What My Filipina Wife Will Miss Most About America

I asked my wife what she will miss most about America if we retire to the Philippines in late 2023. I will start with what I thought she would say, and she has been here since January 11 of 2016. Please subscribe to Love Beyond The Sea to learn about how to have a good relationship with a Filipina and what you are missing without one. If you are seeing this and have retired in the Philippines, please let me know what your Filipina wife misses most about the country she was in before going back to the Philippines. At the conclusion I will let you know what my Filipina wife told me she thinks she would miss about America.

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A huge interest my wife had about coming to America to be my wife was to work. We are grateful she was able to land a job at the company I have worked at for over 39 years. She would have worked around seven years if we were to retire to the Philippines when I am 62. She has her own 401-K that she will be able to transfer to the Philippines and I think will be able to have the age 59.5 early withdrawal penalty lifted by virtue of leaving the company and leaving the country. I am not 100 percent sure on that.

I don’t think she will miss the work experience, and by the time she retires I think she will have learned some valuable life lessons while there and gained a lot of good experience with working with different types of people. However, I don’t think she will miss the work experience per se. I don’t even think she will miss making money there. Her goal was to provide for her family in the Philippines and to pay for her car and buy some other things for herself but when those days are over, I doubt she thinks about it anymore. She has also helped with some monthly bills, but I don’t think she will regret not being able to work in America or make money in America.

You might be wondering why she wouldn’t miss these things. To me, by the time we would retire and move to the Philippines, she would have accomplished a lot more than she imagined when she immigrated here. If she had any goals, they would have been accomplished. My wife wasn’t materialistic when I married her and she isn’t today. She enjoys occasionally buying some clothes or accessories for herself but that’s just a bonus. I will have probably helped her family a lot more that she anticipated.

Both of us have combined to build a house in the Philippine to be our vacation home and our permanent home in the Philippines. It will be about a 50/50 responsibility. Her car will be seven years old with probably 70-75,000 miles on it and in great shape. She has a 10 year/100,000 mile-warranty on it. It will be a shame not being able to transport it to the Philippines. You can actually do this but it has to be with a fairly new car. It was a brand-new SUV so she should be able to get something for it in cash.

I don’t think she’ll miss the abundance of clothes she has purchased; I am sure she can bring her favorites to the Philippines. That sounds like a good thing for a balikbayan box. I doubt she will miss being able to make what would be a sick amount of money compared to where she is from. She will have arrived in America to be my wife, and left perhaps only seven years later. When we got married, neither one of us was thinking about retiring in the Philippines, especially me, but I love my wife, I love her family, and I have become amenable to retiring in the Philippines.

If I were her, I would miss the spring and fall seasons here in the United States, but she hadn’t experienced that for the first 27 years of her life anyway and was just fine with the heat of the Philippines. She might continue to drive in the Philippines, so that might not be something she would end up missing.

It would be nice to say when we retire that she was able to see many different places in America but it doesn’t look like we will have the time or be able to afford much travel other than to the Philippines. What if anything, do I think my Filipina wife will miss about America?

The only one I am sure about is the friendships she has established. Some are coworkers, some are not. Some are Filipinas. She will have them on photos and I am sure maintain contact on Facebook and messenger, that will ease the pain. As time goes by she may add even more friends. As her husband, I prayed for friends, especially Filipinas before she arrived in 2016, so it has been gratifying to see her make friends and a little sad to see her move so far away, but the thing to remember is, she will be reunited with her childhood friends and her family once again, so that will help with this loss.

I just asked her about what she thinks she will most about America should we retire in the Philippines and I was surprised by her answer. She said she would miss efficiency of the United States, how much easier it is to get things accomplished. How easy it is to see a doctor because you must make an appointment first. How easy it is to get documents for certain things. Just the overall organization that helps speed things up compared to the Philippines. I wouldn’t have expected that answer, but I can certainly understand where she is coming from.

Even so, I hope my wife has plenty of fond memories and feel she has had beneficial experiences in America, before we take our Love Beyond the Sea.