A visitor to Mexico wonders...

I recently received this email from a reader of this blog, a woman from the US who had just gotten home from a trip to Mexico. She and her husband had flown into Guadalajara, come out to the Lake Chapala area and taken us out to dinner, then gone by bus to Guanajuato, San Miguel de Allende, and Queretaro before returning to Guadalajara to fly home nine days later. Quite a trip!

If a hotel clerk makes $6.00 a day and a hotel manager only makes $9.00 a day, how can they afford the prices we saw for food and clothing? That is not to mention housing of some kind. This is the salary we heard were paid for these types jobs, but I can not remember who told us that. If maids make $3.50 an hour for housekeeping at a private home for a Gringa, why would hotel staff be so low? Maybe it was wrong.

We went to a big grocery store in SMA outskirts and looked at the prices for Grocery/ Health and Beauty aids. They were as high or worse as the USA. This was where the locals shop. I don't know how they can live. I shop at a Mexican Grocery store outside our neighborhood because the prices are better and the prices are about the same as Mexico and our salaries are much more.

Another observance was that soooo many people eat out at all the little hole in the wall places. I don't know how they can afford that either. Always buying fruit, corn, candy or something. You even see the kids taking buses and taxi's.

Example, we went to VIP's in Queretaro to eat one evening. It was like a nice Denny's in the USA. The place was full of Mexicans and it cost us $20 US to eat. Some looked like Bank clerks that were sitting in a table by us. We just can't figure the economy out. Do you understand how they make it or know that they make more salary than we heard?

I don't know that I can answer all the questions, but I'll give it a try. Some of the people you see eating or buying things at the expensive places may well be doing it as a rare treat. The little hole in the wall places are often very cheap.

Also, they typically have less stuff than we do, partly because their houses are smaller and wouldn't hold it all. So if you see a young woman buying a pricey cosmetic, for instance, she likely doesn't have tons and tons of them at home like Americans might.

As for food prices, the poorer people eat a lot less meat and fish than we do, a lot more beans and tortillas. You can feed a large family a lot of beans and tortillas for not much money.

Here are some of the expenses that Americans typically have and Mexicans typically don't:

• Rent or mortgage payments, often astronomical... most Mexicans live in the family home which has been owned ever since it was built.
• Expensive appliances and furniture for the homes. Many Mexicans don't even have refrigerators or washing machines, though this is more true in rural areas.
• Car, car payment, car insurance, car repairs, gasoline... most Mexicans don't have cars, though the middle class does more now than before and the wealthy don't have problems here. This lack of a family car is part of why even children will take taxis at times.
• Credit card bills with high interest payments. Rare here, though beginning.
  
• Health insurance. There are plans here, but it's relatively rare.
• Vacations. I've heard Mexicans say that they have never been to a particular city because they have no relatives to stay with there.

Hope this helps. I'm sure there is more to it.