Living Costs So Far

[BrettGC]

All figures are in PHP/Month.  We’ve been in our rental for about 6 weeks now so costs have settled down now compared to the expense of being in transit for a while. 

 

Rent – 13500 – Modern 2^nd floor,2 bedroom/2 full bathroom apartment, one AC in the bedroom, secure covered car parking, 5k, from the city centre, 2km from the nearest major supermarket (Hypermarket) and 2.5km from Robinson’s.

Electricity – 2500 – We only run the AC at night, we actually get a nice breeze most of the day.

Gas – 600 – For cooking only.

Internet – 2099 – Globe fibre 150 plan (hasn’t missed a beat yet).

Phones – 1000 – I’m on 500/month prepaid, AM is on 500/month postpaid.

Pay TV – 500 – Sky TV basic package, it’s mainly for the news channels, anything else we can stream or download.

Groceries – 10000 – obviously this varies but this is the monthly average.  We live mainly on Filipino style food with some Western luxuries (decent bread etc).  I quite like Filipino  food but we spice it up or blend it with other recipes a bit and trim the fat, brown or black rice rather than white. 

Water – 600 – water bill, our drinking water is included in the groceries.

Car – 4000 – this is a projection, only had it a week but includes annual insurance (comprehensive) and LTO.  Again, this will probably vary depending on how much we road trip.  We still walk a lot locally; we enjoy it and it does have its benefits. 

Dog – 1200 – includes quality kibble, quarterly worming and monthly de-lousing (Nexgard) which we’re buying ourselves now.

Entertainment – 10000 – Dinner out once or twice a week, a few drinks out, cinemas when they open up again.  AM’s beauty routines. 

Miscellaneous – 3000 – For that stuff you forget when you go shopping etc

We’re still looking at medical insurance, probably going to go with Pacific Cross at this stage, just have to investigate who actually accepts them here.  We both wear glasses and I have some minor dental work I want, rather than need, done. 

I've probably forgotten something... 

Edited April 6, 2022 by BrettGC

[OnMyWay]

1 hour ago, BrettGC said:

Phones – 1000 – I’m on 500/month prepaid, AM is on 500/month postpaid.

You might be able to save some money if what we are doing works for you.

We use SMART and TNT for our mobiles.  We rarely need to make a real phone call so we just keep a little bit of load on the phones for that.  We do almost all calling on FB messenger.  All of our friends and family in the Philippines, U.S., New Zealand and Australia use FB.  Need to call family in the U.S., no problem and video calls work fine.

We buy SMART/TNT Magic Data 399.  24 GB of data that NEVER EXPIRES.  I bought my first one on April 1, 2021, and it went down to less than 1 gb last month, so I renewed.  It lasted almost one year.  My wife and I use it a lot!  I even turn off the house PLDT (to keep the teenager off of it at night) and use the data on my phone.  It works well everywhere in our area, even in malls, etc.  It is so cheap I never even bother to sign into free networks at malls, etc.  It also is a great backup when our PLDT goes down, although that is rare.

So, in the last 12 months, we probably spent less than 1500 for phone load.

 

[BrettGC]

15 minutes ago, OnMyWay said:

You might be able to save some money if what we are doing works for you.

We use SMART and TNT for our mobiles.  We rarely need to make a real phone call so we just keep a little bit of load on the phones for that.  We do almost all calling on FB messenger.  All of our friends and family in the Philippines, U.S., New Zealand and Australia use FB.  Need to call family in the U.S., no problem and video calls work fine.

We buy SMART/TNT Magic Data 399.  24 GB of data that NEVER EXPIRES.  I bought my first one on April 1, 2021, and it went down to less than 1 gb last month, so I renewed.  It lasted almost one year.  My wife and I use it a lot!  I even turn off the house PLDT (to keep the teenager off of it at night) and use the data on my phone.  It works well everywhere in our area, even in malls, etc.  It is so cheap I never even bother to sign into free networks at malls, etc.  It also is a great backup when our PLDT goes down, although that is rare.

So, in the last 12 months, we probably spent less than 1500 for phone load.

 

Thanks for the tip mate, we'll investigate it 

[OnMyWay]

18 minutes ago, BrettGC said:

Thanks for the tip mate, we'll investigate it 

The Magic Data 399 for 24 gb is the best deal per gb, but they have some other Magic Data (no expiration) for less, if you want to trial it.

[Dave Hounddriver]

2 hours ago, BrettGC said:

All figures are in PHP/Month.

So how much living expenses per month, or are you gonna make us do the math 

[Old55]

4 minutes ago, Dave Hounddriver said:

So how much living expenses per month, or are you gonna make us do the math 

~1K USD I think?

 

[Mike J]

1 minute ago, Old55 said:

~1K USD I think?

 

Agree, I came up with 48,999 peso assuming my fat fingers did not make a mistake.

 

[hk blues]

50k a month seems a realistic budget for living costs.  It's more or less what our family of 3 spend but we don't have housing costs or a car.  Other main differences in our respective budgets are the food budget (including my beer) where we are almost double and entertainment where we are way less although we have Netflix and Cignal which come in at a total of 2600 php.  

[stevewool]

I think that’s a great price for what you have and I would happily spend that amount living somewhere where I would like to be too, thanks Brett 

[Youngster]

21 hours ago, BrettGC said:

All figures are in PHP/Month.  We’ve been in our rental for about 6 weeks now so costs have settled down now compared to the expense of being in transit for a while. 

 

Rent – 13500 – Modern 2^nd floor,2 bedroom/2 full bathroom apartment, one AC in the bedroom, secure covered car parking, 5k, from the city centre, 2km from the nearest major supermarket (Hypermarket) and 2.5km from Robinson’s.

Electricity – 2500 – We only run the AC at night, we actually get a nice breeze most of the day.

Gas – 600 – For cooking only.

Internet – 2099 – Globe fibre 150 plan (hasn’t missed a beat yet).

Phones – 1000 – I’m on 500/month prepaid, AM is on 500/month postpaid.

Pay TV – 500 – Sky TV basic package, it’s mainly for the news channels, anything else we can stream or download.

Groceries – 10000 – obviously this varies but this is the monthly average.  We live mainly on Filipino style food with some Western luxuries (decent bread etc).  I quite like Filipino  food but we spice it up or blend it with other recipes a bit and trim the fat, brown or black rice rather than white. 

Water – 600 – water bill, our drinking water is included in the groceries.

Car – 4000 – this is a projection, only had it a week but includes annual insurance (comprehensive) and LTO.  Again, this will probably vary depending on how much we road trip.  We still walk a lot locally; we enjoy it and it does have its benefits. 

Dog – 1200 – includes quality kibble, quarterly worming and monthly de-lousing (Nexgard) which we’re buying ourselves now.

Entertainment – 10000 – Dinner out once or twice a week, a few drinks out, cinemas when they open up again.  AM’s beauty routines. 

Miscellaneous – 3000 – For that stuff you forget when you go shopping etc

We’re still looking at medical insurance, probably going to go with Pacific Cross at this stage, just have to investigate who actually accepts them here.  We both wear glasses and I have some minor dental work I want, rather than need, done. 

I've probably forgotten something... 

I’m envious. My rent and car loan alone are 54k, and the rest for our family of four are..way up there. I need to reevaluate our budget.