(Photo from AFP)
Johnny Noe Ravalo continues his online bestseller last week on
preparing for retirement in the Philippines. This made me wonder whether retirees are ready for rising medical and travel costs:
Food and utility bills will be the baseline but they will not figure prominently in the total cost scheme. What you need to be very realistic about is medical expenses. Maintenance medicine and periodic check ups are never cheap.
If diabetes runs in the family, for example, you will have to dish out over P5,000 in monthly medicines plus the annual check up which can run up to P10,000 if all the laboratory tests are included. That's P70,000 per year --- minimum --- for an ailment that has no cure and has to be paid when you are no longer enjoying both a regular salary or your company's medical plan. Complications also add to the expenses. Any hospitalization will set you back in the tens of thousands for as short as a day or two of confinement. You need to estimate a portion for monthly medical maintenance plus set aside a lump sum for the “just in case” part.
Some of MoneySmart’s regular readers are in their 30s but are already planning for their retirement. A lot of you are working and living abroad and are planning to come home for your golden years. It’s relatively easy to figure out the lifestyle part for me, personally, but medical cost is very much a puzzle. How do you know what medical problems you will have to prepare for, huh? (trying out a sultry, vampy voice) Can’t I just be young forevah?
Noet brings me back to earth. Okay, okay, the medical cost fund should be extra, extra fat. And since every Pinoy is a tireless
“lakwatsera”, the travel fund should be, too. We're all dreaming of visiting every beach in our 7,000 plus islands so we gotta raise the travel fund too what with the rising cost of oil and all. Sigh. There goes the upgrade to Macbook Air.
and to think the only sickness running in the family's the big C.
*sighs too*
This is why I don't want to grow very old hehe.
Guess we also need to start taking care of ourselves this early so we could at least save from some avoidable health problems in the future.
oh, no...i'm one of the most lakwatsero pinoys out there :(
good thing there's no sickness running in the family...the only thing that's always hurting are our pockets
Salve, re: "medical cost is very much a puzzle. How do you know what medical problems you will have to prepare for, huh?..."
Yan ang silbi ng kapatid o kamag-anak na doktor o nurse! Free advice and consultation :D In my case, 2 in our family at 10 sa tita at pinsan. How about you?
follow up... Free medical consultations... which I barter for Moneysmarts investing advice. Ayos, ne? :D
hey qwerty, long time no hear! how have you been? i didn't mean to get you down. i'm sure there's still time for all of us to prepare. but look at it this way, at least we're forewarned and are now forearmed :-)
ria, yup, prevention is still the best cure. i know someone who died at 98 due to the only sickness that he had his entire lifetime. i kid you not! veggies, fruits, early bedtime, no alcohol, caffeine and zero nicotine. :-)
qwerty, i am an oncologist. re the big C, remember this - only about 10% is inherited. the rest are preventable, since 30% is due to wrong diet, 30% is due to smoking, 3% is due to food additives, a few percent due to obesity/sedentary lifestyle, a few percent due to radiation exposure, a few percent due to medications, and a few percent due to infections (hepatitis B, hepatitis C, Epstein-Barr virus, H. pylori, Human papilloma virus)...lifestyle changes are important to lessen risk for cancer
what to do? don't smoke or stop smoking or avoid being exposed to smoke; eat lots of fruits and veggies - they really do contain antioxidants; eat less red meat, or better still, avoid red meat (i don't eat red meat, and am alive and kicking); avoid processed food and those w/ many additives; avoid barbecued/char-broiled food; exercise daily, kahit na 30-minute walk lang; work to always be within ideal body weight; be monogamous, and make sure your husband is monogamous too (human papilloma virus is the cause of cervical cancer and it is sexually transmitted); have your vaccines (hep B vaccine - hepatitis B is high risk for liver cancer; give your daughters/nieces HPV vaccine before they become sexually active; avoid or minimize alcoholic beverages because it helps strengthen other cancer-causing substances (it is also one of the risk factors for breast CA)...and the list goes on
and go to the doctor yearly for routine check-ups even if you don't feel anything.
cancer when detected early is easy to manage. when late, it can be managed but a little more difficult, and verrrrrrrrry expensive! and we don't want all our retirement money to go there...
read prevention and screening guidelines of american cancer society..
kaya natin yan!
veggies, fruits, early bedtime, no alcohol, caffeine and zero nicotine. :-)
Ack! Alcohol pa lang bagsak na ako heheh
hi salve. i was just immersed in a sisyphean routine at work and school since late last year. never thought post graduate studies after years of being away from the university would be such a cerebral pain.
anything for more career options i guess.
back to the topic at hand anyway, i've seen first hand how hard the experience is for a dying person who wasn't able to properly prepare for retirement. as if wincing through the pain wasn't hard enough, he had to worry about how his family would be able to foot the hospital bills.
yeah it's sad but it helps drive home the point. preparing for retirement should be given serious consideration.
femaad, much appreciated. it changed the lens i put on cancer. i had previously declared that if i were diagnosed with it, i would choose NOT to get treatment and just die in peace. i realize i just have to live healthy and perhaps everything will be ok :-)
Ria, you know what they say. Quitting is easy if you want to! :-) If you could do it with rice, how much more difficult would it be to stop drinking alcohol hehehe.
qwerty, i was kinda hoping to go back to school when the kids are not so high-maintenance anymore...
hi femaad. thanks a lot for the checklist. sounds like i've got lots of work left to do healthwise. :D
ria, don't think of the cigarette...think of how much money is spent on cigarettes, and be amazed how much money you have "burned" :-)
Most of us feel secured after opening a medical insurance but just read at the hundreds of disease the insurance do not cover, it is lengthy and have you ever experience the plight of reimbursement? Retirement may be far for most of us but we have to start saving and investing in properties which will grow and give us a steady income. Instead of maintaining 4-5 insurance policies I'd rather invest in a business which grows.
group Medical Las Vegas