At 73, I Priced My Funeral — Then Chose the Philippines

👉 https://ruthinthephilippines.com 📖 MY BOOK — "Still Somebody" ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Seven true stories of women written off at home — who started over in the Philippines. Plus the honest $1,150-a-month budget behind it. $27 · instant PDF. I was seventy-three, and four years after I lost my husband of forty-four years in a single night, the only thing left on my calendar was my own funeral. 00:00 — The Casket With a Payment Plan 01:57 — A Useful Pair of Hands 03:48 — The Plastic Bins 06:29 — Still a Dress to Finish 08:25 — One-Way Ticket 09:39 — The Heat and the Dark 11:16 — My Thumb Over the Button 12:18 — A Knock at the Wall 14:23 — "You Sew" 17:18 — The Night I Blew Out the Street 21:14 — Six Hundred Dollars a Month 24:40 — Nine Thousand Dollars for One Afternoon 29:19 — The Call I Waited Years For My name is Eleanor. For most of my life I was a seamstress in Erie, Pennsylvania — a dressmaker, alterations, a little corner in a shop on the west side. Fingers like sandpaper by the end of it. A useful pair of hands. Then Harold was gone, and the house went quiet and stayed quiet. My own daughter started coming by with plastic bins to sort my closets "for when the time comes." She talked about me in the past tense with me sitting right there. To her I wasn't a woman anymore. I was a schedule. One gray afternoon I caught myself pricing my own casket at the kitchen table. Pine is cheaper than oak. There's a payment plan. I added the whole thing up — the hymns, the flowers, the box — and it came to more than nine thousand dollars. Nine thousand dollars for one afternoon at the end of my life. So I did a foolish thing, and maybe the best thing I ever did. I bought a one-way ticket. I sold most of what Harold and I had, kept his watch and my thimbles and my heavy old black Singer, and I flew to a city in the Philippines I could not have found on a map — Ormoc, on the island of Leyte. I was seventy-three years old, ten thousand miles from a single soul who knew my name. This is where my story really begins. #RetireInThePhilippines #RetireAbroad #AnotherLifeAbroad #CostOfLivingPhilippines #RetireOnSocialSecurity #ExpatLife #StartingOverAt70 #Ormoc #RetirementCrisis retire in the philippines, retire abroad, retirement, cost of living philippines, retire on social security, american retiree philippines, moving to the philippines, healthcare in the philippines, medical bills usa, retire overseas, retire cheap, senior expat, retire at 70, retirement savings gone, retire abroad on a budget, philippines cost of living 2026, expat life philippines, retire in asia, affordable healthcare, filipino hospitality, retire alone, starting over at 70, retirement crisis, another life abroad, ormoc, ormoc city, leyte, leyte philippines, dressmaker, tailor, seamstress, funeral costs, funeral planning, living in the philippines, widow expat, retire in the philippines on social security