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Guest Post: You Can Live Well Here For Just $10/Day
From Tim Staermose of The Sovereign Man
You can live well here for just $10/day
I first started coming regularly to Daet, in the Bicol region of the Philippines, more than 13-years ago.
It’s a sleepy, quiet, relaxed place without the bustle of Quezon or Manila… perfect for people looking to live an easy, simple life. Despite the bucolic setting, though, the telecom infrastructure is pretty stellar.
At my wife’s hotel last week, I was able to utilize a mobile broadband connection, which cost me the equivalent of $0.25 an hour, to sit and do what I do every day no matter where I am in the world– monitor and trade the Australian stock and options markets.
I even sent out a trading alert to my 4th Pillar subscribers from here when another great opportunity to make some safe money in the Aussie market became available.
I should also mention that Daet is incredibly cheap.
Wages for unskilled workers are about $4.65 per DAY. If you buy food from the local markets or vendors and prepare it yourself, you can have quite a decent meal of fresh local fish, rice, and vegetables for less than $1 per person.
If you have a place to stay, even adding in a few luxuries (beer is about 50c a bottle, for example), you could live well here on $10 a day.
Down the road from my wife’s small hotel is a vacant beach lot for sale. It’s priced at about $35,000, and the owners have spent a considerable amount of money improving it with access ramps and other structures leading down to the water.
The land is already planted with some crops, and there are ponds suitable for fish farming. Of course, construction costs here are quite cheap by western standards, and you could build a nice three-bedroom home for around $60,000.
In total, that’s less than $100,000 for a spacious beachfront home in a quiet, clean, pristinely beautiful place where living costs will only run $10/day.
One thing to keep in mind is that this is largely a cash market; there has been no rampant bubble created by teaser loans and negative real interest rates. Hence, prices haven’t moved much.
I believe it was Milton Friedman who said, “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.” From what I’ve observed around the world in property markets, I couldn’t agree more.
Property markets that are based on high leverage and cheap money are the quickest to rise and fall. Where property markets are based on cash transactions, though, prices tend to remain reasonable.
If you’re looking for great value, I’d put that among the key criteria in your search. Assuming you have cash, seek out places where the real estate market is largely cash-based. Daet is just one example of a cash market where there are some real bargains available– both in terms of property and living costs.
In the Philippines, the catch is that only Filipino citizens can buy land outright. A non-citizen may own only a 40% interest in real property. So if you were interested, you’d need a Filipino proxy, or a carefully structured corporate vehicle through which to purchase land here.
I’ll have much more to tell you about the Philippines, my adopted home country, in future letters… including how I don’t have to pay taxes!
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Gotta love the America firsters. They may be completely ignorant and have never seen any part of the world except the lot their mobile home is on but by God, they know it all.
If you actually get a passport and travel (which 99% of your fellow citizens do not do) you will discover that much of the world including the Third World has modern day conveniences at a fraction of the cost. Why do you think US companies outsource everything - it's better and cheaper elsewhere!
So keep your heads in the sand, ostriches and keep on believing the US is #1. You and your moron president will do well together. NOT!
The United States of America
is the Superpower of the world
and pray it stays that way for
all our sake. It has enormous
challenges ahead but make
no mistake it will succeed
much to your chargin.
Oh by the way I'm not American, but love
and respect America deeply.
God Bless the United States
of America.
America is a land of white trash morons who spend all their time doing meth and watching TV when they aren't having sex with their immediate family members or dogs. Your love is wasted on a decrepit nation of losers and idiots who deserve the screwing they are getting. And I AM an American and it makes me puke to see what a shit hole it's become. And no, it's not going to get any better. Superpower - yeah right, as bankrupt as Greece and run by a bunch of criminals.
But I love my dog...she is also my sister. Now excuse us as we turn our attention back to "Animal Planet". Pass the meth!
As an american that pays the taxes for the military empire that has bankrupted us, I would like to see it end. Perhaps your government could take its place.
<dupe of above>
Lots of misinformation and outdated info here. Talk to someone who lives here (I live in Cebu City, Visayas) and I have never been happier.
The typhoon belt is primarily in Luzon (in the north). The muslims are in the deep south, the southernmost region of Mindanao. I travel all the time around the middle of the country (Visayas) and I have never ran into any trouble. I have met many kanos (Americans) living here on $900 So-called Security per month like royalty, with live-in maid for 1,500 pesos ($40).
No, the Philippines is not Eden, it has its problems with pollution, traffic, overpopulation, corruption, etc. But having lived in Europe (20 years) and the US (40 years), I believe the opportunities for the next 20 years are best in Asia. So, I travel all over SE Asia and I am amazed by the developments in Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thaliand and the Philippines. You would be, too if you lived here -- not as a tourist comparing everything to how it is back home, but accepting things the way they are.
Foreigners can own condominiums and townhouses outright, but not land -- without a proxy. BTW, Filipinas (pinays) make the best wives. They are hard-working, loyal, family oriented, tolerant, amiable, and very loving. Yes, there are exceptions (gold diggers, whores, etc.) but you can find exceptional women (mainly in the provinces). I thank God every day that I did.
Just one more thing: older folks in the US are marginalized. Here, they are revered. I met a 70+ year old man at the US Consulate here in Cebu arranging paperwork to marry his 19-year-old finace. No one gives this a second thought. Men in their 50s and 60s routinely marry 20- and 30-year olds.
It always amazes me and makes me mad all of the americans that decide reality with little or no or wrong information.
I have been to Cebu several times. I agree with everything you said.
I've just read 3/4 of the comment threat, it's absolutely hillarious to me that even on a site like ZeroHedge where you'd expect a decent level of enlightenment Americans seem to think that if they leave their country for anywhere other than West Europe, UK, Canada or Australia they'll find themselves robbed and decapitated or raped, murdered and skewered onto a spit roast by the savage locals. Idiots.
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