Retiring in the Philippines as an OFW: Can I Afford Makati?
After decades of working overseas, Richard Valdez is preparing to come home to the Philippines. But before buying a retirement home in Makati, he had to answer a deceptively simple question: Can he actually afford the life he wants after retirement?
After decades of building a life in San Francisco, Richard Valdez is planning the next chapter: coming home to the Philippines.
Two years ago, I asked myself a question I never thought I’d have to ask: Can I actually afford to come home?
I’m 63 years old.
And two years ago, I found myself sitting down and asking a question that, frankly, surprised me.
Could I afford to retire comfortably in Makati with my husband and our two dogs?
Not someday.
Not theoretically.
Not in some retirement fantasy where everything magically works out.
I mean really retire.
Come home.
Buy a home.
Pay the bills.
Eat well.
Travel.
Take care of ourselves.
Take care of the dogs.
And still have enough money left to enjoy the life we’d worked for.
For someone who had spent decades working in San Francisco, it was a surprisingly complicated question.
And it took me back to something my grandfather said to me when I was only five years old.
“The People Who Go to America…”
I still remember my maternal grandfather saying something that stayed with me for decades.
He said:
“The people that go to the United States are the ones that cannot afford or make a living in the Philippines.”
I was five years old.
I didn’t understand economics.
I didn’t understand immigration.
I certainly didn’t understand retirement.
But children have a funny way of collecting sentences from adults and carrying them into adulthood.
I believed him.
And maybe, somewhere in the back of my mind, that sentence became part of the story I told myself about America and the Philippines.
America was where you went to work.
The Philippines was where you came from.
You worked hard abroad because you wanted a better life.
And someday…
you might come home.
What I Didn’t Know at Five
I certainly didn’t know that decades later, I would be sitting in San Francisco wondering whether I could afford to retire in the Philippines.
And I definitely didn’t know that the question wouldn’t simply be:
“Can I afford to come home?”
It would be:
“Can I afford the life I want when I get there?”
Because today, when I think about going home, I’m not imagining the Philippines I left behind.
I’m imagining the Philippines I want to live in.
For me, that means Makati.
And eventually, a summer home in Baguio City.
A home in Makati for our everyday life.
A place in Baguio where we can escape for a while.
My husband.
Our two dogs.
Our own spaces.
Our routines.
Our friends.
Our food.
Our travel.
Our life.
And then I realized something.
I had been dreaming about the homes.
I hadn’t calculated the life.
The Strange Thing About Being an OFW
When you’re young and working overseas, retirement seems impossibly far away.
Five years becomes ten.
Ten becomes twenty.
And before you know it, you’re looking at the calendar and thinking:
Wait. When did retirement get so close?
For me, that moment came two years ago.
I realized that 2031 wasn’t some distant year on a calendar anymore.
It was my future.
The year I could finally go home.
And for the first time, I started asking myself the questions that I imagine many OFWs eventually ask:
Can I afford it?
Where will I live?
Should I buy?
How much should I spend?
Will my savings last?
Can I actually enjoy retirement?
And then came the question that mattered most:
What kind of life can my money actually buy me?
So I Did What Most OFWs Eventually Have to Do
I sat down.
And I figured it out.
Not with some complicated financial formula.
Not with a 47-tab spreadsheet.
I simply started with my life.
I asked:
What will our life cost every month?
Housing.
Food.
Utilities.
Transportation.
Healthcare.
Insurance.
Entertainment.
Travel.
The dogs.
The little luxuries we’ve become accustomed to.
The things that make life feel like our life.
Then I asked:
What reliable income will we have?
Pensions.
Social Security.
Investments.
Other dependable sources.
And then I looked at the difference.
That’s when retirement became real.
The Math Wasn’t Actually That Scary
Here’s the simple way I learned to look at it.
Imagine your retirement as a bucket.
Every month, money goes into the bucket.
And every month, money comes out.
If more goes in than comes out, you’re comfortable.
If approximately the same amount goes in and comes out, you’re maintaining the balance.
But if more comes out than goes in…
your bucket gets smaller.
That’s the basic retirement question.
How quickly is your bucket emptying?
And how long does it have to last?
Let’s Say Your Life Costs ₱150,000 a Month
This is just an example.
Let’s say the lifestyle you want in retirement costs:
₱150,000 a month.
Then suppose your reliable retirement income is:
₱50,000 a month.
The calculation isn’t complicated.
₱150,000
What your life costs
minus
₱50,000
What reliably comes in
equals
₱100,000
What your savings need to help provide
That’s ₱1.2 million a year.
Now you have a number.
And once you have a number, you can start making decisions.
And Then Comes the Makati Question
Let’s say you have ₱20 million saved.
And you find a beautiful condominium in Makati for ₱15 million.
You can technically buy it.
But should you?
That’s where I think many people—including myself—need to slow down.
Because the question isn’t:
“Can I afford to buy this condominium?”
The question is:
“Can I afford my life after I buy this condominium?”
Those are two completely different questions.
If you spend ₱15 million of your ₱20 million on your home, you have a very different financial picture than you had before the purchase.
You now have a beautiful home.
But you also need enough liquid money and income to support everything that happens inside that beautiful home for the next 20 or 30 years.
That’s the part of retirement planning that doesn’t look very glamorous on Instagram.
But it matters.
The Home Isn’t the Retirement
This is something I came to understand very clearly.
Your retirement home can be one of the most important purchases you’ll ever make.
But it shouldn’t consume the resources you need to actually enjoy retirement.
I don’t want to spend my retirement sitting in a beautiful condominium worrying about whether I can afford dinner.
I want to enjoy the dinner.
I want to travel.
I want to spend time with my husband.
I want to take care of our dogs.
I want to have friends over.
I want to enjoy the Philippines.
I want to be able to say yes sometimes without immediately wondering:
“How much is that going to cost me?”
That, to me, is retirement.
So How Do You Know Where You Stand?
You don’t have to be good at math.
I wasn’t trying to become a financial analyst.
I simply asked myself three questions.
1. What will my life cost every month?
₱__________
2. How much reliable money will come in every month?
₱__________
3. What’s the difference?
₱__________
Then multiply the difference by 12.
That’s your approximate annual retirement gap.
Now you have something you can work with.
Maybe the number makes you smile.
Maybe it makes you nervous.
Maybe it makes you say:
“I need another five years.”
Whatever the answer is, that’s okay.
Because knowing is better than guessing.
The Three Retirement Lights
I like to think about it almost like a traffic light.
🟢 GREEN
“I think I can do this.”
Your income, savings and lifestyle appear reasonably aligned.
Your home purchase won’t leave you financially stretched.
You have reserves.
You have choices.
You can start planning your return.
🟡 YELLOW
“I’m getting there.”
Maybe you need to work a few more years.
Maybe you need to save more.
Maybe you need to adjust your housing budget.
Maybe your dream condominium needs to become a slightly different dream condominium.
That’s not failure.
That’s planning.
🔴 RED
“Not yet.”
Your desired lifestyle is currently costing more than your income and resources can comfortably support.
Again, that’s not failure.
It’s information.
And information gives you options.
You can save more.
Work longer.
Spend less.
Buy differently.
Rent.
Create additional income.
Or rethink the retirement lifestyle you’re building.
The worst time to discover that your retirement doesn’t work is after you’ve retired.
And Then I Realized Something About My Grandfather
When I was five, my grandfather told me that the people who went to America were people who couldn’t make a living in the Philippines.
I carried that sentence with me for a very long time.
But sitting in San Francisco at 61, trying to figure out whether I could afford to retire in Makati, I realized something.
Maybe my story wasn’t really about leaving.
Maybe it was about coming home.
America gave me a life.
It gave me opportunities.
It gave me experiences.
It gave me the ability to imagine something different.
But it never erased where I came from.
And now, after all those years, I’m not thinking about going home because I couldn’t make it in America.
I’m thinking about going home because I finally get to choose where the next chapter happens.
And Here’s the Part I Never Saw Coming
When I was a young working adult in San Francisco, it never occurred to me that one day I’d be looking at a calendar and realizing:
2031.
That’s when I expect to finally go home.
And I won’t be going home to just one place.
The vision I’ve been building is a home in Makati and a summer home in Baguio City.
My husband and I.
Our two dogs.
Two places.
One life.
And suddenly, that little five-year-old boy listening to his grandfather’s words seems very far away.
Maybe This Is the OFW Retirement Conversation We Should Be Having
We spend so much time talking about how much OFWs earn.
How much they send home.
How much they save.
What property they can buy.
But perhaps the more important question is:
What kind of life can they afford when they finally come home?
Because coming home isn’t the finish line.
It’s another beginning.
And that beginning deserves just as much planning as the years we spent getting there.
Before You Fall in Love With the Condo…
I understand the temptation.
I’ve been there.
You see the photographs.
You imagine your furniture.
You picture yourself waking up there.
You can already see the Christmas tree.
You know exactly where the coffee machine will go.
But before you fall in love with the property, fall in love with the math.
Know what comes in.
Know what goes out.
Know what your retirement lifestyle costs.
Know how long your money needs to last.
Then decide how much home makes sense.
Because the right retirement home isn’t necessarily the most expensive one you can buy.
It’s the one that lets you say:
“I can afford to live here—and still enjoy the life I worked so hard to create.”
That’s Why Casa Alon Exists
Casa Alon wasn’t born from a theory about retirement.
It grew from questions I was asking myself.
Can I come home?
Can I afford it?
Where should I live?
What should my next chapter look like?
And I realized that I’m probably not the only OFW asking those questions.
There are people all over the world who have spent decades working away from home who are now beginning to wonder:
“What happens when I finally come back?”
Casa Alon is my answer to that question.
Not simply:
“Here’s a property.”
But:
“Let’s think about the life you’re trying to create.”
Where should you live?
What kind of home makes sense?
How should it be designed?
How should it be furnished?
How will it be managed while you’re still overseas?
And most importantly:
How do we make sure the home supports the life—not the other way around?
Maybe Coming Home Is the Real Luxury
For years, I thought the American dream was about getting somewhere.
Now I’m beginning to think the dream might also be about knowing when you’ve arrived.
For me, that journey has an address.
And another one waiting for summer.
But the real destination isn’t either city.
It’s the freedom to wake up one morning and realize:
I don’t have to leave again.
I can have coffee with my husband.
Take care of our dogs.
Meet a friend for lunch.
Travel because I want to.
Come home because I want to.
And look around at the life we’ve created and know:
We planned for this.
Maybe that’s what retirement really is.
Not stopping.
Not slowing down.
Not simply going home.
Choosing what comes next.
And after decades of working for that future…
I think we deserve to make it a beautiful one.
Casa Alon
Property & Lifestyle Group
Connecting exceptional homes with discerning buyers around the world.
This article is intended for general educational purposes and is not financial, investment, tax, legal or retirement advice. Retirement needs vary based on individual circumstances, including longevity, inflation, investment performance, healthcare costs, taxes, pensions, debt and lifestyle. Consult appropriately licensed professionals before making significant financial or property decisions.
