to factor that in, in our case as clearly it's beneficial. We own where we live so all the rest is anywhere from 12,000 to 25,000 Peso's per Month. When we travel and do the resort and eating out thang, the Month can run us 50 to 60 thousand Peso
John I would suggest my monthly expenses to be between £600 to £750 a month, this is for a family of 4 living a fairly modest but reasonable lifestyle without extreme penny pinching, living in a small practical insulated house keeps our Electric bill low to around £30 month but I would hazard a guess to say the average there will be closer to £90, last year there was a guy on DI bleating that his bill was rising to P13K that is £200, Btw he was a builder? I go to the Bar 3 times a week so my weekly bill will be around £20 and perhaps another £10 for the beers I have at home, we have a fairly small car 1.5ltr engine and that will use about £30 a month in fuel, so the fuel for both myself and the car is around £150, we never eat out all that often, likely it is less than half the price of UK, but mostly this can be a bad experience there in my view, as the standard of service is poor? There are a few better places to eat especially in the City which are almost to western standards and there you can expect to pay around 40% less than the equivalent meal in UK. If I had my family over here in UK I could feed the 4 of us on fairly nutritious meals for around £100 a week, all in my household expenses are £600 a month, this being mostly council tax and energy costs, I now make my own home brew and a months supply of 10gall cost me £25 perhaps another £75 on fuel for the car so in total that would be £1,100 a month add another £100 and we could have a couple of meals out together in a family friendly place. Now here is the Kicker our two boys can benefit from getting a Scottish Education free of charge, the get that in PH they would have to go to a high end private school and this would cost £200 each per month. There is a lot more things to see and do here at quite low cost for a family. To sum up on this I would Guesstimate to support a family of 4 here in UK with two children is 35 to40% more expensive that it would be in PH, but the benefits it has to the children such as free healthcare including dental and education far outweighs the higher cost.
You are entitled .... and there are many of us here as well. I can't imagine life without having a whinge occasionally.