What is the Cost of Living in PH?

Cost of living in the Philippines.

This case shows the income of one mother and her expenses in one month who is living in Metro Manila, Philippines (applicable in the year 2018). We can observe that bulk of the expenses goes to food followed by house rent. 

This case is not isolated since many low-income earners in the Philippines houses 4 or more children. What happened here is that in the past years the father was contributing to the family income, after things go wrong in the relationship the father left and the responsibility of taking care of the 4 children was shouldered by the mother (the other scenario is that the father died, then the mother shouldered the family responsibilities).

My goal here is to analyze this case and to figure out how we can help these people. We can’t blame the mother since the problem is already there, but if the mother had anticipated the problem, she might as well result in family planning (the mother might have chosen to bear only one child). If she chose to have only one child, the effect on the food cost might have been lowered by 3/5, or 60% equivalent to P2,400 which will reduce the food cost to P1,600 (computation: P4,000 – P2,400 = P1,600). 

Another thing to look at where we can reduce the cost is the housing rent. The government should provide housing facilities to low-income earners, by this, housing expense could be reduced by half. Developing a low-cost decent housing facility which can be amortized at P1,500 (or lower) will be lowered compared to prevailing P2,500 monthly rent in substandard home facilities in the metro. 

The electricity bill, in this case, is high, my assumption is that a high electricity bill was due to lighting and the use of television. The electricity, in this case, could be reduced by 50% to P600 if the house use led lights (3watts) and that watching television would not be done the whole day. In this case when children are not watching television, they should be engaged in activities that enhance well-being like playing sports, participating in barangay and school activities, and studying.

The price of water is high as well, in the province you can use water regularly every month and have a bill ranging from P150 to P250. The government should review the pricing scheme of monopoly water companies in the metro, and decide whether there is a need for regulation.

Let us look at the new income and expense accounting when a reduction in costs are applied:

Look at the big difference in savings from previous P-500 to P3,750, this change is feasible if and only if the government will provide the right policies and people cooperate in the changes to be made. 

The P3,750 savings can be used as a security which can be deposited in the bank - which can be invested, or the family can use the money to improve the quality of their food for better nutrition, or they can use it to improve the education and learning of their child; to simplify, increasing savings will open doors to many improvements.

p.s. The tuition fee was not included in the cost since it was assumed that the children are getting free education from public schools.