Usually it works great.

One day recently, Kelly and I were shopping at Soriana, a chain store in Chapala, and he went to get some cash from one of the ATMs in the lobby. He came back and said his card wasn’t working.

So I went and tried mine, which has a different number and PIN number. I had no trouble. Kelly went and tried again. No luck. But I had taken out enough money to do our errands, so we did our shopping.

When we got home, Kelly called our bank in Colorado. We had made a point of making the acquaintance of one of the bank officials before we left, so we would have a specific person to contact. This has come in handy several times. It was late on a Friday afternoon when he called and as she wasn’t there, he left a message on her machine.

Saturday morning, I happened to be doing some online banking and I noticed that there were two withdrawals from our personal checking account that were dated earlier in the week, on a day that we hadn’t left home. They were located in Mexican towns I had never heard of. One was for about $112 and the other for about $450. I’m talking dollars, not pesos.

Well… that was no good. We surmised that this was why Kelly’s card hadn’t worked at Soriana. But how had this happened? The card was never out of his possession and he is very careful about letting someone else in line see his card or what he is punching. In fact, our favorite ATM here is one in a booth, where you swipe the card so the machine has no chance to gobble it up. (When a card is gobbled in Mexico, you may not be able to get it back from the bank. I don’t know if this is also true in the US.)

Anyway, I found the emergency number for calling on weekends, and got put through to the fraud unit. There was, as we suspected, already a temporary hold on Kelly’s card, and the man told us that there had been two more charges as well. He put a permanent block on Kelly’s card.

Monday morning early, our friend at the bank called and we discussed everything with her. How could this have happened, we asked. “We can only guess,” she said, “but my best guess is that someone was running random numbers to find some that worked, and that they physically created a credit card with Kelly’s number, not needing his PIN.” I had found out in the meantime that those two Mexican towns were near Mexico City, not near us at all.

She faxed Kelly a form to fill out and he sent it back. (We use an inexpensive fax service at send2fax.com, which sends faxes to our emails and lets us send them out through their website, very handy.) A few days later, we were refunded all the money. The bank sent Kelly a new debit card to our Colorado address, and a friend is bringing it down to us soon.

It’s good — make that essential — to have more than one way to get money. Whew.

Kelly’s Debit Card Meets a Bad End is a post from: Mexico with Heart - Living, Traveling, and Retiring in Mexico

Comments from the old blog:

• How wonderful to find your blog again! We’ve wondered how you are doing; I’m glad to see you’re well. I enjoyed reading your blog, it makes me feel like I’m home again. Abundio and I are back in the states now, we had problems with my visa – a rather ironic role reversal! But we’re going to try it again in a bit, this time armed with (we hope) the right information.

  Much love to both of you!!

  ruthi and abundio carrillo-hernandez

  
  

• Rosana,

  Sorry for the long delay.. I couldn’t find your site again! Is your email still the same?
  I absolutely loved Tierras Coloradas! I can’t wait to go back. I felt so much at home it was unreal. Your pictures really helped it come alive for me, and I believe that it wasn’t such a culture shock because of them, that it could have been. They still speak fondly of you and Kelly and hope to see you again!

Bus Fares and Tortillas: Small Price Rises, Big Challenges is a post from: Mexico with Heart - Living, Traveling, and Retiring in Mexico

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. I’m sometimes surprised at how rarely the Mexicans we know go anywhere.

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

Comments from the old blog:

• Anonymous said…

  This is an interesting post. A good friend of mine has family in a small village in Mexico. Actually, it’s adopted family – she’s American but speaks fluent Spanish. Anyway, she went to Mexico last year and told me that the village is having terrible troubles because so many people are sending American dollars home making the village economy wacky. Poor folks who don’t have relatives in America are destitute because the shops and such are starting to trade in American dollars and at American prices. I live in Austin, and this makes sense. There are thousands of illegal immigrants here. Some are just trying live here under the radar, but others live cheaply and send money home.

• I said…

  Thanks, Kristina, enjoyed your comments too. In every small town in Mexico, there are relatives up north, but I had given no thought to the plight of those without relatives sending money back.

• dumpster baby said…

  maybe they pay a lot less than you americans do, cuz you all is a-gettin’ RIPPED OFF!

  And then you go around on the net saying how it costs 900 bucks a month to live in mexico. Nonsense!

• I said…

  I am not ripped off and the amount that people spend depends on many different factors. I have never seen any agreement regarding a figure like $900.

How Can Mexicans Afford to Live? is a post from: Mexico with Heart - Living, Traveling, and Retiring in Mexico

In December, we left Colorado on the 2nd, entered Mexico about a week later, and were here by Lake Chapala before Christmas. Gasoline for the trip was $313… our old Toyota Dolphin RV gets about 17 mpg. I didn’t sort out costs for the two countries. We also spent $100 for clutch repair in Mexico (would have easily been 5x that in the US!), a $50 fee to get the RV into Mexico, and $123 or maybe a bit more to take the toll highways. Total transportation, $586. Campground fees were $230. We spent $200 on groceries and $175 on eating out. We spent $50 in NM for our dog Larry to get updated on his shots and get the papers needed to get into Mexico. (Nobody asked for them, as it turned out, but they will also work for getting him back into the US.) Just before we left, we got a cellphone with a Colorado number that works in Mexico and that cost us the monthly fee of about $60 plus $60 in setup fees. Supplies and miscellany, including some clothing, came to $142. Total $1528.

In January, we didn’t drive our RV at all, as it’s parked in a backyard in San Antonio Tlayacapan, by Lake Chapala. It was a very quiet month as Kelly fell off a roof and broke a rib on the 5th, and we did very little for a couple of weeks. The total costs for the ambulance, clinics, xrays, several doctor visits, medications, etc., was $400. Yep, no typo there. Just before the fall, Kelly had spent $576 going into Guadalajara three times to an excellent periodontist, getting started with four dental implants. So total medical expenses in January were $1076.

Other January expenses were buses and taxis for $76, miscellany including propane for the RV $100, $30 for entertainment, $170 for groceries and $155 for eating out (about a dozen times), $60 for the cellphone, and $320 for the month’s camping fee. Total $909.

Interesting, huh? I might add that we feel we lack for nothing. We are both rather frugal by nature, but we eat very healthfully and well. We don’t drink much alcohol.

Your mileage will vary… so will ours.

Costs of Traveling and Living in Mexico is a post from: Mexico with Heart - Living, Traveling, and Retiring in Mexico

Before I get to the numbers themselves, I want to say that April 2005 was a month in which we mostly stayed in our village in Bernal. We did drive our little motorhome to a nearby town a few times for shopping, but mostly it just sat. We needed no health care last month. Also, I might mention that we have long had the habit of writing down our expenses. We get all the big expenses, but don’t always remember the odd small grocery or miscellany purchase. Still, I doubt that the food numbers are more than 5% off, if that. I’m using 11 pesos to the dollar as the exchange rate, and everything below is in US dollars.

Okay… food first. We spent $92 on meals out, there are 12 different entries, and each event was for both of us. That’s a lot of gorditas at the local gordita stand, a bunch of economical meals, and one fancier meal, the Italian one I blogged about recently.

Our groceries for meals prepared at home in April came to $141. That’s a LOT of mangos, avacados, papayas, and other fresh fruit and vegetables, as well as eggs, beef, chicken, yoghurt, cheese, and canned tuna. Bread and tortillas add practically nothing to the bill. Because we haven’t yet remodeled the kitchen of the house we are renting, our refrigerator is up the street a ways in our motorhome, and this has tended to keep our meals simple. We didn’t buy any vitamins or other nutritional supplements in April, though they are available in Mexico. The nearby city of Queretaro has a GNC in one of the malls, we noticed. For comparison, in the US, this figure is rarely under $400 for us, including some supplements. TOTAL FOOD= $233 for a month for two people. Once we have a refrigerator, this will go up some and we will eat a little higher off the hog.

Lodging: we are renting a house (including parking in a lot up the street) for $108 a month. This is a very good deal, suitable for us only because Kelly has many fix-it skills. Most Americans would probably want something fancier. We went to Queretaro overnight one night and spent $24 for a room with a good bed and private bath in a well-located hotel. Our electricity is a two-month bill; the April part would have been about $1.80 and our monthly water bill was $2.40. Trash collection is free, to encourage people to use it. Propane, mostly for hot water heating, was about $24. TOTAL LODGING= $160.00 for the month for two people.

We had other expenses: paint and other supplies for fixing up the house, some nice clothing made in our village, a few art and craft purchases, gasoline and bus fares for travel, and the inevitable miscellany. I’m not totaling those up because they don’t seem that pertinent to other people and no doubt they vary quite a lot for us from month to month. They totaled more than our food and lodging.

A bit more about lodging: don’t plan to arrive in Mexico and come upon a rental in our price range. Three or four times that (and up and up) is probably more common. But if you stay in an area and get to know people, opportunities can arise. House-sitting for other foreigners or Mexicans who have second homes they aren’t using is a possibility. We did house-sit our first two weeks in Bernal, back in February, and we have had two other house-sitting offers come our way since: one for a month while someone was away, and the other for a beautiful and very new house that is for sale and the Mexican owner has moved away. We didn’t take either one, as we are happy where we are. This kind of thing happens when people know you.

Mexicans often ask what we are paying for rent, and their reactions vary. Some local people who were installing glass in some windows for us sniffed and said they knew a much nicer house across town for about $20 US less a month. On the other hand, a friend of ours from Queretaro gasped and exclaimed “A gift!” when she heard our price. She hadn’t seen the house since we’ve been fixing it up, though!

2 Comments from the old blog:

• At March 27, 2007 12:10 PM, Caleb Avery said…

  I am looking for a cheaper area to live in so I found your article about Mexico interesting. Your cost for housing sounds great! However your food costs do not sound good at all. I live off of Soc Sec Disability and am looking for lower cost because right now in the U.S. I only have about $40 a month for all food expeses. (and I am a BIG eater) Even when I was married and feeding a family of 4 we never went over $100 in a month for the family. Granted there are times when my only food is oatmeal for several weeks at a time. But still those prices seem very high. Is the high food cost there offset by any other lower costs?

• At March 27, 2007 7:17 PM, Rosana Hart said…

  Caleb, we eat a LOT of fresh fruits and vegetables, far more than an average Mexican family. Good fresh corn tortillas are currently just under a dollar a kilo, and that’s a big pile of tortillas. That’s the mainstay of the poor Mexican’s diet, with beans also quite cheap. I am sure you can spend a lot less than I do for food. Also, in most situations in Mexico you don’t need a car as there is bus transport or you can find a cheap living arrangement where your food, etc., is nearby.

  Hope this helps!

The Low Cost of Living in Mexico is a post from: Mexico with Heart - Living, Traveling, and Retiring in Mexico