Category: The Learning Curve of Living in Mex.

Today was a quick run to one of the fish markets and one of the local fruiterias. I promised pictures of them to show where we have been shopping for the last year.

The learning curves as I mentioned previous are many, there are a lot of things that once you get past the 🤷🏼‍♂️🙋🏼‍♂️🤦🏼‍♂️💆🏼‍♂️(HAHA)it all makes sense and sometimes even more so than how we do things in the states. I covered, expectations of timing, house buying, land owning, shopping, now ill cover things like opening a bank accounts, passports, ffm forms, stop signs, signal lights, electric usage, paying for purchases, auto tint. So I will try and keep these short where possible, but explain where necessary, a friend mentioned that for the general public that might read this, that they would greatly benefit from someone who has done all these things and has the first hand experience.(Thank you Sheila!)

Disclaimer: These are all things relevant to where we live in Mexico, most things are the same throughout but your milage may vary…

I am going to lump some of this together for shortness and because they are all linked! (Passport, FFM, Residency Card, RFC, CURP, Bank Accounts, House-Land Purchases). Ok this should go without saying, Mexico is another country.. (HAHA) yes passports are required but rarely enforced. Passports are required to do any type of financial transactions like buying property. The FFM(Tourist Visa) forms are also legally required, and we made sure to always have our forms, because for us we knew this was always going to be a long term adventure for us, and we wanted to follow the laws.

We had a bit of a learning curve with applying for temporary residency, there are several more requirements than there used to be to obtain your residency cards. We had to supply lots of bank statements, birth certificates, FFM forms, Passports, and we needed to get an apostille marriage certificate. I know this sounds like a lot of work, but I think it came together pretty easily, it was just time. The consulate was really easy to work with and they even rushed our Visa the day we had our appointment so we could make the border closing time. You might think well that was a lot, however that was only half of the process.. (HAHA) Once you cross the border we had to get your Visa stamped then we had 30 days to get to the local INM (immigration office) and finish the process. I lucked out I walked in, one person ahead of me, 1.5hrs I walked out, with a note to come back in 5 days for my card. Frank however wasnt going to be able to get his card till two weeks later, when he went it was an entire day of waiting and not getting in, followed by a second day waiting for 3 hrs, getting in and finally getting his card. Woohoo we were officially temporary residence of Mexico!! OH MAN.. that reminds me our one year is up in February.. and that means another trip to the consulate and the INM office.. however this go around the cards will be good for 4 years after such time we will be able to apply for citizenship!

Banking, this was and continues to be one of the largest learning curves!!! Stateside we are all familiar with opening a bank account its pretty straight forward and maybe a 1-2 hour process, in some cases you can do it all online. So, Mexico, I had to get an accountant, who provided me a letter, that then I needed to take to government office to get my RFC number, that is linked to my CURP number that was assigned during the residency process. Then once I had my paperwork I had to head back to the bank to start the actual process of opening a bank account. The security around even accessing your account is something I have never seen before!

Stop signs and signal lights at the same intersections!! While maybe confusing, it makes sense here, electric has not always been reliable so to negate issues with traffic during those times.. however very confusing at first..

Autotint, illegal here other than factory installed that includes on US cars just here for vacation, while not strictly enforced it is enforced and they will stop people and remove it on the side of the road ..

Purchases, I have researched this a lot, and always come back to the same conclusion no matter the exchange rate. Always pay CC first if possible as long as the card doesn’t have foreign transaction fees. The next best form of payment is pesos. The last very last option should be USD. This was a learning curve because almost everyone says just use USD because everyone accepts it.. and this is true, however they almost always give you a way worse exchange rate than what you would get at the bank.

This installment.. very boring, but a lot of useful information for those who might be interested in moving or visiting Mexico. Please keep in mind these are summaries to keep it “short”.

Ok so I think thats maybe enough of the background, the next installment will be a jump ahead to more recent events!

Next .. The Rental Condo….

The learning curve started even before the move, what many people do not realize is that as a foreigner buying property in Mexico you cant not actually “own” the coastal property, it sits in a trust. The trust is 50 years, so I am pretty sure neither of us will care, but we are working on our citizenship and at that point we will own the land. The next thing we learned is that Mexico doesn’t really do home loans, when you see a price it’s pretty much cash. Yes some builders and sellers will carry a note but that is not typical.

Leading up to moving into our home, June 22, 2022, many people thought, aren’t you scared of just up and moving to another country!? No, I cant say that at any point of this have I been scared or worried about, up and moving to another country. There have been major learning curves, I will say I think it’s more cultural differences, and societal differences. People might think it’s the language barrier that has been the hardest, but thats only been a small part of it because we are in classes to learn Spanish, translation apps and very patient kind people here.

So, what was one of the largest learning curves. you might ask? Well my friends that would be “EXPECTATIONS”. Most people reading this know that I am a Designer who has my own design firm, where I do architectural design work, 3D photo realistic renderings, I worked very closely with clients, and the builders to make sure the designs came together as laid out. That included contractors showing up when they said, etc. What I learned here in Mexico, that “see you at 9am” really means 10:30-11-12, “see you Monday” really means Tuesday with a slight chance of that being Wednesday. (HAHA) This by far was the biggest learning curve, over a year in and we really appreciate this laid back outlook. Nobody here really gets in a hurry, and nobody really gets upset about anything, it’s just a more relaxed laid back atmosphere. While I can appreciate it now, the first 3-4 months it was very stressful for me and frustrating.

The next learning curve was shopping, to go from order something on Amazon, get it potentially that day or by the latest before 12pm the next day, to thats going to take a week and then we have to drive to the border to get it, was a bit of a shock to the system! (HAHA), 16 months in and we have found we don’t need “stuff” from Amazon and the items we just have to get, well there really isn’t a rush for it.

Food, that is another story, I think for us it was not a huge adjustment in the process of shopping for food but more in the availability of food. We stopped years ago really doing the one stop, big box store food buying, we were doing more curated food shopping from many sources, including farmers markets etc. We love that here in this little fishing village there are limited big stores. There really is something special and precious about supporting local families who own small shops providing quality products.

I love going to the butcher shop and asking them for a specific cut and not a single person working there, doesn’t know what you’re looking for. (after I learned what to call the parts in Spanish. haha!). You then go down the harbor area and hit up the fish markets, for fresh seafood and what is available varies by the time you get there that day and time of year! Then we head down to one of the many Tortillarias to grab some freshly made corn or flour tortillas. We have not been to the Panaderia(Bread) yet, because most of you know I make our bread fresh most of the time. Fresh fruits and veg. have to head over to one of the many local Fruiterias where we find whatever happens to be in season. The thing we learned very quickly here, is that Mexico sends all the A and probably most of B graded fruit and veg. to the states, and they get the left over B, C, D.. levels. We have been totally fine with that. Honestly, I love the fact that we are using things that in the states would be left behind tossed out and left rotting. Fruits and Veg here is almost always rip, not picked green and gassed to make it ripe, it really truly ripened, with that comes bruising, and imperfetion but thats ok!

Nothing comes in industrial sized packages, another re-learning experience(while our travels around the world exposed us to this reality, it’s a learning curve living with it), everything comes in small packs and there is not 200 of that item on the shelf with 2 pallets sitting in the back, what you see is likely all they have.

Realtime Comment…..

I will do my best to take some pictures of the places we go and put them in the continuation of this post tomorrow. Tomorrow we have to run to the Fruiteria and pick up some more veg. and drop by the fish market to pick up some shrimp and fish.

Please stick with me through these first posts, they are a lot I know.. but I wanted to share what has happened over the last year with the people that mean a lot to us, our friends. I promise shorter post will happen once we are caught up.

TO BE CONT….