Neist Point Lighthouse, Isle of Skye, Scotland

Not my photo:

Beautiful place Scotland, like to get back there one day... but probably freeze my balls off now!

If ever you were to visit Scotland again? I would suggest the best month to be May especially if visiting the north west, as it is in this month where the Midges are not so prevalent and the following month before they start to hatch out, added to that at this time we seem to have less rain then and so many days with fine clear skies.

Having Solar Panels fitted to my house they produce the most Electric with the fine clear days in the month of May and not June as would be expected with the longer days? it must be close to a 20% increase, I have often wondered how good solar can be back there in PH? the hotter the weather the less efficient they become?

My house is around 2miles from the sea and when we do get snow and ice it does not take all that long for this to melt, however if I were to travel around 10miles inland there it is a different story where the snow and ice can be lying there for a week or so, however in my experience a bad winter happens about once in 5 yrs here in my location, last winter we had snow only once as I recall and even then it was only a half inch and had all gone after an hour, in that very first winter when I retired I began to take notice of one particular sound and this was Music to my ears, this was to be the sound of my working neighbours scraping the ice off their cars before going to work, lying there in my warm bed what could be more pleasant than this? most of the cars I have owned were Volvos and for as long as I remember they all had heated seats this to me being far more important than AC and a blessing in these cold winter morning also a prime requirement in a car with leather seats.

All things considered I'd much rather live here in Scotland than any other place in UK it may well be a couple of degrees cooler up here but wearing the correct clothes for the time of year and this is not a major problem, I could imagine for anyone from down south coming up here for a Holiday it must be heart-breaking to have to return back to where they come from???

Thank you @HONEST DAVE, I thought I replied yesterday (don't know where that went!) - Anyway looking more like a pipe dream now with everything, everywhere getting more and more expensive.

Yes... scraping the ice off the windscreen in winter lol... those were the days

Yes, John, the cost of living differential between Phils and Scotland is quite large.

For the most part this is true, anyone visiting both of these places Scotland and the Philippines on a Holiday would find a huge difference in Travel costs, Accommodation costs and Eating out, but it must be said there is also a marked difference in the standard of these services with the Philippines being way below par and often getting what you pay for fits there, but this does not strictly apply, paying the mid range price for these services in PH can be still be good value.

As someone that has lived in both places for the longer term 62yrs in Bonnie Scotland and 8yrs in the Philippines it may come as a surprise to many and especially so to people that have only had short term holidays there in PH, the cost of day to day living there for a Foreigner wishing to buy and prepare their own food is perhaps higher than that of UK? Potatoes, Carrots and Onions are more than double the price there in PH and not all that fresh, Milk, Cheese and Butter are also more expensive, Meat prices are about the same, Fish, Eggs and Coconuts are cheaper in PH, Rice can be had here in UK cheaper than there in PH, an Aldi essential brand can be had for P35 a Kilo, I doubt if any Rice can be had there in PH for any less than that?

Here in Scotland I live in a modest 4 bed Bungalow of around 120M2, council tax for this is £2500 per annum, energy costs for both Electric and Gas is around £2000 per annum. There in PH I built a Fully insulated 2 bed house for the family of around 84M2 there is no AC required and we only run a couple of Fans my energy cost there for electric is around P3K a month, we do pay a Land Tax there but I think this to be very low perhaps around £100 per annum? I have heard it said by quite a few Foreigners that they have bills of P10K a month as they have a high use of AC, last year on another Ex-pat Forum a member was complaining that with the price increase in energy there in PH his monthly bill would increase by p2K and he will be paying P14K a month for Electric, so overall it is cheaper for me to live in the Philippines than it is in my own home country, but not by such a wide margin as many would like to think? now at the age of 71yrs and becoming and old coffin dodger, plus having a few health scares in recent times, I have returned to my home country where the NHS may extend my life by a few years??? having had some experience with the money grabbing charlatans that call themselves Doctors there in PH? perhaps this has been the right decision for me? Certainly the case if I were to have a long term illness that required extensive medical treatment.

My Hoose here does not have a high market value for various reasons and I was able to purchase this 24yrs ago at much lower than market value as it was built adjacent to local authority properties and this housing scheme had a bad name at the time, I was brought up in this very same housing scheme and the Hoose I have, was built on the land I used to play on as a child, due to its lower than average market value it has a lower rating for council tax, about 150mts from me a very similar house sells in a private scheme for around £75K more than mine would fetch and they are quite small in comparison, I would guess where you are living at the moment the value of my property would be anything between £100 to 200K more? Scotland has attracted so many English white settlers for that very reason, they can sell up and move here and buy a similar house to what they had for a much lessor price.

I believe the house you rent in PH is up in Luzon? I would expect pricing of most goods and services is that bit higher there than where I was living on Negros Oriental, this is a very small town around 15mins drive from Dumaguete City, I had moved from Mactan Cebu and at the time I moved beer prices were P60 in a Bar there in Mactan and only P35 in my new place at my local, however I must admit this is a real dump of a place. After the Lockdown new Resto Bars were opening in this wee toon every other month, many owned by returning OFW's, all with that same great idea, if they sell their Food and the Beer cheaper than the than the rest they will get all the customers, or course this does not work in the long term most would fail after a few months, fools and their money are easily parted.

I become friendly with a man from Cebu as we both had racing Pigeons, his name is Theodore Choing Sy, I was to ask him how come so many successful businesses there have an owner from a Chinese background? Oh that is an easy answer, when a Filipino earns $10 but the end of the day this has been spent and the next day he will borrow to shore up his business, but my Chinese father taught me that if I was to earn $10 only to spend $2.5 and bank the rest, he then went on to say the highlight of the year for a typical working class Filipino Family are the Birthday Parties and there they like to put on a show, they will borrow P10K for the party and spend 12K, I was to find out this was all very true when I employed the workers to build my house there, they were all to get loans from me and other places, they would come to me for the 10K to finance a party, but never at any time would I loan them any more than 2 weeks wages, so they had to go elsewhere for the other 5 and likely had to pay 10K back on this?

My workers were pretty good guys and although we got off to a bad start, this being my fault as I could not comprehend how anyone can be so stupid and cause so many faults on the job? however being reasonably generous to them I guess I formed a kind of cupboard love from them, I was to go and buy a Flux cored wire Mig welder and had a foreigner provide some tuition on how to use this, by the end of my job there the boys 3 Brother in Laws were producing very good welds, getting near the end of my job I offered them the equipment, Welder, Chop Saw and Grinder at half the price I paid for it and agreed to let them pay this P6K in instalments, they declined my offer, these Cupid Stunts were given an ideal chance to at least make a little money on the side, you can lead a Horse to water but you cannot make it drink.

I'm not sure if I ever mentioned this before on this site? but I managed to get a very good Car there in PH by buying a repossessed one from BPI bank, what we have is a Honda Mobilio, I was able to buy this for P632K it was 16 month old with 9500Klms on the clock, new price for this was P1.1M.I had this in to the Honda main dealer for a service costing P4.5K and this allowed me to maintain the remaining 20months manufacturers warranty, this is now 5yrs old and has not given us any problems at all, this is the very first Auto Car I have ever owned much preferring a manual, however the Auto's I had driven in the past were nothing like this with them all having 3 speed boxes, this car has a CVT gearbox and the gear change is as smooth as it gets. it also gives us very good fuel return. This car has a 1500cc engine and the perfect power to weight ratio, why anyone would wish to have some of these big Gas Guzzlers is beyond me especially there in PH where it is unlikely you can get them up to cruising speed? driving on both Negros and Cebu I have found it takes 4hrs to drive 100mls.

Last year when I arrived back in UK I had to get myself a car, thinking £2to3K would get me a decent run around I was kidding myself on, as I had not had Car insurance for some time in UK, I had to start off as a new insurer, I ended up buying a 7yr old Yaris for £7K, low emissions with only £30 a year Road Tax, costing me £300 for insurance, this is a good little car and something I would recommend to a female family member, however it is not the car for me, in fact I hate the little thing as most of my motoring in past years was in Big Volvos and I am so used to this level of comfort.

I think you're spot on there... food here is getting more and more expensive and unfortunately we live in a place where the electric is double the cost it is in most places.

Heading back to the UK is always at the back of my mind because as I get older I'm more and more likely to have something go wrong and need the NHS... also prefer my kids to school there if they can.

Problem for me would be the wife and getting her out to work to earn some money there to help support us I'm sure she'd want to spend most of it on crap and send anything that's left home...

@HONEST DAVE

"... he then went on to say the highlight of the year for a typical working class Filipino Family are the Birthday Parties and there they like to put on a show, they will borrow P10K for the party and spend 12K, I was to find out this was all very true when I employed the workers to build my house there, they were all to get loans from me and other places, they would come to me for the 10K to finance a party, but never at any time would I loan them any more than 2 weeks wages, so they had to go elsewhere for the other 5 and likely had to pay 10K back on this?"

He's hit the nail on the head there... the idea that you should live according to your means is totally foreign to the average "social" filipino... nope they want to live like film stars from the off!

Lots of people in the UK are maxed out with their credit catds also John

Wife want's a new car, I don't. Seen too many cars with dents and scratches including mine. You need to be able to read Filipino's mind, if they had one. Second hand cars here are expensive compared to England.
Got a dash cam fitted front and rear in case of a serious accident, even then a Filipino will denied all fault.
Trouble is I live in the jungle and it's a 1000 meter walk to the highway and I'm not getting any younger. (still younger than Honest Dave) just.

Well perhaps the answer to that is to do what I did and look for a repo, there is plenty of them around, the one I bought had a bash in the plastic bumper this was quite unsightly and perhaps the reason the dealers gave it a wide berth, by pouring a kettle of boiling water on this and I was able to pop this out and get it back to the original.

Yes you are correct with this, only there is a marked difference between a person from the western (assumed to be of average intelligence) world being maxed out with their cards but having the knowledge on how to balance this out and shifting this around on to cards with 0% interest.

Then you have the Filipino way below average intelligence and the mindset of a 10yr old, twice I have known my Filipino neighbours to have Motorbikes repossessed getting into big problems with money one of them was working for me at the time earning p400 day, he really did fall on hard times by getting deep in debt, all the family had to eat was rice with a little vegetable oil mixed with soy sauce poured over it. However twice year he will have the lavish Birthday Party for his two children.

The last Car I had in UK before going to PH for the long term, was this very same Car, Honda Accord 2.2 diesel this was also the EX top of the range, older than yours being a 2005, I bought this very cheap from my work an Ex managers car, mine was the estate, one time I moved a 2.1mtr tall fridge in this, I still see this same car everyday as my neighbour bought this from me, he now has the oldest car in the street at 18yrs, I have the second oldest at 8yrs, all my cars were bought second hand and most of them I would keep for around 10yrs many were passed on to my son and he would get another few good years out of them, I do believe my son is now in the position to buy a brand new car he has his own business and employs around 20 people, 15 of these are in the Philippines and yet last year he replaced his existing car with a 6yr old Jag, in my view anyone buying a new Car has got to be ATFH? around 5yrs ago I had worked out that I had owned cars for 45yrs and kept my son going in cars for 15yrs and my total spend on cars in these 60yrs was around £35K, just before I retired 9yrs ago I remember a man I worked beside boasting about his new BMW and this had cost him 30K, fools and their money?

the last new car i bought was in 1978---a mini 1275 gt. Bright red. But it was a friday afternooner. 3 yeares later my 1st wife grabbed it off me in our messy divorce. By then the door bottoms were starting to bubble badly..and the engine block cracked--new engine required. Bad luck that.

My current car is a Ford fiesta diesel i bought 6 years ago--ive now done about 15000 miles in it--been very reliable and owes me nothing. I'm thinking of getting a 7 seater now--i'm forever taxiing my extended family around.