Why do I want to retire in the Philippines?

Just about everyone that knows me has heard me talking about retiring and moving to the Philippines. The thought first came to my mind shortly after meeting and falling in love with my Filipina wife. When she told me about her father, who had been a career U.S. Navy man, who had retired after a Navy career and moved back home to the Philippines. He and his wife had 4 children while in the Navy and my wife and her younger brother were born in the Philippines after his retirement.

The amazing thing is that they built a beautiful home and put 6 children through college in the Philippines only on a U.S. Navy enlisted retirement. Being someone that always wants to stretch the dollar as far as possible, I found the idea of retiring in the Philippines to very interesting.

When I first brought up the idea to my wife, she said she didn't want to retire in the Philippines. I'm not sure if this was reverse psychology or not (on her part), but since then I seem to have convinced her and we began making our plans for retirement. That was about 10 years ago. Now that were getting closer to the retirement date, there is rarely a day that goes by where she doesn't look at me with excitement and say "I can't wait to move to the Philippines!!!"

Many of my friends in the states thought it was a crazy idea. The reason for this was because for many of the early years of deciding to retire to the Philippines, I had never actually been to the Philippines. I had done as much research about the Philippines archipelago as I could find online and the more I read the more I was convinced that this would be the life for me. My wife has said many times to friends, "He knows more about the Philippines than I do."

It wasn't until the summer of 2015 that I actually made my first trip to the Philippines. I met many of my wife's friends and family and everything that I had read about the friendliness and kindness of the Philippine people proved to be incredibly true. Even though the country has a high degree of poverty, the people you see are always smiling and offering what little they have at nearly every turn.

Sure, there are people that see a foreigner and immediately see a "rich" person that they believe has all the money in the world. With this you see a lot of outstretched hands. It doesn't hurt to occasionally drop a few pesos into some of those hands. I don't know about you, but I feel good about helping out the less fortunate. You just need to be careful about bringing out money in certain areas and it can make you a target as a sucker for donations.

I now have about a year and a half left before I am able to retire and live out my dream life in a tropical paradise. After the move, we will build our dream home on the property that was left to her by here grandfather when she was young. I have two children, ages 8 and 11 that are excited about living in the Philippines as we have talked about this to them for there entire lives. After their visits to the Philippines they are very excited and eager to make the move.

The kids at Grandma's house.