• Expat Retirement
• Overseas Retirement Information

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Bahala Na, or "Come What May" is a way of life in the Philippines. While that may sound charming, it amounts to acceptance that western retirees will find difficult to deal with because that sentiment will include them as well.

As for the nation's wealthy, they seem to have learned well from the Spanish. No one treats a Filipino worse that another Filipino (with chicanery, of course, as the Philippines can be a very violent place and it just isn't smart to openly offend a Filipino while you're picking his pocket). And pick their pockets the lofty privileged will do.

There is no trickling-down in the Philippines, a country that can boast the highest level of college educated taxi drivers in the world. Nothing is left by the Philippine aristocracy or politicians for the common man, and hence, the nation surely grinds evermore into nothing. Some analysts feel that in forty or 50 years, there will be no Philippines as we know a nation must be, resolute, forward-looking, and with a caring government.

Filipino women, notably, will spend their entire lives living and working abroad to support large families back home. Mothers, wives, sisters and daughters by the millions will work twenty or thirty years to send money back home because the government will not invest and improve infrastructure and the miserable, poverty- riddled standard of living. Then, the government has the effrontery to declare these women, called OSW (Overseas Workers), national heroines, thereby honoring them in the minds of a people that clearly do not comprehend the wrong being done to them by their indulgent national leaders.

Meanwhile, bank accounts held by wealthy Filipinos abroad, particularly in Southern California, account for more money on deposit in banks in their own country. The peso, which in American times, was pegged at two pesos to the dollar, has climbed to over fifty-to-one, and is nearly worthless outside of the country and d little to no buying power.

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