Why Foreigners Go Home After Retiring in the Philippines

Sometimes the Philippines didn’t change. Their equation did.

This article is part of the My Philippines Retirement Hub, a collection of observations, practical advice, and hard-earned lessons about retiring and living in the Philippines.

Before you decide to retire in the Philippines, there’s one question worth asking yourself.

Why are you coming here in the first place?

And if you’ve already moved here and you’re thinking about leaving, ask yourself the same question again.

Why did I come?

Not why some YouTuber told you to come.

Not because somebody promised you could live like a king on $1,500 a month.

Not because you spent two weeks on a beach, met a beautiful Filipina, drank cheap beer under a palm tree and decided you’d discovered paradise.

Why did you come?

Because I’ve noticed something about foreigners who eventually pack up and go home.

Sometimes the Philippines didn’t fail them.

Sometimes they didn’t fail at retirement either.

Their equation simply changed.

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My Equation Was Pretty Simple

I’m 77 years old and retired.

When I decided to live in the Philippines, my personal formula looked something like this:

No family obligations + no close friends tying me down + reasonably good health + steady monthly income + a sense of adventure + willingness to adapt to another culture + younger Filipinas who generally don’t consider an age gap the deal-breaker it often is in America = retirement in the Philippines.

That’s a mouthful.

But it worked.

And here’s the important part:

That was my equation.

It doesn’t have to be yours.

I’ve written before about Why I’m Not Fleeing the Philippines and why I’ve chosen to stay despite the frustrations that come with living overseas. But this is a different question: why do foreigners who once loved retiring here eventually decide it’s time to go home?

But this is a different question.

I think the answer is often simpler than we make it.

Something in their equation changed.

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I Didn’t Leave Much Behind

That may sound cold, but it’s important to understanding why living overseas works for me.

My parents are gone.

All five of my siblings—every one of them younger than me—are gone.

I don’t have elderly parents in America who may suddenly need someone to care for them.

There are no brothers or sisters calling because of a family emergency.

There aren’t grandchildren waiting for Grandpa to come over Sunday afternoon.

My friends were another matter.

I had friends in America, but most were younger than me.

They were married.

They were still working.

Many didn’t live particularly close to me.

When you’re retired and most of your friends aren’t, you quickly discover something.

Tuesday morning may be a beautiful day for golf.

Everybody else still has to go to work.

They can’t just drop everything because you feel like playing 18 holes.

So my social life wasn’t exactly bursting at the seams.

In fact, by the time I left America, my most dependable support network had four legs.

I lived alone with my two cats.

I had neighbors I barely knew and didn’t particularly care to know.

So when I boarded an airplane for the Philippines, I wasn’t abandoning a huge network of family, lifelong friends, grandchildren and social obligations.

That’s important.

Because many foreigners who eventually return home have exactly what I didn’t.

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Family Can Change the Equation

You can move thousands of miles away from your family.

That doesn’t mean you stop being part of it.

Mom gets sick.

Dad starts having trouble living alone.

A brother has a stroke.

A daughter gets divorced and needs help.

Grandchildren arrive.

Someone dies.

There are weddings.

Birthdays.

Graduations.

Christmases.

Life keeps happening.

And suddenly that ocean separating you from home feels much wider than it did when you bought your one-way ticket.

For someone with aging parents, children or grandchildren, retiring overseas can carry a price that doesn’t appear on any cost-of-living spreadsheet.

You miss things.

Sometimes very important things.

Maybe the retiree who happily moved to the Philippines at 62 suddenly finds himself at 70 with a 94-year-old mother who needs him.

The Philippines didn’t do anything wrong.

His equation changed.

And going home may be exactly what he needs to do.

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Health Can Change the Equation

This is the one none of us likes thinking about.

Especially when we’re older.

You can arrive in the Philippines healthy at 60 and be dealing with an entirely different body at 70.

Routine medical care is one thing.

A serious illness can be another.

For American military veterans, there’s an additional consideration: access to VA healthcare in the United States.

I’m a 100% disabled Marine veteran.

If I returned to America, I could receive VA medical care.

That’s not an insignificant benefit.

But at 77, getting there isn’t as simple as buying an airline ticket.

There’s the long transpacific flight.

Airports.

Security.

Connections.

Luggage.

Transportation after arrival.

Finding somewhere to stay.

And perhaps most importantly, leaving behind the people who form my support network here.

I’ve thought about this before.

Quite a bit, actually.

For me, at least right now, the answer remains the same.

I’d rather build the best life I can where I am than organize my life around where I might someday need medical treatment.

Another veteran could look at exactly the same situation and make exactly the opposite decision.

I’ve wrestled with that decision before in If I Fly, I Could Die, where I looked at the very real question of whether an older expat facing serious illness should endure the trip back to America for treatment or remain in the Philippines.

Neither one of us has to be wrong.

We simply have different equations.

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Money Can Change the Equation

Here’s another uncomfortable truth.

The Philippines may be less expensive than many parts of America.

That doesn’t mean it’s free.

And it certainly doesn’t mean every foreigner who arrives here is financially prepared to stay forever.

Some people come here with an image in their heads of endless cheap living.

Then reality starts nibbling away at the budget.

Imported food.

Air-conditioning.

Restaurants.

Entertainment.

Travel.

Helping a girlfriend.

Helping the girlfriend’s family.

Medical bills.

Visa expenses.

Unexpected emergencies.

Maybe somebody builds a house.

Maybe somebody starts a business.

Maybe somebody simply discovers that he enjoys Western comforts more than he thought he would.

Cheap living can become surprisingly expensive when you’re trying to recreate an American lifestyle in another country.

My financial equation works for me.

I receive Social Security and 100% VA disability compensation every month.

I rent a nice home.

I don’t own a car.

I don’t own property.

I don’t operate a business.

I can eat out when I want.

I can buy imported products when I want them.

My medications are affordable.

And I can live comfortably without checking my bank balance every time somebody suggests going out for dinner.

That’s a very different retirement from somebody watching his savings slowly disappear.

That’s also why I think anyone considering retirement here should understand The Real Cost to Live Comfortably in the Philippines before building a retirement plan around somebody else’s YouTube budget.

If the money runs out, paradise can start looking a lot less like paradise.

Again:

The Philippines didn’t necessarily change. The equation did.

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Sometimes the Honeymoon Ends

Almost everyone who moves overseas goes through some version of the honeymoon phase.

At first, everything is interesting.

The jeepneys are interesting.

The trikes are interesting.

The markets are interesting.

The food is interesting.

The language is interesting.

Even dealing with bureaucracy can be interesting because it’s different.

Then you’ve been here awhile.

The brownout isn’t an adventure anymore.

It’s another damn brownout.

The traffic isn’t colorful organized chaos anymore.

It’s traffic.

The guy who said he’d arrive at 10:00 and appears at noon isn’t giving you a fascinating lesson in Filipino culture.

He’s late.

The paperwork that made a funny Facebook story the first time isn’t nearly as entertaining the fifth time.

The Philippines didn’t change.

Your reaction to it did.

That’s where adaptability becomes important.

If you require the country around you to operate exactly the way America operated, you’re probably going to spend a lot of time frustrated.

I don’t.

That doesn’t mean I love everything about the Philippines.

I don’t.

It means I’ve learned which battles aren’t worth fighting.

That’s a lesson I’ve explored more fully in How to Live Peacefully in the Philippines—sometimes adapting to life here means knowing what you can change, what you can’t, and what simply isn’t worth ruining your day over.

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I Eliminated a Lot of Problems Before They Could Become Problems

There’s another reason Philippine bureaucracy doesn’t bother me as much as it bothers some foreigners.

I don’t have much interaction with it.

I don’t own a car.

I don’t own land.

I don’t own a house.

I don’t employ a bunch of people.

I don’t operate a business.

I rent.

If something goes wrong with the house, I call the landlady.

If I need to go somewhere, somebody drives me or I use local transportation.

I’m not dealing with vehicle registration, construction permits, property issues, employees, payroll, business licenses or most of the other things that can turn a peaceful retirement into a full-time administrative position.

There’s a lesson in there somewhere.

Sometimes the easiest way to solve a problem overseas is not to create the problem in the first place.

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Company Is Easy. Friendship Is Harder.

Another reason foreigners sometimes leave is loneliness.

I’ve written about this uncomfortable side of expat life before in Loneliness in Paradise Is Real, because palm trees and cheap beer don’t automatically give anyone a meaningful social life.

And this one can sneak up on you.

It’s not particularly difficult for a foreigner with money to have people around him in the Philippines.

Buy a few rounds.

Pick up dinner.

Help somebody out.

Spread a little cash around and smiling faces can appear pretty quickly.

But let’s not kid ourselves.

Company and friendship aren’t necessarily the same thing.

The better question is whether those relationships would still exist if you stopped buying dinner.

Deep friendship takes time anywhere.

I’ve been fortunate.

I don’t struggle much with isolation.

I have people around me.

I have people I can talk to.

More importantly, I have people who will show up when something goes wrong.

That’s a distinction I’ve experienced firsthand.

But another foreigner may desperately miss the friends he left behind.

He may miss people who understand his jokes without explanation.

People who remember him when he was 25.

People who knew his parents.

People who share decades of history with him.

You can’t buy that.

And if that kind of connection matters deeply to you, eventually the pull of home can become powerful.

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Sometimes the Filipina Was the Retirement Plan

Let’s talk about the elephant sitting quietly in the expat bar.

Women.

For some foreign men, the Philippines wasn’t originally the destination.

A Filipina was.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with that.

Part of the attraction of the Philippines for me was that age differences in relationships didn’t seem to carry the same automatic stigma I had experienced elsewhere.

At 77, I’m not going to pretend that wasn’t part of my equation.

But there’s a danger in building your entire overseas life around one person.

What happens if the relationship ends?

Suddenly the foreigner discovers he doesn’t have many friends.

He doesn’t particularly like the town.

He hasn’t developed interests of his own.

He never really adapted to the culture.

And the one person around whom his Philippine life revolved is gone.

He didn’t build a life in the Philippines.

He built a life around a Filipina.

Those are not the same thing.

And when that relationship disappears, sometimes the reason for staying disappears with it.

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Some Foreigners Never Stop Fighting the Philippines

I’ve seen foreigners get angry because things here aren’t done the way they’re done back home.

They complain about the traffic.

The food.

The service.

The bureaucracy.

The noise.

The heat.

Filipino time.

The way people drive.

The way business gets done.

Eventually I want to ask:

Why are you still here?

Moving to another country while demanding that it behave like the country you left seems like a pretty reliable formula for unhappiness.

Adaptation doesn’t mean surrendering your identity.

I’m still an American.

I’m still a Marine.

I still like the foods I grew up with.

I still have opinions.

Plenty of them.

But I also understand something very basic:

I moved to the Philippines.

The Philippines didn’t move to me.

That distinction may be one of the most important ingredients in my equation.

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Even the Weather Can Change the Equation

The Philippines is hot.

It’s humid.

We have typhoons.

Earthquakes happen.

Volcanoes occasionally remind everyone that they’re still down there.

And when it rains here, it can rain in quantities that make you wonder whether Noah has started taking reservations.

Personally, the heat doesn’t bother me much.

I grew up in Missouri.

I remember hot, humid summer days.

And when Philippine heat becomes ridiculous, I have a wonderful modern invention:

Air-conditioning.

I’m not trying to prove anything.

I turn it on.

But other people genuinely struggle with tropical heat and humidity, particularly as they get older.

Something that felt wonderful at 60 may feel exhausting at 75.

Once again, nobody failed.

The equation changed.

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Sometimes America Starts Looking Good Again

Homesickness has an interesting editing system.

It remembers what you loved and gradually deletes what annoyed you.

You remember your favorite restaurant.

Your old golf course.

The grocery store where you knew exactly where everything was.

Fall weather.

Driving down a familiar highway.

A particular food you can’t find here.

Old friends.

Christmas with family.

You may not remember quite as clearly the things that helped convince you to leave.

And after enough years overseas, something else happens.

The America you remember may no longer be the America waiting for you.

Friends move.

Neighborhoods change.

Businesses close.

Prices change.

People die.

Life doesn’t freeze in place because you left.

Sometimes an expat dreams about going “home” when what he really misses is a particular time in his life.

Unfortunately, there’s no airline ticket for that.

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Going Home Doesn’t Mean You Failed

I think this is important.

There’s sometimes a strange attitude in expat communities that going home means somebody couldn’t hack it.

He ran out of money.

His girlfriend dumped him.

He couldn’t adapt.

He wasn’t tough enough.

Maybe.

Or maybe he spent ten wonderful years in the Philippines and then his priorities changed.

Maybe his health changed.

Maybe he wants to spend his remaining years near his grandchildren.

Maybe he simply woke up one morning and realized he’d rather be somewhere else.

So what?

Retirement isn’t an endurance contest.

There is no trophy for being the last foreigner standing.

If living in the Philippines made you happy for five years, those five years weren’t a failure because you eventually went home.

And staying here doesn’t prove anything either.

The only meaningful question is whether the life you’re living still works for you.

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My Equation Still Works

At 77, I’m not looking for the same things I wanted when I was 40.

I don’t need a career.

I don’t need to build wealth.

I don’t need to buy another house.

I don’t need a new car sitting in the driveway.

I don’t need to impress anybody.

I need enough money to live comfortably.

I need people around me.

I need access to reasonable medical care.

I need a roof over my head.

I need good air-conditioning.

I need something interesting to happen every once in a while.

And I need enough peace to enjoy whatever time I have left.

Right now, the Philippines gives me that.

My income is steady.

I have no family obligations pulling me back to America.

I have people around me.

I’m reasonably healthy.

I can afford the life I want.

I’ve adapted to the culture rather than spending every day fighting it.

And most importantly:

I’m still enjoying myself.

My equation hasn’t changed.

Someday it might.

Health changes.

Finances change.

Relationships change.

Rules change.

People change.

Life changes.

And if something important in my equation changes, maybe I’ll have another decision to make.

But until then, I see no reason to solve a problem I don’t have.

I didn’t retire to the Philippines because somebody on YouTube told me it was paradise.

I didn’t come because I expected everything to be cheap, easy or perfect.

I came because the life available here matched the life I wanted to live.

So far, it still does.

That’s why before you move to the Philippines—and especially before you decide to leave it—I’d ask yourself one more time:

Why did you come?

If those reasons are still here, maybe the bloom hasn’t really come off the rose.

And if those reasons are gone?

Maybe the Philippines didn’t change.

Maybe your equation did.

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