Living Abroad - Part 2: Money Concerns
The question I get asked most often when I tell people I live half of the year in Mexico is, how can you afford it? The assumption is generally that I must be wealthy to sustain this sort of life. While my business back home is doing fine, the truth is that this lifestyle doesn’t have to be especially costly. If housing costs in your primary country can be reduced - perhaps by simplifying, or arranging some sort of seasonal accomodations - then it can be quite manageable. Housing costs are much cheaper in most of Mexico than in many parts of Canada or the United States, for example.
It helps if you have a job or business that doesn’t require you to be physically present all the time, but many today can realistically earn their living wherever they have a telephone and good internet. Air travel has never been cheaper, so the occasional trip back is not a real problem. And many are able to supplement their income with online businesses. (see my experiments with this here and here)
One of the strangest discoveries is how strange it is to get used to a foreign currency. While in an office supply store in Cancun, I went to the art supply section to see if they had any oil paints. They did - but the price seemed crazy!
Two hundred and ten dollars for a starter set of Pébéo paints?!?! Of course, in a second or two I realized that was in pesos, and is about $10-$11 USD.
This happens to me every time I spend money! I almost fell over the first time the cashier at Costco showed me the total and it was over $5000. (Note - it doesn’t help that the symbol for the Mexican Peso is the $). Spend a day shopping, or a week furnishing an unfurnished apartment, and despite knowing better you can start to think that you will need to call Jeff Bezos and beg him for help with your credit card payment.
Despite the currency advantage, the costs can add up. My point isn’t that it is so cheap to live abroad that you can just do it without any planning. Some things are more expensive, because they must be imported. Some things are just unavailable - I still can’t find steel cut oats anywhere!
If you are willing to eat like a local, this is one area you can economize. I have noticed that many of the homes down here have very modest kitchens. Part of the reason is no doubt the availability of inexpensive street food and modestly priced restaurants. You will often see workers lined up at a street vendor, getting their lunch for the day.
4 tacos for $35 pesos? Less than 2 USD? Crazy.
The bottom line - living abroad can be more affordable than many think. With a little creativity as far as domestic housing, it can even end up being less expensive to live abroad part of the year. And if you can live abroad full time, earning dollars and spending pesos, you can save even more money. But the real benefits go far beyond dollars and cents. More on that in future posts.
