What's Your Story? How you ended up as expat in the Philippines.

[gbmmbg]

I met my wife back in January 1986. We moved to San Diego in 1990, raised two kids and worked and worked and did i say worked? We had plans to move back to P.I. in 2007 when her brothers and sisters visa got approved so that held us up. The whole time my wife had a job at Kaiser and loved her work. It was starting to look like the move back to P.I was going to be in our 60's when she injured her left shoulder. Previously she had surgery on her right shoulder and both of her hands. Being 4'11 and 100lb and hard headed she always worked too hard. After one and a half years and three surgery's all the doctors told her she would never be able to come back to work at the hospital. So in July 2017 she was medically retired. We moved back to the Philippines November of that year. Its been a hard adjustment for my wife. She always has to be doing something and here you have people to do it for you. So now to keep her mind and body busy she is rescuing cats and dogs. We are up to 23 cats and 17 dogs. It makes her happy and that makes me happy. I enjoy living here and don't let the day to day issues get to me. Will we stay in P.I. forever? Who knows, time will tell.

[Balisidar]

I was assigned to Clark Air Force base back in 1984.  I met my wife there in 1985 and got married in 1986.  I then kept taking the offers of the Air Force to save them money and stayed in the Philippines until April 1991 when we moved to Altus AFB, Ok.  Fortunate for us as Mt. Pinatubo blew up about a month later.  We have two boys and a girl.

Did a lot of moving after that but wound up working for the National Weather Service in Seattle WA.

My wife and I had always planned to retire here and we have both always been long term planners.  So we did just that and I retired in 2020 and we moved here.  The pandemic be damned..full speed ahead😂

We probably plan on staying here unless our health gets too bad.  If it does we will move back to the US and probably stay with one of our kids.  Or I might just do what my dad always talked about and buy a quarter acre river bank in Mississippi and go fishing.😀

Edited April 1, 2023 by Balisidar

[JJReyes]

16 hours ago, Balisidar said:

We probably plan on staying here unless our health gets too bad.  If it does we will move back to the US and probably stay with one of our kids.  Or I might just do what my dad always talked about and buy a quarter acre river bank in Mississippi and go fishing.😀

Fresh water fishing is one activity that is difficult to accomplish in the Philippines.  Besides, it will probably be catch & release due to pollution.  

[P_X]

I lived here for almost 2 years beginning back in 2014ish. 

The pLandemic and all the homelessness and drugs and wokeness gave me a bitter distaste for all things usa.

I started figuring out ways to get outta dodge..and viola..here I am in Cebu 

[CebuAndy]

 ....  .....  ......

Now I remember:

What's Your Story? How you ended up as expat in the Philippines.

 

[jimeve]

2 hours ago, CebuAndy said:

 ....  .....  ......

Now I remember:

What's Your Story? How you ended up as expat in the Philippines.

 

Very simple. 

I married a Filipina 20 years ago. After living together in the UK together for 12 years we decided to live in the Philippines in a house we built over the years from 2002 coming over here every other year for 2 or 3 months till the house was built. 

 

[mountainside]

Worked hard in the US to achieve the happiness that I didn’t find there.  Tapped into the big bank of hotel points and airline miles that I’d accumulated by spending years in hotels for domestic business travel.

Took a “sabbatical” and headed off to Asia, a region I’d studied.  Learned real quick that SE Asia was my place.  After visiting the countries (except for Laos and Myanmar) I concentrated on the Philippines although it was initially far from the top of my list of possible destinations.  Turns out that I like Filipinos and they like me.  So back to the US to finish up business.

Got an SRRV.  Picked a date for my return to the Phils.  Two weeks prior to that date I joined Filipina Cupids – posted a photo of me in a suit and another of me horseback in the American West.  Within a day I had more than 100 responses, and within a few more days, more than 500.  Narrowed the list down to 30 or 40.  The biggest sub-group was in Manila, and the second-biggest was in Cebu.  I preferred Cebu City to Manila, so I flew there and set up shop.  Every woman I met seemed sincere and honest (though often heavier than their photos depicted).

Not too long into the process I met the woman I would marry.  With the SRRV I had all the time in the world to get to know her and her family, and vice versa.  And we married in Cebu City.

We spent three happy years in SBFZ, then I brought her here to the US, where she’ll hopefully soon become a US citizen.  She’s living the dream of millions (my friends think it may be billions) of folks who so much want to be here.  But we’ll soon be back to where our hearts want to be.  The Republic of the Philippines.  For how long?  Who knows.  Aggravations can build up and spur the urge to move on.  And we may.  But we know where we’re going next.

[gbmmbg]

What, were in the Philippines? Crap i told the ticket salesman I need a ticket to Philadelphia. That's why winter was so mild.

[GeoffH]

I was with the mother of my daughter for over 20 years, worked hard, built up a decent selection of assets and superannuation... enough to retire early.

She was unhappy with my early retirement plans, turns out she'd been seeing someone else on theside and 3 months after I retired it all blew up.

 

I lost more than half of my assets and half of my superannuation and ended up with a large child support bill for 3 years (because she'd managed to get the amount assessed based upon my pre-retirement earnings and spun it as 'revenge retirement to reduce child support' which had the time line all backwards.  

 

Needless to say the 'family' court believed her and by the end of 3 more years a decent chunk of what superannuation I'd retained was also gone so I looked for somewhere where my remaining savings and income would stretch further, that was about 6 or 7 years ago.

 

I chatted to and came to see a girl from online, which didn't end up going anywhere but I met SWMBO through that family and that did... that was 5 years ago.

 

Since then I've been spending half the year in Australia and half in the Philippines (mainly for land tax reasons) and that's about it really.

 

I do love it here but I've still got a lot of connections in Australia as well so I've never really bitten the bullet to stay here full time, although the 'visits' have gotten longer over time.  This time will probably be longer than 6 months, or at least that's the plan.

[BrettGC]

31 minutes ago, GeoffH said:

 ended up with a large child support bill for 3 years (because she'd managed to get the amount assessed based upon my pre-retirement earnings and spun it as 'revenge retirement to reduce child support' which had the time line all backwards.  

Happy ending at least mate, and I mean that in the least crass way possible 

My ex did something similar to me.  We parted ways in '99 and we had 3 kids.  We we separated we based my payments on the child support formula, basically my 31% of my gross at the time.  I was still in the navy at sea a lot so being paid very well.  My mistake was we didn't register the agreement... So when I left the navy in 2007 and was living my pension while I finished uni, the payments went down.  She went off her nut and told the and told CSA that I hadn't paid a cent since we separated.  I was staring down the barrel of 8 years of back payments.  Thankfully a mate of mine I was talking to worked in navy pay in Canberra, he managed to get all my pay slips for the 8 year period that cleary showed payments into her account almost to the dollar of the formula, including variations when I was deployed, pay rises etc.  I was let off.  What happened to her for the attempted fraud?  Nothing. I thought about reporting her to the ATO for not declaring the payments I was making, but for the kids sake, I didn't bother in the end.   

Anyway, back on topic.. Sorry @CebuAndy.  Great thread btw.