Hedge
BUT with the expected spending this May up to June, particularly on tuition and school expenses, the hedge couldnt be applied despite the peso gaining further against the greenback on a two-month high of P47 exchange rate.
That enrolment is just around the corner prompted me to ask for the additional money, Dimasupil said whose two other children are also studying to be nurses like Arlene.
Indeed, low inflation rates may have abated prices of basic commodities from pushing up but the cost of education, something held dearly by most Filipino families, remain expensive.
Ditto, says Beth Realubid who said she also asked her husband Lando in Bahrain to hike what he sends monthly.
They have three children who are all in college.
Jose Alfonso, a seafarer, said aside from tuition, the higher cost of his brothers clothing requirements in a maritime school also caused him to send an additional hundred dollars a month.
My brother asked that his monthly dollar allowance be raised because the peso equivalent of what I used to send him has gone down, Alfonso said.
Alfonso said that before, he sends US$150 a month, which is equivalent to around P8,400. But with the appreciation of the peso, that amount is now just a few change above P7,000.
I feel like losing a thousand pesos every month, he added.
Alfonsos brother Michael also needed an additional US$25 in allowance to be able to pay rent and eat three times a day. He lives in a Manila dormitory and goes to their home in the southern Philippine province of Cavite on weekends.
Arlenes parents, on the other hand, used to get the equivalent of around P28,000 from her US$500 monthly remittance.
Now, her parents said they get only a little more than P23,500, a difference of P4,500 since the exchange rate of P56 to the US$1 in 2005.
Yung ibinaba ay sapat na para sa allowance ng isang bata sa isang buwan (The difference is already equivalent to a months allowance of one kid going to college), Flavia, Arlenes mother, said.
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