Onward Tickets

The Problem
Many airlines require you have an onward ticket before checking in to your flight into certain countries. This is always a problem for open ended travelers since they might not know how long they want to stay and where their next destination will be.

I am flying to the Philippines tomorrow night and this is one of the countries that requires an onward ticket which led to do some thorough research to figure out what to do. Below are options that I have read about however I do not have that much personal experience with onward flight tickets.

Solutions:
I list the solutions in my own preferred order starting with most preferred option.

24 hour cancelation policies. Most online booking websites and airlines have 24 hour cancelation policies giving you a full refund back to your credit card. Double check before you book your ticket. This means that I can just book any onward ticket I want and print my itinerary before I leave for the airport. When I land I can call or cancel the ticket online as long as its within 24 hours. I suppose this might not work if your taking a flight that is 24 hours long.

Fully refundable tickets where you can cancel your flight but I read that even fully refundable tickets often charge you a fee for cancelation. I also read that some really expensive fully refundable tickets don't charge any fee's. Also refunds usually take a while to process. I avoided this option since I was too lazy to read the fine print for each airlines refundable ticket policies. Also it seemed scary buying a really expensive ticket and not being familiar with fully refundable tickets.

buying the cheapest onward ticket and accepting cost weather you use the ticket or not. Sometimes you can also buy a ferry ticket or bus ticket and print those itineraries which might be cheaper. I didn't go with this option because it seemed like a waste of money.

Make a fake itinerary either using word or start the booking process online and print your itinerary before the payment section. This option has worked for people but I have also read of people getting caught when airlines look up their flight in their systems. I didn't feel like taking that risk although I don't think the consequences are too strict I would rather have a full proof plan.

Hope they don't ask. I guess many airlines don't ask for the onward itineraries but I wouldn't bank on that. I would get to the airport a little extra early so if they did ask I could hop over to an airline counter and buy a ticket with one of the above options: either one with a 24 hour return policy, fully refundable, or just the cheapest ticket you can find.