More pesos, less value

By Herbert Vego

THE bad news yesterday seems good to dollar-earning overseas Filipino workers (OFWs): The Philippine peso has plunged to a historic low of PHP 62.27 against the US dollar.

That’s a classic case of inflation, which means that the same unit of currency buys fewer items than it did in the past.

While dollar remittances translate to a higher peso amount, its buying power diminishes vis-a-vis higher prices, especially of imported goods.

Prices of domestic products rise, too, because the costs to produce and transport them rise, and because high overall demand pushes local prices up.

As a senior citizen, I lament the loss of buying power of my hard-earned bank savings.

I look back to the “good old days” in the 1950s when one centavo could buy a piece of candy.

I remember my late father reminding us kids to set aside coins (at that time mostly made of silver) for our piggy banks. He said that if we could be millionaires in old age, we would have saved enough money to spend the rest of our lives.

Our father and mother, both school teachers, had a combined monthly income of PHP 240 monthly, which was then big enough for us children to enjoy their “tender loving care”.

No thanks to inflation, the same amount could only buy a “value meal” for one person today.

When he died in 1992 due to lung cancer, he had spent more than a million pesos in hospitalization and medicine.

Most retiring wage earners in today’s generation have no doubt made millions of pesos. Unfortunately, a stash of one, two or even ten million pesos today does not guarantee financial sufficiency to a retiree for the rest of his life.

Sa totoo lang, we Filipinos have more money now than we had half a century ago, but it could buy less goods. Today, a thousand pesos could melt on a visit to the market.

But, believe it or not, the same amount could feed a family for six months or more in the 1950s and even in the early ‘60s!

I was 10 years young in 1960 when our parents took us four kids to Quezon City for a two-month summer vacation. Our two-hundred-peso baon took care of the house rental, food and shopping expenses.

We rented a two-story apartment at 23-A Dapitan St. for PHP 60 per month.

The second time I went to Manila to pursue college education in 1967, prices were still very affordable.

As a night student at MLQ University, I work during the day at the Manila International Airport post office for a minimum daily wage of PHP 6.

In the mid-1970s, even when President Ferdinand Marcos had already declared martial law, price increases were infrequent and would be met with salary increases. I was then working for a music recording company and was also freelance-writing for newspapers and magazines.

With a wife and a baby boy, I made both ends meet on an average monthly income of P700, of which P80 went to house rental.

When I transferred to Iloilo City in 1981 to edit a local weekly newspaper, the so-called PUs (small Minica taxi cabs) were charging a flat rate of ten pesos for an inter-city ride.

An overnight stay at Hotel del Rio in that year cost PHP 120. Today it’s PHP 2,400.

No one will disagree with my opinion that today’s peso millionaires are no longer rich.

And so, dear reader, please be a dollar millionaire.