John Arnold – Page 5

Cell phones overseas

14 July , 2013 By John Arnold Leave a Comment

A common question when traveling overseas is “can I use my cell phone in xyz country?”

The short answer: maybe.

1. Assuming you are just visiting for a holiday ask your cell phone provider for their rates and also, VERY important, ask them to remove any restrictions on using your phone overseas. This is my personal least favourite way because it usually is so damn expensive.

2. Ask yourself.. do you really need the phone (4g) part of your cellphone? ALL cell phones can connect to ANY WiFi in any cafe or hotel anywhere in the world. Via WiFi you can look up maps (take a screenshot to save the map when you are not in a WiFi area), retrieve your email, post Facebook updates; in fact you can do anything but make a phone call. But wait, you can use WiFi based Skype or LINE to make a phone call.. for free! If this is the case any cellphone, iPod or tablet will also suffice.

3. If your phone is UNLOCKED and is a GSM type of phone then you can make a call and connect to the internet via a cell tower data connection. Before you leave your home country, ask your cell phone provider to UNLOCK your cellphone, you then take the phone to a provider at your destination. They will sell you a “SIM” or “chip” for your phone. Your current SIM is removed and replaced with the new SIM. Keep the current SIM in a safe place for your return home. Assuming you will return one day :). The next step has many variables.. but basically you need to add money on to the new SIM in order to use the phone. This is my favourite way to use my cell phone.. it is usually a much, much cheaper method and I can connect to maps, email, Facebook while I am anywhere with a cell date data connection.

If your phone is not unlocked or if your phone is not a GSM cellphone then your options are limited. Check before you leave your home country. A fourth option is to simply BUY a phone at your destination.. this cheap.. cheaply made… cheap to buy cell phones, come with call time already available, but these cheap phones can only make calls, but sometimes may include free Facebook or LINE communication.

Moving to Mexico. Logistics and practical stuff.

4 April , 2013 By John Arnold Leave a Comment

First things first. I have decided that “Mexico is the best place to retire” and so living in Mexico means that I have to move to Mexico. So, how will you accomplish this?

My story: After I had made my decision to live in Mexico I also decided to sell just about everything I owned. Since my home sold in 2008 for 65% of the purchase price in 2006 (gosh what fond memories those days were) all I had to sell was the rest.

I sold my 1996 Jaguar xj6 (sniff sniff) and bought a mini-van. Yep, flashbacks to when the kids were all less than 10 years old. The mini-van cost me $1,200 and it would serve as a moving truck so to speak and storage place while I looked around for a new home. Looking back the plan was the best for me out of all possible options. Those options were: just like I describe here, have a moving company do everything, have a packing company ship everything or arrive with a suitcase and nothing else from a flight to Mexico.

I also had decided that if I was really going to live in the best place to retire (Mexico) then I should never look back and so a storage locker full of maybe a $1,000 worth of “stuff” that might end up costing twice that over the years was not in my plan for success. I know many people who have stored items for years only to regret this boat anchor of a mess later on in time.

I packed almost everything in cardboard boxes and each box was numbered and contents described for the Mexican Customs (aduana) officials at the border. Clothes were on hangers inside inexpensive plastic garment bags and larger items wrapped in bubble wrap. For security reasons I bought some window tint that blocked out 95% of sunlight and so even with a nose pressed up to the glass the contents was impossible to see. Along with my stuff I knew I must have a detailed list of the items and their worth and aduana (customs) would need to see this. My value shown was about $3,500 and aduana charged me $120 on import duty. How much they charge you will depend on your attitude, the officer’s attitude (that day) and how organised you appear. If memory serves me Mexico allowed me no more than $4,000 of items before I needed to hire the services of a broker to import the items. The broker fee was not cheap at all and you need to decide for yourself that value.

I was living in Tucson and so my border crossing was Nogales. The entry point into Mexico was only just to slow down and I was waived on my way. However about 20 km down the road is the first the car import gate and then the customs check point.

In Mexico no one has a copier on any government office, well not for YOUR use. So arrive at the car import place with 4 copies of Passport, car registration, car title and some cash. The fee for the entry permit is about $30 and another $200 to $400 for a deposit on the vehicle, depending on the cars model year. The deposit is returned to you when you remove the vehicle from Mexico, IE you drive back over the USA border. Your permit is only for a temporary import permission as is good as long as your resident visa is valid and so only for a maximum of 4 years in the case of a residente temporal status by the driver. In 2014 there was a LOT of fuss about residente permanente not being allowed to own a vehicle that was imported via the temporary permit. The details of this mess can not be explained here and so please ask at your Mexican Consul for the latest info, in writing if possible.

Now some would say “don’t stop and take a chance”. Why ask for trouble for a few hundred dollars in fees? At the check point I had a choice, pull over and declare what I had or go thru the gate. The gate opens after you press a button and a random red or green light allows you to pass. Or not. It is most often green and this system is employed at airports and road crossings. A red light could mean trouble if you have more than $300 value in import items and you never declared those things.

Now I am really on my way. Full tank of gas, GPS working fine, cell phone with international plan working, passport with visa, telephone numbers of Mexican Tourist police in my phone just in case. I was also told to only have a few hundred pesos visible in my wallet and stash the rest of my cash inside the van. Would you believe that I forgot exactly where I put all that cash a week later? I digress… The purpose of all this was in the event that police pull me over and try to extort money from me for a traffic violation that never really happened.

During my 1,300 miles journey I was never stopped by the police. I did destroy my vans fuel pump after I drove over the mother of all speed bumps in Guadalajara at about 5 mph. The van stopped and gasoline was pouring out of the vans rear and I was stopping traffic in both directions NOT GOOD!!! Five men came out of nowhere and pushed me safely off the road. The men came up with a plan (amongst themselves since I spoke zero spanish). They pushed my van about 5 blocks, up down and around and into a dirt yard. The mechanic greeted me and within 15 minutes had diagnosed the problem! His helper then got on a motorbike and went to buy a new fuel pump. This all happened around 1pm and by 6pm the mechanic came to my hotel, which I had decided was a good idea to get since I thought I would be staying in this one spot for days, he handed me the keys and asked to be paid $120 for the part and $30 for his labour. Wow, inexpensive, fast and so courteous.

As you can see from the map here my journey was via Mazatlan, a beautiful beach city that I visited in November 2012. I had continued with my Mexican residency application in that immigration office and was informed that I need to complete that process at the same office within 90 days. However BEFORE arriving in Mexico one MUST have a visa resident stamp in your passport. So your first step is to apply at your local Mexican Consul office. This first step of the process can NOT be done inside Mexico.

A useful place to head at this point would be to CLICK HERE – a website that was run by Rolly Brook, but please come back here.. otherwise I will miss you! Rolly was the defacto place to go to for the latest info on life in Mexico. Unfortunately Rolly passed away February 2015 and so I will search for a site nearly as good and update soon.

With my Residente Temporal in my hand (in the form of a green plastic card) I am now free to continue my journey to San Miguel de Allende. You will need plenty of cash pesos if you are heading anywhere in a “cuota”, a toll road, some as much as 120 pesos per leg. Very few restaurants take credit cards and for security reasons I do not recommend them when travelling. Pay for gas, hotels, food and tolls with cash. ATM’s are easily found and that’s the best way to access cash in Mexico.

After my Guadalajara adventure with the fuel pump the journey was uneventful. Upon arriving in San Miguel de Allende I parked my van in a secure paid parking area for 800 pesos per month and only removed a suitcase of items since I stayed in a small hotel for the first 2 weeks while searching for an apartment to rent. Thats a whole different story to be told later.

Please let me know if you have any questions regarding this article’s topic and I will do my best to answer or find the answer for you. Cheers and welcome to Mexico (soon)!

San Miguel de Allende and all its Beauty

31 March , 2013 By John Arnold Leave a Comment

It is difficult to believe that this is a town in Mexico: San Miguel de Allende. If I had seen just photos alone then I would have guessed Spain or Italy, but certainly not Mexico. First there is no beach here :).. when my family and friends learned that I live in Mexico there first question was “what’s the beach like”. I agree that in my previous thoughts “Mexico” and “beaches” were synonymous. The weather here is not unlike that of Tucson, where I lived from 2007 to 2012.. hot summers and cool winters.. though temps here rarely exceed 32 C and Tucson 40c + is common. Winters here average 8 c at night and about 20 C daytime. Since homes in San Miguel have zero central heating, various methods are employed to stay cozy. Many here use portable propane heaters.. not that attractive to look at, but they get the job done, my home has a nice gas fireplace and I bought with me a heated mattress pad. This was one of the BEST items I brought with me..it covers the whole mattress and has a temperature controller and shuts off automatically after 8 hours. Toasty.

My rent is $550 USD a month. The owner is a gringa.. meaning a woman (as opposed to gringo) from north of the border and she has several of these apartments in town all nicely furnished with everything I need. Many of the household items I bought with me was a waste of space and I would have been better off selling 98% of EVERYTHING before arriving here. For this amount of rent I get a beautiful 1 bedroom, large kitchen, living room with views of Centro and the campo (countryside), a small bathroom (no tub) and a large dining area that I have divided into an eating plus office area. The water, gas, Internet and cable TV is included with the rent I just pay for my electric which so far has been around $20 a month. The last time I paid this sort of rent was in 1984 at the beach in California. A good value here. Meal prices here are not as attractive. Often my meal here can be had for the same money in Tucson. In fact if you move to Mexico because it is COST of living that is the big attraction then you would be wrong. Sure you can live like a Mexican and your costs will be about $300 a month but for a gringo lifestyle.. furnished apartment, 50% of your meals at restaurants beer and wine 4 nights a week, cell phone, a little travel, a concert each month then you will spend what I do.. about $1,700 a month for all of this.

The expat community here is big.. they/ we are everywhere. Canadian and USA being the largest demographic, followed by a few of everyone else. It is interesting how certain places become “expat hangouts”, but this is a fact in every town I have visited in Mexico. Sometimes I find the company of fellow Brits and yanks a welcome sight and at other times, not so much. We have a several theaters here, the biggest being the Angela Peralta and hosts plays and concerts of all sorts. The list of other cultural activities would be a huge article of its own! Several parks, dozens of churches dot the landscape in this prettiest of towns. The focal point of all things social is in the El Jardin, where park benches, mariachi music, warm Mexican families fill this beautiful space. The most prominent architectural building in this town is a masterpiece right in front of this festival of relaxation.. La Parroquia. I describe the style of this beautiful church as “whimsical”, many events are centered on this church including weddings, funerals, Quinceañera and daily mass.

I know that I live in a beautiful place because every Mexican I come across elsewhere in this country, they all will remark how lucky and how beautiful this town is. Lucky me!

Hola Mexico

29 January , 2013 By John Arnold Leave a Comment

It is January 2013 and having explored, on paper, some towns in Mexico to live in I chose San Miguel de Allende. San Miguel is in the Colonial Central Mexican Highlands. The Spanish building influence is all over the area and 300 year old buildings are not uncommon. The town of about 100,000 residents rests at 2,000 meters, about 6,300 feet above sea level. I had visited this town just once before on an exploratory trip to Mazatlan, Guadalajara and San Miguel de Allende (SMA) in November 2012. I still don’t really know that much about the town but my feelings was that I KNOW it is a beautiful place and so if I made some sort of gross error then at least it would be nice to look at while I put a Plan B together.

I have arrived in SMA with zero Spanish skills and a mini van filled to the brim with what I thought I would need and want in Mexico. I bought a Dodge Caravan in Tucson for $1,200 to be used as my moving and storage van while I journeyed to SMA from Tucson USA and looked for an apartment to rent. The streets here are very narrow and processions happen ALL the time, hence in just a 6 month period my van was towed 3 times.The last time my van was towed I threw my arms up in the air and just went with the flow… I just used the police compound as my parking space! Then it dawned on me that a car in this town was not needed and I got rid of it quickly. We should all remember this in our new lives abroad: take note of what once worked in your life does not necessarily apply or is applicable in your new found paradise. Walk for goodness sake! Back in Tucson, Arizona I used to walk about 4 km a WEEK and now I do that day!

Renting was not new to me, having lost my home to the financial debacle of 2008 it was the best thing that happened to my finances, I was living the New American Dream; I was renting! Having little savings is actually far less stressful in my humble opinion. If I lost half my investments in 2008 to the “crash” then half of $100 is.. only a $50 loss. Foruntaely I do have more than $50 in the bank. I think. So now in SMA having small cash savings prevents me from making stupid mistakes. For example, it amazes me that retirees here arrive and within a few months BUY a home. I don’t get it. Why in retirement would you tie yourself and your money down to one place, a place that could change VERY quickly. The Mexican government has has a history of changing the rules with regards to banking, peso value and foreign real estate ownership. Plus, what if your new neighbors have 2 rooftop dogs that bark 24/7, what about crime increase or just plain boredom of your chosen town? For me renting is the best option and in spite of lack of funds to buy a home, I would like to think if I did have $400,000 in the bank then I still would not “invest” it in a house.

In a future post I will post lots of pretty pics and give details about this pretty town. Until then, buenos dias, Adios.

Making it legal in Mexico

19 November , 2012 By John Arnold Leave a Comment

I got a HUGE surprise at the Mexican Consulate office here in Tucson this morning. First let me explain about Mexico’s visa process which is very similar to the other countries on my short list.

You can not just waltz into Mexico and rent a home, stay for more than 180 days and call yourself a resident, well not legally that is. It takes paperwork and a little money and a whole lotta patience!!
Earlier this year (2012) the Mexican Government announced 2 major changes in their immigration program in order to become a Mexican Resident. First the income requirement were just about doubled from $1,200 a month to $2,300 a month. Second the process to apply MUST start outside the USA. The income also must come from outside of Mexico, so my USA Social Security qualifies in this regard.

The nitty-gritty: Keep in mind that whatever you are reading here and now has a good chance of being outdated at any time by the Mexican Government. In addition the person you are face to face with, either at your Mexican Consulate or Mexican immigration can really make or break what you are trying to accomplish. Thier mood can change from day to day.. and YOUR attitude can help things dramatically. First, TRY to at least say Buenos Dias and Holla when approaching the staff member, second- have ALL your document ready. ALL of them. Often times they need 4 copies of everything and guess what – they have no copy machine available to you.. so you will need these copies upon your arrival. Smile and be patient, do not appear in a hurry. After all, since you are retired what IS your big rush? Take a book, sit down relax and wait.

For the current rules on income, background checks etc etc please check HERE.

Now fast forward to today again and my surprise. I drove to the Consulate office and knew full well that my income was short but rationalized that “it would be just fine”. Crazy me. The 2 ladies at the front desk took a look at my income and it stopped right there.. no, I can not move to Mexico and I was basically handed my hat. So much for THAT dream. I sat in my car with the incredulous feeling and said out loud “oh great so my income isn’t even good enough to live in Mexico??!!”. I marched back in to the office.. and headed for a different area and spied a man in his 30’s that I felt I could appeal to. I began a conversation with him about my desire to live in Mexico and that surely my close to $2,000 monthly pension income would be sufficient in a practical sense. In an adjacent office I was aware of a man, well dressed, crisp white shirt who interrupted our conversation and in a really great Mexican accent asked “so you want to live in my country?” he introduced himself as the consul! He then invited me to Mexico and to return tomorrow and he would approve the application. Whewwwww.

Lesson learned: The Mexican consul has complete discretion as to who is approved and who is not. So if you are in in a similar quandary about your “lack” of income and you desire to move to any Third World country, don’t give up so easily..there are ways to make it happen! On the flip side, a high income and a poor attitude along with an ego the size of Mexico, you may not get to live in Mexico. Good luck to you all.

Options and my Short List

22 October , 2012 By John Arnold Leave a Comment

I have already decided that continuing to live in the USA is not an option for me. I do not agree with the USA government and their “peacekeeping” missions which end up killing hundreds of thousands of civilians all over the Middle East. Nor do I subscribe, anymore, to the huge consumerism in America, the spending is just silly both at corporate and at a personal level. Then their is affordability for me and for a lot of us we just can not afford THE SAME lifestyle on a pension as we once did in our high income earnings days. I do not fancy living in a mobile home in Arkansas and having no money for heat on cold winter days. Remember: winters are expensive on our budgets: clothing, heating, well constructed home cost more and so on. So my choice is to leave the USA, but where to go?

At 60 I began reading International Living an online magazine that supplies information about all the ins and outs of where to retire and why. A word of warning about the site that I learned over recent time: use the articles as a guideline and not gospel, the company pushes places that they often have a vested interest in. I also searched the internet for expat blogs I found sites such as: ExpatForum and ExpatExchange

My list of requirements is; AFFORDABLE, GREAT WEATHER, GOOD INFRASTRUCTURE AND SOMEWHAT POLITICALLY STABLE. Since most of Europe and the USA is not that stable in many senses I suppose “SAFE” would be a better word. My short list ended up being: CROATIA, PORTUGAL, MEXICO and ECUADOR.

The winner for now will be: MEXICO. Now I need to narrow down where in Mexico. First though, more about “why” Mexico. Logistically Mexico is easy. For example moving to Ecuador would require some serious thought on what to ship with me. I currently live in Tucson, USA and so I can drive to Mexico and take the kitchen sink with me if I want to. Next reason is that Mexico is BIG and so plenty of climate, topography and cities to choose from. Portugal, Croatia and Ecuador and are small countries and not so many choices. Lastly the Mexican Economy is doing very well at the moment, in fact all trends for Mexico are getting better. Crime is a HOT topic when talking about Mexico and so I checked the facts thoroughly and found it is not as bad as the USA news media portrays. Imagine that; the USA media exaggerating, what a surprise! However should I wish to participate in the distribution of cocaine then Portugal would be a much better choice since in Mexico I would be killed very shortly after my arrival.

So what are YOUR priorities to being an expat? No sense in living in the cheapest place on Earth, somewhere in India I guess, if that place is also crime infested or gets blown off the map every year with Cyclones or whatever. So Sharpen your pencil and make a list of “what is important to me” for a place to live overseas.

For me… Mexico here I come!