After living in Manila for about a month, we have real world numbers showing the cost to live there full time. This Manila Philippines expat family budget is based on our family of four, and I will cover both renting and buying scenarios. In some past posts in this series I have avoided the buy scenario, but I feel like I have good data on buying in Manila. I will also cover the differences in spending and required investments for a single person.

Assumptions

To simplify things, I’m making some assumptions:

• You are selling everything and moving to Manila permanently.
• You are using international health insurance, something similar to Cigna Global.
• You will not own a car and will instead use Grab
• You will rent or buy a 2 bedroom 1 bath house since that’s what our numbers are based on. This is admittedly very uncomfortable for a family of four.

Scenario: Renting

Big Picture Numbers

I want to lead off with the totals showing the full rent scenario expenses, and the investments needed to cover those expenses. The detailed line items will be coming up in the next section.

Monthly Expenses	$2,893.72
Annual Expenses	$34,724.68
Investments Needed	$868,117.00

Detailed Monthly Budget

Commentary has been provided inline on those line items that require clarification or explanation.

Accommodation	$875.94	Urban Deca Homes Ortigas
Cigna Global Silver w/ US	$612.18	Sinking fund
Grocery Store / Food	$732.96	This amount is way higher than necessary. We ordered nearly all of our groceries through Grab. If you commit to going to the grocery store this would be reduced.
Discretionary	$310.06	This subtracts the absurd $445.21 of Grab restaurant and in person restaurant food. We only spent that amount trying to cope with the difficult living conditions.
Transportation	$60.18	Grab rides
Clothes	$95.80	Projected using numbeo to adjust our $200 sinking fund in CO for cost of living in Manila.
Vaccines	$91.58	This includes all vaccines that we got for the year, including expensive Japanese Encephallitis which is recommended.
Phone (Google FI)	$52.29	Three phone lines
Gifts	$28.74	Projected using numbeo to adjust our $60 sinking fund in CO for cost of living in Manila.
E-Sim	$20.00	Sinking fund
Virtual Mailbox	$11.00
Cloud Storage	$2.99

Conclusions On Renting

The FIRE number of $868,117 for a family of four puts Manila very much in the affordable range. There would be plenty of spending categories that could be reduced to lower that number further. One example of that is food, which we did in about the most expensive way possible. If we had been more intentional we could have reduced that to around $500/month. That alone would pull the FIRE number under $800K. There are certainly more affordable accommodations as well, and you might be better off paying cash for medical services. In reality even if you had $600K, you could find a way to make it work sustainably without sacrificing too much.

Scenario: Buying

For this scenario we are buying our accommodation. We will be buying a unit like the one we stayed in, and that will cost around $54K up front.

Big Picture Numbers

Monthly Expenses	$2,112.78
Annual Expenses	$25,353.36
Investments Needed	$633,834.00
Up front purchases (condo)	$54,000

Detailed Numbers

Accommodation HOA	$50.00
Cigna Global Silver w/ US	$612.18	Sinking fund
Grocery Store / Food	$732.96	This amount is way higher than necessary. We ordered nearly all of our groceries through Grab. If you commit to going to the grocery store this would be reduced.
Discretionary	$310.06	This subtracts the absurd $445.21 of Grab restaurant and in person restaurant food. We only spent that amount trying to cope with the difficult living conditions.
Transportation	$60.18	Grab rides
Clothes	$95.80	Projected using numbeo to adjust our $200 sinking fund in CO for cost of living in Manila.
Vaccines	$91.58	This includes all vaccines that we got for the year, including expensive Japanese Encephallitis which is recommended.
Phone (Google FI)	$52.29	Three phone lines
Uncategorized Spending	$45	As a homeowner, there are unexpected repairs that in my experience come in at about 1% of the value of your home per year.
Gifts	$28.74	Projected using numbeo to adjust our $60 sinking fund in CO for cost of living in Manila.
E-Sim	$20.00	Sinking fund
Virtual Mailbox	$11.00
Cloud Storage	$2.99

Conclusions On Buying

Buying a condo, at least in Urban Deca Homes Ortigas, is a major advantage financially over renting. Even when considering you need to put up $54,000 to buy the condo, the total money needed between that and investments is only $687,834. Also consider the same potential per-category savings mentioned in the rent scenario (e.g. food spending, health insurance). If you really worked to optimize cost, you could tune this to the point of only needing a grand total of $500K to FIRE in Manila.

One thing I like about this scenario is that you could connect with an Airbnb co-host to rent out the place if you wanted to leave and travel elsewhere part of the year. The $800-$900 per month you can get on Airbnb isn’t a massive income, but would keep your place occupied and provide some money. The maintenance costs should be minimal on such a small place as well. One person could renovate the entire 376 square feet single handedly.

Single People

Just a quick side note about what this would look like for an individual. Several spending categories would be significantly less than our family amounts. Here is a quick rundown of those categories that would change, and the reduced amounts needed:

• Food: $200, and even that would be a luxurious diet for one person
• Cigna Global: $300 even if you are middle aged
• Clothing: $20
• Vaccines: ~$23
• Phone: $20
• eSIM: ~$7

That’s a savings of $982.80, which reduces the investments needed by $294K. Those cost savings apply across both the rent and buy scenarios, so it’s $294K less than the total of either family scenario.

Conclusion and Final Comparison

It’s easy to see why the Philippines is a popular destination for American expats. It’s very cheap, easy to enter and stay there, and english is widely spoken. While we didn’t necessarily enjoy the food, the traffic, or the population density, some of that could be remediated by moving outside of Manila. The Philippines offers a great chance for Americans and other english speakers to extend their money and also have a chance to immerse in the culture.

These were the scenarios examined, and the final investment/money total needed for each.

Family Buy	$687,834.00
Family Rent	$868,117.00
Single Buy	$393,834.00
Single Rent	$574,117.00