Are you mentally prepared for retirement in the Philippines?

Are you ready to leave it all behind and retire in the Philippines with your Filipina wife or to go be with the woman you will marry? It isn’t always an easy decision. Subscribe to Love Beyond The Sea on YT and Casting Beyond The Sea on Podbean (for podcasts) and keep up by clicking the notification bell. Lvbts.com is your one shop place for all things Love Beyond The Sea.

My wife and I are hoping to retire in the Philippines as soon as we are able, that may be three or four years from now and time is going fast. For us, especially for me, I have some time to prepare myself for such a move, and it is a big one. Here are some of the ways that affect the man who is working on leaving his country to retire in the Philippines. Remember this video is about being mentally prepared. In what ways might this need to happen?

Leaving family behind-You can tell yourself you will try to Skype with family and friends back home and I hope you would be able to. There is a time zone difference that might be helpful or not. If you are leaving good relationships behind, you will hopefully consider what it will be like for you to not be together in person, perhaps ever again. It would be great though if you were able to travel back to your country now and then to meet with your loved ones. Leaving grown children can be problematic.

I don’t have any children so I can’t relate to that, but I can understand why someone would start to second guess their decision that involves being so far away from family. Maybe this is different for each person? If someone’s family relationships have been strained, leaving them could cause some guilt and gnaw away at their conscience. It’s difficult to make things better from thousands of miles away.

Personally, my mother who lives with us is the main family I spend time with. She is 87 and we’ve told her we won’t be going anywhere as long as she is alive. If I was to leave for the Philippines and leave her alone, I think that would really bother me. I am blessed that my wife insists we don’t go to the Philippines to live full-time while my mother is still alive. It wouldn’t be fair to my wife if I was struggling with some aspect of leaving the country. All of the things I will list should be dealt with before leaving.

Leaving familiarity behind (Friends)-If you are someone who has a lot of relationships to leave behind then that will need to be accepted. You can always try to keep up to date on social media, although of course it won’t be the same thing as being there together in person. Things may be different not being able to do things together, but what can you do? You just have to accept that social media is your best option and be grateful for that. Be thankful for the good times you’ve had together. In my case, I am not leaving a lot of friends. When friends found a girlfriend, I was seemingly avoided as they moved on with their lives. Apparently to them, the woman in their life meant they had to jettison our relationship so they could invest in their new one, and well, that’s how it works. Part of the apprehension here may be the knowledge that you won’t have any friends when you move to the Philippines. You can still make new friends there among Filipinos and I am looking forward to that. As for expats, it seems that has its own set of challenges. See the video I made called Importance of Male Friends for an Expat.

Leaving familiarity behind (Places)-When you’ve lived in the same country and perhaps the same part of the country or same state or city for your entire life, leaving can sound like a good idea until you “look down” and see that you are going to be a long way from all the familiarity in your life. In any of these things on this list, you’ll need to be prepared to leave things behind. In the Philippines, I don’t think I’ll be able to just go outside and drive somewhere. In time, I might get comfortable with that, but I am not good with directions and the thought of getting lost in the Philippines doesn’t appeal to me. I can always call my wife and get some help though, but I don’t know, I might be relying on her to get around.

Maybe there will be some new places in the Philippines that I will enjoy going to, that will become favorites of mine. I think you just need to forge ahead and try to explore your new environment and develop some places you look forward to being. I do find safety in familiar places so when we retire in the Philippines, I will have no choice but to start over.

Leaving memories behind-You can’t have regrets when moving to the Philippines full time. Certain places like where I grew up, where I went to sporting events, are places I won’t plan on seeing again. We just recently returned from South Dakota where I used to live for a year, in Sturgis. I was able to meet with a former coworker while there and it was a great experience. We saw Mount Rushmore for the first time. My wife wanted to go to Colorado, which we did. Even though we just returned, we are thinking about going to Minnesota soon.

I am at the point where there is only so much opportunity to visit places I have never seen here in America, and to visit places that have a soft spot in my heart. Sports is such a big thing here in Nebraska that I think I will miss not being able to listen to the games and the talk shows and watch the games in the usual time zone. I suppose I could watch replays but it’s not the same. There is just this buzz of excitement on game day. You go to the store and it has the game on.

I don’t want to go overboard with leaving memories behind, but one thing I can do is to look at the time I have left to make new memories in the Philippines. I can’t go there and sulk and have regrets. I have maybe several years to prepare mentally and emotionally to leave the United States and live in the Philippines with my Amazing Aiza. I do look forward to making memories there. Time will be of the essence. I never thought in my life I would live in another country, but I think that would be best for my wife and doing what is best for her is a top priority of mine.

Leaving opportunities behind-Maybe you still have some things you’d like to see or do before you leave for the Philippines and kind of want to stay a little longer to accomplish, but won’t be able to. It’s a big decision. You can’t have it all. If there is something you feel you need to do, do it before you need to go.

Leaving missed opportunities behind- Perhaps you might be tempted to look back and feel like you didn’t make the best of your opportunities where you are. It could be with work, with savings, with other interests you may have had, that you won’t have in the Philippines. All I can suggest is to try to invest yourself into your new life in the Philippines. I can’t see into the future, but when we retire there, I want to make the very best of the rest of my life. I approach it trying to make the best of my life here in America, so I can be at peace with that, and look forward to whatever God has in store for me and for us in the Philippines.

Leaving more money making behind-This depends a lot on your financial situation. Yes, you’ll have had more opportunities for making income in the west, and if you are older, than there are only so many opportunities left for building your savings. Hopefully you aren’t addicted to making money. Hopefully you aren’t scrambling to make up for losses. You’ll want to make sure you know exactly how much money you’ll have to work with and where it will come from when you retire in the Philippines. The good thing is, you will be able to live on less in the Philippines.

I think it’s important to not look back, and not look down. Whether you would be retiring in the Philippines with a wife or to look for a wife, I think you should look at it as an irreversible decision. From what I am told, virtually all expats don’t last in the Philippines. My assumption is if they are not married, they are the ones who don’t last, because they don’t have a viable reason to stick it out, to get used to a brand new and different environment from the western country they may have arrived from.

I don’t think it’s a good idea to think you are retiring in the Philippines until you know that you will stay there, unless your idea of retirement means possibly moving from country to country. One has to consider all they can about what they are leaving behind and be able to accept that they might not be seeing their own country again. If they are able to, even better, but if not, I think a man needs to be able to make a decision he will live with.

Of course, if you have never been in the Philippines, and are relying on YouTube videos as your sole source of retirement information, that’s probably not a good idea. It is always different when you spend some decent time there first. I had been to the Philippines maybe three times before I decided I would be willing to retire there with my wife someday. I love her enough that I might have made that decision sight unseen but it is better to know what you are getting into.

This video has been about being mentally prepared for come what may, when retiring in the Philippines. Please leave comments if you agree or disagree. Love is just a part of it. You’ll need to be mentally prepared to make this big move but it is easier if you are doing it with your Love Beyond The Sea!