# Retiring (forever) from U.S. to Mexico



## Future Retiree (Feb 6, 2020)

Here's a general question for all of you, especially those of you who have retired to Mexico from the U.S. or elsewhere.

I plan to do so in a few years. I've spent a lot of time in Mexico and speak Spanish, so I'm fairly confident about my plans. Still, I will follow the normal advice (rent for while before buying, etc., etc.) and not do anything rash.

But here's my question. Financially, I'm not going to be able to maintain homes in both the U.S. and Mexico. In other words, at some point I am going to have to move my life to Mexico permanently (as in, until I die) and only return to the U.S. for short visits. Doing the six-months-here-and-six-months-there thing isn't likely to be a possibility.

That will mean, hopefully over a period of many years, making putting down roots in the community and eventually making arrangements for aging and all the rest of it.

Have any of you done something similar, or do almost all expat retirees keep one foot here and one foot there?


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## timmy45 (Mar 22, 2021)

We moved from US to MX about three years ago. We did our homework for a few months. Unlike everyone's advice we bought a home immediately. This has been consistent with our lives in general. We have loved every minute in Merida, We are not heavily involved in the "expat" community and are happily integrating into the Merida culture. We sold everything in our wonderful home on the Puget Sound including all the furniture and have no regrets at all. This is not a choice for everyone for sure.
We are and never will be a "two home couple" We have 6 kids in various locations throughout the US and get back often and they come except for the last year with Covid. We hope we will be returning for a lengthy visit in the nest 6 months. If you know you can be happy and satisfied in another country and can make it work you should go for it. We are both in our 70s and it has worked for us so far. We may well go to the US or elsewhere in another 5 years. We have loved every single thing about the last 3 yrs in MX. Good luck to you...!!!


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## TundraGreen (Jul 15, 2010)

Future Retiree said:


> …
> Have any of you done something similar, or do almost all expat retirees keep one foot here and one foot there?


I have no idea what the statistics are, but it is certainly not true that "almost all ... keep one foot here and one … there".
Almost everyone I know lives here all year round. I came here 14 years ago and have only been back to the US for visits of a week or less. I have no place to live in the US, so the cost of hotels would limit my visits even if I had an inclination to stay longer.


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## surabi (Jan 1, 2017)

Many retired expats, even if they don:t still own a home elsewhere, seem to have only moved here because they can enjoy a better standard of living on less money ( how many people could afford not only a maid, but also a gardener in their former country, not to mention going out to eat all the time?), and because they like the climate. Those types of expats tend to never bother to learn Spanish ( therefore need to hire facilitators to do everything official for them), are always comparing how things are in Mexico unfavorably with how they were where they came from, and still think and speak in their former currency (it cost 20 dollars).

I moved from Canada about 15 years ago, after doing the 6 months here, 6 months there thing for a few years and renting a place in Mexico. I started an upholstery business here ( no employees, just me) which I still have.Then I finally bought a lot and built a house. It took about 2 years for my house to be finished, as I built in stages, and I rented out my house in Canada for several years, but eventually sold it. I don't have one foot here and one there anymore, aside from having 2 daughters and 3 grandkids in Canada, as well as tons of lifelong friends,and going up for a visit of about 5 weeks every summer.


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## eastwind (Jun 18, 2016)

I am not sure the folks that post on this board are a representative sample. But most people posting here are full-time in Mexico without houses in the US. Some people move to Mexico for a number of years but then are forced to move back to the US for health reasons (most of them then stop posting here).

Some people don't like it and move back, but we often don't hear about that, they just disappear. Sometimes they favor us with an angry post on their way back.

My advice would be to downsize and put your stuff in storage and try to rent furnished here in Mexico for a year. Put your house on the market and get it sold within that year. It will be lots easier to have people come in and do fix-up work on it while you're not living there, you have to have a real estate agent you trust to recommend good people, and you'll be using electronic check-writing from your bank to pay them). So move out first, get a broker and do fix ups as they recommend remotely from Mexico, then put it on the market.

Put your stuff in storage in case you decide after a year to move back. Try to mentally segregate your stuff into two piles, both in storage: stuff you'll eventually move to Mexico, and stuff you're only keeping in case you don't like Mexico and decide to move back to a different house in the US. But it's ok to store both piles for a year. It's not going to cost a lot, and you should look at it as the cost of doing the Mexico experiment.

After you're ready to really commit to Mexico, buy a place and then get rid of the one pile of stuff from your storage and move the other pile down somehow. 

I've written this before: I think it's psychologically very important and helpful to keep a bail-out plan. You want to avoid the 'trapped in a bad decision' feeling. That's much worse than the "I made a bad decision but I'm all set to unwind it" feeling. People who feel trapped in a bad decision tend to panic and make scorched-earth decisions to get out of it that can be very bad financially. But you don't have to own two houses to have a plan to bail out, in fact you can go for a year or two without owning _any _houses. 

Just be careful of which storage unit provider you pick. Some are known for jacking up the rent by 10% or more a year, every year. I have a 10x10 in Laredo that is still charging me the $80/month that I originally agreed to 5 years ago. If your current house is in an expensive metro area, it may be worthwhile to load up a U-haul and move your stuff to storage closer to Mexico (i.e. Laredo). They have a lot of places so there's price competition there and it's much cheaper than expensive east/west coast metro area storage units.


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## citlali (Mar 4, 2013)

We have been here for 20 years and do not have a home in the US or for me in France and do not go to the States, I go to France every 2 or 3 years to visit my family and they come and visit. We have no plans to ever move back to France or the US.. We have two home here and are not going anywere but Mexico.


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## hyracer (Aug 14, 2011)

Of our friends and acquaintances, the ones we know that spit their time between the US & Mexico tend to have young grandchildren they want to visit. Canadians we know also want to maintain their health insurance which requires so much time back in their home country every year. I'm not saying it's true for every expat but the ones we have dealt with that seems to be more the norm.
We have been coming to Mexico for the past 6 winters and tend to split our time equally between the US and Mexico. We enjoy our experiences in both places and do not see us moving to Mexico permanently. We do not own a house in the US but maintain an older RV and travel from time to time to explore what we didn't see while earning a living the past 45 years 😄 For us it's the best of both countries!


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## citlali (Mar 4, 2013)

People who keep a back. here , a foot there are more likely to go Yes medical situation and grandv children are some of the reasons epople go back. WE have no grand chiildren, have a good health insurrance and tend to move on rather than go back to a place we do not have any ties to so the likelyhood of going back for us iis nil.


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## PatrickMurtha (Feb 26, 2011)

My situation is probably unusual, as I am single, gay, have no children or grandchildren, and almost no surviving family. So I have not left Mexico since I arrived 10 years ago, although I have moved WITHIN the country several times. Being able to maintain a double life in two countries would be way beyond my financial means in any case! Although my Spanish is still not the greatest, I have tended to live in cities or neighborhoods that have a low or non-existent number of expats - Culiacán; Cuajimalpa in Mexico City; San Francisquito in Querétaro; and now Tlaxcala City. It is cheaper to live in “authentic” places and I have definitely preferred it. I began as a worker here (teacher), obtained my permanent residency, and am now fully retired.


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## Mark1 (Jun 12, 2010)

Wife is Mexican; I'm a ******. We have a foot (each) firmly planted in each country. No delusions about either country; neither on the positive nor negative side. We don't rule out the risk of adverse developments in either country. We don't have any expectation of pulling up roots in either country. 

I understand that it isn't realistic to maintain a residence in the US while living in Mexico. We can afford to do so; but, it won't make sense for us either if we only spend a couple months in one or the other place on average each year. 

The suggestion that you divide your US possessions into 3 lots makes sense. Stuff you *will* take to Mexico. Stuff you would want to *keep* were you ever to return to the US. Stuff that you *can't* justify either moving to Mexico nor store for an indefinite period of time in the US. 

I'd look to minimize the stuff you would want to keep were you ever to return to the US. Store it in some rural and cheap storage location in the US. A place you could afford to pay for indefinitely. You might decide to return in 10 years. _Would it be worth while paying the rent on that stuff for 10 years?_ You will want to keep the storage bill for that period _small enough_ to justify the value you will forego not selling it in the next couple of years. This is the calculus you need to apply to the stuff you want to keep just in case you someday decide to return for reasons you won't be able to foresee.

There is not a lot you can afford to carry to Mexico unless you can drive it yourself from, for example, Oklahoma to Monterrey. We can't afford any such proposition from the north-east US to middle Mexico. We can move some stuff in numerous plane loads over the years of regular travel. 

The residual is too expensive to store and too expensive to move. Probably not going to produce much in a garage sale; but you will have to dispose of it within a year or two of beginning your experiment.


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## eastwind (Jun 18, 2016)

I think if you are able bodied, or can get able bodied help at both ends, you can move your stuff economically from anywhere in the US.

I moved the stuff I have kept (so far) from Seattle to Laredo in a 16 foot penske truck. I could have used a smaller truck, but it wouldn't have saved anything on the rental, and I was a bad judge of the space requirement, so I ended up with about twice as much truck as I needed. The top line cost was the truck rental, which if I recall was a bit over $600 five years ago. Add gas, food and hotels along the way and I think I still spent less than $2k. And I enjoyed the trip, took it easy, six hours a day, no pressure. They gave me more days than I needed even at that speed in the package price (which just depends on the end points). Boston to Laredo is the same distance. (2200 miles)

I did all the loading and unloading myself, the truck comes with a ramp and a hand cart, and I didn't have anything bigger than an overstuffed chair (no couch, no big furniture, no mattress - though I could have managed some of that, or all with another pair of hands.

The hard part is the rest of the trip, because you can't drive the US rentals into Mexico, so you have to unload (to storage) and come back to Laredo from Mexico for the stuff somehow. If you're, say, in Mexico city you can reasonably make a couple trips to Laredo to bring down loads at a time from there as you need things. If you're in Cancun like I am it's a bit more of an issue...

The stuff I wanted to have in case I moved back is pretty minimal - some lawn tools and winter clothes. I am in an apartment here in Cancun so I have no need of lawn stuff, but if I moved back to the US I'd want it. I kept all my tools, some of which I could do without but they're low-volume high-value things. So that's in Laredo too. 

You'll probably find it's more expensive now due to high demand for DIY moving, and gas is more expensive now than then, but still it should be affordable for a lot of people. The truck I rented got 12 mpg, 2200 miles / 12 * $4 is $733 for gas now (gas for me was $2 to $2.50 at the time). 

If you're going to put stuff in storage, you need to go through the work of boxing everything up neat and tidy and that makes the boxes easy to move, too. I got pretty much completely boxed up and inventoried before I picked up the truck.

Another important bit of advice: if you ever want to get a Menaje de Casa (permit to move household goods to mexico with reduced duty) you need an accurate inventory of what's in each box. So you need to collect that info as you are packing the boxes. You need make, model and serial numbers on electrical appliances. Look into the requirements just in case, even if you end up not getting the Menaje de casa. (be prepared). 

Extensive inventory will also help if your stuff ends up staying in storage for years and you want something specific later...


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