My Parents and Retirement

My parents are in their seventies are living in Southern California. Being retired, they live on a fixed income. They are seriously considering living in the Philippines for a part of the year. With the state of the economy these days, I think that it is a good idea. The cost of living there is much lower and they will have less expenses since the house is fully paid for. My parents are just waiting for my brother's petition to be finalized, so we hope he will be here soon since he's only waiting for the final approval from the US Embassy. My dad is also a believer in having a life insurance so he called me and ask me to look into life insurance rates for my brother. They own their house in California but this is a bad time to sell, he is hoping the real estate prices will go up again.

This is the house I grew up in. My parents had this house built when I was seven years old and I lived here until my early twenties after which, I migrated here in the U.S. Today, only my bachelor cousin who is a lawyer lives here. My parents did not want to sell this house even though there are people who want to buy it. It certainly holds a lot of good memories for all of us. My dad plans to have the house remodeled before they go back. He wants to convert the maids' quarters on the first floor into their bedroom and make it bigger by extending it to a part of the kitchen. He also wants to put air conditioning to the rest of the house since currently, only the bedrooms upstairs have it. My dad is already complaining of the expenses but I told him he will still save money in the long run.