Pinoy Expat , a.k.a. OFW

By Cheryl Sperling

Wow! Pinoy expats! I think it sounds better than the so commonly used OFW. But before I go further let us first check what the word means.

"An expatriate (in abbreviated form, expat) is a person temporarily or permanently residing in a country and culture other than that of the person's upbringing. The word comes from the Latin terms ex ("out of") and patria ("country, fatherland")", this is according to Wikipedia. "In its broadest sense, an expatriate is any person living in a different country from where he or she is a citizen. In common usage, the term is often used in the context of professionals
sent abroad by their companies, as opposed to locally hired staff (who can also be foreigners). The differentiation found in common usage usually comes down to socio-economic factors, so skilled professionals working in another country are described as expatriates, whereas a manual labourer who has moved to another country to earn more money might be labelled an 'immigrant'".

Well, there it goes, we can call our dear OFW's, the new Filipino heroes, as Pinoy Expats! Today, I wanted to talk about them because once upon a time I was a Pinoy expat myself. Most families have 1 or more members working abroad or has a relative or relatives working there. And the places Pinoys are in, are so widespread that probably there is at least one Filipino in every country on earth. In one of my travels, I happened to talk to a Filipino family who lives in Greenland! I never thought that place was even inhabited, more so having our "kababayan" there. From Asia to the Middle East, to Europe, and even in Africa, Filipinos are in every country there as well. My family have lived in Cairo, Egypt in two separate times, and I see and talked to a lot of fellow Pinoy expats and immigrants (those married to Egyptians). Not only in Egypt, but also in Angola, South Africa, the tiny and beautiful tourist islands of Seychelles and Mauritius .... to name a few!

Being an expat and working abroad is not an easy task as we will be far away from our families. Filipinos being a closely knit family, homesickness is the foremost problem encountered by our Filipino compatriots and then there is the case of culture shock wherein which living in our host country is totally a different one with regards to their ways of living and even the food they it. But all these we readily accept coz our reason for leaving our beloved Philippines is a noble cause - to provide for a better future for our families!

Provide for a Better Future for our Families. There we go, that is our main goal when we left the Philippines and our families. But we failed to make a Plan on how to implement this, nobody taught us how. What happens is we just gave them sustenance for the present or just upgraded the present life of our families, and we forgot about the Future. We are happy that they are happy ... happy to oblige for their need to have a new dress, or a new phone , or gadget or what-nots. Its okay to give these stuff for special occasions perhaps ... as long as we are not derailed from our main purpose - that is, providing for our families future and our future retirement.

"No one plans to fail but only fails to plan."

So, am calling all my fellow Pinoy expats, to focus or refocus and start planning, if you haven't still, for your financial future because you will not be working forever there! Try to read and research on how to achieve financial security! On how to make money work for you and earn passive income or better still earn multiple passive incomes! This site is aimed to help you in this regard. You may ask any questions or you may share your experiences with us on how or what you did towards this goal ....so we can profit from it, too. But its not enough to just read and learn ... we must ACT now!! We have to practice whatever has to be done. And rest assured , we'll see each other wealthy in the future!