Can we talk about Guanajuato?

[DonJuane]

But thinking on the positive side of this diatribe - it does illustrate another point and precaution with moving to GTO or Mexico in general. I didn't elaborate on it previously because dormant before, this recent exchange did a good job in bringing it to mind. The problem occurs in subscribing to the "International Living Mindset" of thinking, where they try to convince you it will be easy to retire and move to Mexico prior to your social security kicking in. It is not. The way most of the "International Living" set is geared is it is a giant pyramid of seminars and workshops trying to guide people on how to move out of the US where they will encounter a utopia of ultra low prices along with their wonderful new lifestyle. And the hook is, that they do this by luring you into a giant scheme of overpriced seminars, real estate broker tours and gatherings, all mind you, mainly to collect money for their supported members who happily scoop up your money while they succeed in "successfully retiring early" whether to some lonely high rise in Ecuador or overpriced golf course in Panama or Costa Rica, or least likely a location where they don't have any hooks, Guanajuato. In the mean time, it's just an elaborate game, the same one you used to see in the back of the comic books as a kid, where you sent in your money to learn how to make money stuffing envelopes. Here you made the money by collecting money from other kids who also wanted to make money by stuffing envelopes.

Still that leaves the people who have been drawn in with high hopes, perhaps with ideas of offering some service or instruction on the side (and often exposing themselves to not realizing the tax and registration requirements of such activity) out in the cold, where they continue to dream of how they are going to supplement their income. These thoughts can even begin to dominate all aspects of their new environment. Shortly afterward they may start to become a social pest while scheming to make money - the effect of this is often defined as the "Amway syndrome".

The people who fit this category are easily identified, perhaps always trying to sell something or trying to figure out how to capitalize on every aspect of their experience here. Then once they realize that the people able to afford their services and facilities are in short number because they actually have no money to share themselves, this often leads the person who came here with hopes of selling and somehow making a living, now desperately looking for new clients just to survive. They then may soon realize that the only way their formula will work for survival in this land of limited clients is to increase the numbers in their favor, thus they become an agent for selling their own idea of utopia to others. The downside of this is, as has been proved in San Miguel de Allende, is that the onset of high-income new inhabitants has an effect of massive gentrification, which brings on the competition to a point that the formula for selling has not been enhanced but diminished for the person with "high hopes" while in the process the cost of living is raised to an unfordable amount, leaving not only the person with the original "high hopes" more distraught than before, it also leaves the rest of the original people stuck here with their own ideals of non-commercial investments left with their own standard of living diminished as well.

The result of all this can then be the original person of "high hopes" begins lashing out at his fellow community members while not realizing that having his own interests at heart was the objective all along.