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Thinking of moving to GTO in December, expat family from Atlanta - Kalanisters - 02-25-2019
Hello everyone,
I am so glad to have found this forum. I have been reading and reading blogs, forums, youtube videos about expat life in Mexico and my husband and I have come to the conclusion that we really like GTO. We are planning to visit the city in May, if everything goes well we are relocating in December. A little background about us, I was actually born in Guadalajara and brought to the US by my mom when I was 3 years old. I became a US Citizen when I was 9 and have so much love for the US. I am college educated and have a pretty good career in HR here in Atlanta. My husband is a retired Army veteran (medically retired) who was born and raised in Germany. We have a 1 year old son who has really inspired us to seek a better quality of life abroad. Life in the US has become pretty hectic and we have found ourselves to lack that quality of time with our son. My husband and I are both college grads, we have a decent cookie-cutter style home in the suburbs of Atlanta that we rent for wayyyy too much. We have been trying to save and get our credit scores above 750 for about a year now, all to just afford another cookie-cutter home so that we can work 40+ hours a week and spend over $900/monthly in child daycare. This is why we have decided that this cannot be what life is about. We have vacationed in Baja before in the wine country and completely fell in love with Mexico. The people, the culture, the food, the colors, and the slower pace of life. I of course am biased, I am Mexican.
However, we of course have many questions about living in Mexico, GTO specifically. We are looking to rent at first and then buy. My husband receives a retirement stipend monthly that should allow us a comfortable life in Mexico, plus our savings. I don't know what is easier but I listed my questions below. Any advice is greatly greatly appreciated! Thank you all for the great information you all provide on this forum.
1. Is life generally safe for a family? We have lived in LA and Atlanta, I don't know if anything could be worse than what we have seen here in the states.
2. What is the best way to find a rental property in the city center? We will be selling our cars and will need to be walking distance to markets, food, and general areas to explore. I have seen the same five or six houses on Vivanuncios, is it hard to find rental properties?
3. Are the nearby towns safe? i.e Leon, Irapuato.
4. What would be the recommended amount of money to have per month to live comfortably?
5. What are some American luxuries you wish you had in GTO? I have read that having a dryer is pretty expensive?
6. Is there a veteran expat community in GTO?
7. I have read that GTO and San Miguel are being gentrified, is that true? And how do expats feel about that.
8. How long did it take you to get settled in? i.e find a home, setting up utilities, knowing where to shop and where to ask for information
9. Do you miss living in your home country? i.e America
Any advice on your experience is greatly appreciated. Thank you!
Best,
Just a mom looking for a better and simpler lifestyle
RE: Thinking of moving to GTO in December, expat family from Atlanta - roberb7 - 02-25-2019
Iĺl take #'s 2 and 5.
I found my current place in Chopper, a weekly magazine that comes out on Saturdays.
I found my previous place in Vivanucios. I just checked, and there are 40 rental listings there, although a lot of them are on the pricey side. The Vivanuncios user interface can be a little tricky, but you should see them if you go to this URL: https://www.vivanuncios.com.mx/s-renta-inmuebles/guanajuato-gto/v1c1098l10334p1
Like most people here, I don't own a dryer. I just hang them up on a clothes line on the patio, and they will usually dry in 1 1/2 hours.
RE: Thinking of moving to GTO in December, expat family from Atlanta - McNally del Campo - 02-25-2019
Your questions are very broad and it would be helpful if you did a keyword search on this site. There's a tremendous amount of information to be gained from previous postings. Gentrification is actually a topic that came up recently, as well as rentals.
I'm curious as to why you're not asking these questions to your mom or the rest of your family in Guadalajara. I'm assuming if you moved down to Mexico, they would be your best way to anchor yourself and get a start.
I don't have much useful info myself, but I'll share my experience--- I live in Virginia (a very rural grean area) with my wife who is Mexican. We've been looking into moving down to Mexico, specifically Guanajuato. I visited GTO with her several years ago while visting her family and came back again for a week sometime later. We also visit other areas of Mexico while doing yearly trips to her family. It's such an enormous difference compared to where we live now, I'm not sure I could adapt to a move out of the US all at once. On our last trip to GTO, we came during the middle of rainy season, which happened not to rain at all that week. Considering the average rainfall amounts during that month, I assumed the surrounding areas would be green, but it seems the ground is so rocky and soil so poor, the water just sheds right off. It was just as much a desert terrain as it seems it is the rest of the year. Our strategy will be to take extended vacations to areas of Mexico that we like-- a week, then a few weeks, then a few months, until we settle on where to move to.
***I also wanted to add in that for the week we were here last, I don't recall running into anyone else that spoke english, with the exception of a few people we already had plans of meeting up with. I was thinking about that when you mentioned gentrification.
*** Something else to add after talking with my wife---- she says to be aware that kindergarten starts at age 3 and registration begins in February for the upcoming August school year, unless you're enrolling in a private school. For most foreigners in Guanajuato, I don't think this is a concern since they're usually older, so you're in a more unique position. She also says Merida has the best public schools in the country and is alway pushing me to consider Merida more seriously--- I just can't stand the intense heat and humidity.
RE: Thinking of moving to GTO in December, expat family from Atlanta - Winnifred - 02-25-2019
For house rentals also try VRBO, Craigslist, Casa Solaris and GBR Inmuebleria. Happy house hunting.
RE: Thinking of moving to GTO in December, expat family from Atlanta - Kalanisters - 02-25-2019
@mcnally del campo thank you so much for replying. I have read a lot of threads on this forum, I started from the very beginning. To answer your question about my family in Guadalajara, I have asked them for their opinion. However I take theirs with a grain of salt. I’m the only one in my big family that graduated high school and college. My mom lives here in Atlanta with her husband and she has a very tainted memory of Mexico. The only places she will visit are the resorts lol. My aunts that live in Guadalajara live in poverty stricken areas, which naturally sees a lot of crime. Especially with the cartels. Since I know that’s not where I want to live, I don’t want to rely too heavy on their opinion. However they have all said how beautiful and treasured GTO is :) In regards to school, that is good to know about the age. Our son is 1, so hopefully we have time with that. I know my questions were broad, I just have so many and I didn’t want to overwhelm the reader right from the start.
@winnifred thank you for sharing the links and resources. I will definitely look into them. I did see the rentals on Vivanuncios, but like roberb7 said they are pretty pricey or far out of the center. Which makes me wonder what is the average acceptable monthly price in your opinion. What is too much? I have seen that a lot of properties are owned by professional air bnb people who don’t even live in GTO, those are usually more expensive.
RE: Thinking of moving to GTO in December, expat family from Atlanta - pianoheat - 02-25-2019
There is great bus service and taxis are like the price of a bus in a big American city. I lived in the Centro for 6 years it can be loud the bars of which there are many are open until 4pm. I now live about a 20 minute walk to the centro and it is peaceful and the rents are a bit cheaper. Someone said it's not green in the rainy which is wrong it becomes very green.
RE: Thinking of moving to GTO in December, expat family from Atlanta - DonJuane - 02-25-2019
1. Is life generally safe for a family? We have lived in LA and Atlanta, I don't know if anything could be worse than what we have seen here in the states.
(Safe is a relative term, and as my wildest guess as long as you are not in the pipeline tapping trade, you are likely as safe as anywhere in GTO, just the occasionally late night stick up but unless you look like you have a lot of money, are known to have a lot of money, or pretend like you have a significant to a lot of money, then you are likely not going to be that great of a target. I always wear ragged jeans, a polo shirt without the pony, cheap tennis shoes and no one has bothered me in the past 12 years I have traveled extensively from border to border in Mexico. I call GTO home but that's only because it used to be a quiet respite for Gringos. Those days have ended but I still have roots here so while I'm not on the road, I hang around. I keep my car trashed and my hair uncombed and in fact most locals give me wide berth and my snarky sense of humor also keeps most expats away as well. Actually now that I think of it there is not such thing as safety. There are more criminals in the US than Mexico but they usually are white collar. And can you die of boredom? If so then there's probably more danger in the US)
2. What is the best way to find a rental property in the city center? We will be selling our cars and will need to be walking distance to markets, food, and general areas to explore. I have seen the same five or six houses on Vivanuncios, is it hard to find rental properties?
(If you want to find a good one, you may have to keep renting for a while until you form a base of Mexican friends because they will give you the going rate if they like you and your family and you treat them kindly but otherwise you get to shop for Gringo (or North American I should say) infrastructure of which some people here are in the business and the gentrification can provide some offerings in the "same as US price" arena and you end up with that if you don't invest quite a lot of time in getting to know the people who have lived in the city for ages and hearing what they have to offer you.
3. Are the nearby towns safe? i.e Leon, Irapuato.
(Again, relative. Never been bothered in Leon, walk all streets and ride all city buses. Irapuato is sort of a dud of a cultural experience so I seldom go there unless I am in the area and need something from Home Depot)
4. What would be the recommended amount of money to have per month to live comfortably?
(For one person I generally spend about $900 per month on food, lodging, entertainment and a good meal out every couple of weeks. I cook almost every meal (as will you will too once you start longing for quality and don't want to overdo your budget at the local high-end restaurants)
5. What are some American luxuries you wish you had in GTO? I have read that having a dryer is pretty expensive?
(Pho and Tex-Mex, that's about it - well maybe an H-Mart but that's a luxury even in the US. There's now a Pho place in town and while they make a great effort with it, there's no mistaking it with the worst Vietnamese back home. And sometimes I would just die for a good Tex-Mex plate but just like pizza (which you will find a good one occasionally) the cheese just pardon my French but it really sucks here in Mexico. You just can't seem to recreate Tex-Mex without the longhorn and sharp and flavorful offerings from the US. Honorable mention also goes to burgers, fries, real fried chicken, sushi without cream cheese, chicken fried steaks, real southern BBQ, meat in general that can be cut with something less than a chain saw, and every day those blasted lost russet potatoes you keep looking for and after scraping off the mud find you're simply stuck with another bunch of round ones. If I was honest I would also say the bad cheese is the thing that I dislike most about Mexico - well maybe not so much bad as completely flavorless. Now you can forget a dryer or a deep fry or a score of electrical appliances because even if you and your entire neighborhood was not all running off the same 10 gauge wire looped up and down the street and if eveyone's lights didn't dim when you turn on something like an electric heating element in anything, and if we imagine you had the 500A feed into your home like those of the US have come to expect, you are not going to be able to afford the electric bill anyway because Mexico is on an exponential pricing system, the more you use the more you pay exponentially - seriously. I also miss taking a bath. The cost of heating water or managing a source of enough water to frequently take a bath is normally prohibitive. Otherwise, everything else I left in the US is best if it just stayed there and if there was anything I could do at all to stop the never ending movement of Dominoes, KFC, Burger King, Starbucks, Walmart, Popeyes, Little Caesars, etc. etc. well I'd lie out in the street and let a truck run over me if it would do any good - but it won't. In 10 or 20 years Mexico will be too close the US to notice much of a difference. Price will be part of that as the Mexico middle class continues to grow by Mom & Pop businesses are folding before you eyes like Dominoes and the same priced super markets move in with a very similar fare to what you "enjoyed" or "over spent for" in the US)
6. Is there a veteran expat community in GTO?
(Not that I know of. Most everyone I have met in GTO usually abandons efforts to unify expats. Most of them from my perspective integrate or try to, into the local Spanish speaking community and many have been known to duck down an alley if they see another expat coming their direction.)
7. I have read that GTO and San Miguel are being gentrified, is that true? And how do expats feel about that.
(Yes they are. We love it. Not really. If most of us had wanted the infiltration of the fast food restaurants I spoke of and all the US-cultural things that people bring down with them, we would have stayed in the US. Of course there is that stray person who claims they just came here to save money and the culture and new way of life is simply an unwanted side-effect they are forced to deal with, but then again most of them typically end up in a San Miguel or an Ajijic bar, as Jimmy Buffet sings (Expatriated American) trying to sell their "second hand American dreams").
8.How long did it take you to get settled in? i.e find a home, setting up utilities, knowing where to shop and where to ask for information
(Still not settled in. I moved here, got restless and started traveling a lot again while still returning and still calling GTO my new home. "There's just too much to see waiting in front of me" ... another Buffet tune.)
9. Do you miss living in your home country? i.e Americ
(Ha, ha, ha, ho, ho, ho, he, he) Like a dog misses fleas, like someone who likes to breath loves to smother, like someone misses a sharp stick in the eye. There is nothing to be gained in the US unless you can adopt an near impoverished lifestyle and sock away every bit of money until you can escape the very fabric of a system that is designed to drain you of every penny you make and add to that - double that amount. The relentless competition of who can accumulate the most debt, the aura of phoniness, beating yourself over the head to pay financial companies to finance some overpriced hunk of steel that you drive only for it to get beat to hell on the highway or overpaying for some cheap wood and plastered home, driving every day to a job that you hate, the taxes for schools that look like ancient Greek coliseums while near bankrupting the community with major-league-like football stadiums and million dollar sports centers and all the while not providing even an elementary level education received by other western nations to our own high school students. Yea, all that was a big boost to walk away from. Still - moving to Mexico will not begin to change the common US-centric frame of mind. You have to go through a major revelation or re-invention process to get to where you need to be here while forming your new life goals and that's assuming you go along with the typical "integration into the community" that most strive for here. Otherwise it's too easy to hit the top notch restaurants each night, fill your fridge with all the Serrano from Spain, prime Costco US rib-eyes and Australian racks of lamb, and Commercial gourmet cheeses from all over the world. You have to not only leave the US physically but you have to leave your US desires and demands for things you cannot afford (or be wasting your money on) mentally as well.)
RE: Thinking of moving to GTO in December, expat family from Atlanta - DonJuane - 02-25-2019
Here's a couple and kids that may have some stories you'd be interested in. They have re-established themselves four times in the past seven or so years, each time lamenting (and publishing) for a period of time how each one of the cities they have lived in for a short while is the perfect city which may in fact prove my point better than any argument anyone has posted in contrast to my often expressed opinions here - and that is my often stating there is simply no perfect city in Mexico or it could be saying that I know that enjoying just one city simply causes you to miss too much of another.
https://www.losogradysinmexico.com/
RE: Thinking of moving to GTO in December, expat family from Atlanta - DonJuane - 02-25-2019
If I had it all to do over again, I'd probably pick Guadalajara city proper to live and do my best to blend or even disappear into some small neighborhood. It's a big city without all the problems of a big city or it seems that way to me. GTO for a young and energetic family who is active can find themselves marooned so to speak after a time of becoming more than familiar with the city.
RE: Thinking of moving to GTO in December, expat family from Atlanta - McNally del Campo - 02-26-2019
Pianoheat--- I stand corrected about the greenery of GTO and I suppose its a matter of perspective. The trees and bushes scattered around were indeed green. I wrongly called it desert terrain, but compared to the southeast US, I would still say its barren and dry. I think the main point I was trying to get at is the difference between expectation and reality.
Kalanisters--- if you use Facebook, try looking for the group "Rentas Guanajuato capital". Its been mentioned on this forum before, but its mostly geared toward university students. You will find some apartments and houses mixed in, not for students, either for rent or sale. Right now there's a nice looking, furnished, 2 bedroom house in the Zaragoza area advertised for $6,500/month.