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Our Favorite Things About Living in Guadalajara Mexico
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V I D E O S T O W A T C H N E X T :
Online Business Tips to Working and Traveling In Mexico: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zGH0voCyOc&list=PLh3xKhkMgH_IA6s3KvB_g9Cc9Ze1eji8j&index=2
Moving to Mexico: 10 Reasons Why We Chose to Live in Guadalajara https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dK23vD8_xjc&list=PLh3xKhkMgH_LAY7UV78YMgms-f2e1UcwN&index=23
Tips for Moving Overseas: Top 5 Remote Work Skills That Make Money: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bFzjCrlNAL8&list=PLh3xKhkMgH_IA6s3KvB_g9Cc9Ze1eji8j
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Inquiries: community@entrepreneurexpat.com
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When you think of Mexico, you might think of the popular beach resorts in Cancun, the hustle and bustle of Mexico City, or the, quote, informal economy of Tijuana. And you might just miss one of the hidden gems of this country, a place that we currently call home, Guadalajara. Guadalajara, Mexico, is the second largest city of this country, and is known for its rich culture, beautiful architecture, Friendly people and cosmopolitan vibe. There are so many things to do and so many places to explore that you're never going to get bored. But, unlike many other cities, in most neighborhoods here, you feel like you're in a much smaller place. Not a city with over 5 million people. In this episode, we're going to talk to you about our favorite things about living in Guadalajara.
Amanda Abella:Welcome to Entrepreneur Expat, your go to channel for navigating location, independent living and building a business abroad. If that's something that you're interested in, make sure to subscribe and hit the notification bell. So you don't miss a single video that we have coming out. On this channel and if you're interested in mexico specifically since this video is about mexico Then make sure to download our moving to mexico guide below. It's 100 free Just put input your name and your email and it'll get directly sent to your inbox If you'd like to go a step further and you'd like our help as expats in terms of relocation Then make sure to book a relocation call below
Justin Keltner:So let's get to the first reason that we absolutely love living in Guadalajara, and that is that you can have a very high quality of life at a fraction of the cost. The price as other cities in the world, especially if you're coming from the U S or Canada. Now, contrary to popular belief that Mexico is just a bunch of desert with tumbleweeds rolling around and then Cabo and Cancun on either side. Um, there's actually a lot of very cool big cities in Mexico as well. And we think that they're really overlooked. Like a lot of people that, especially from the U S they come to Mexico, Mexico. They're like, yeah, we're just going to live on the beach. They go to Puerto Vallarta or maybe a smaller beach town like Sayulita or Bucerias or Playa del Carmen or Tulum. And I think they're missing out on a big part of the, the culture and the true Mexican experience. Now, sure, there's a lot of beach towns that are a little bit more local. We've tried them. We've done some videos about them. Not necessarily our vibe either, but there's really a lot of hidden gems here, including Guadalajara that are big cities and the quality of life you have here is very, very high. I mean, we've got a lot of conveniences that we, we take advantage of every single day where we're at in the neighborhood called Chapalita, you can walk to grocery stores, corner stores. You can walk to the barber shop, the nail salon, the hair salon. Uh, you can walk to doctors and specialists and restaurants and what else? So many other things.
Amanda Abella:Yeah, there's always something going on in the city and basically that's what having a high quality of life is like. Things are a little bit more slower here than perhaps Mexico City, so you still get like that big city pace without the big city chaos, which is one of the things that I like about Guadalajara, and basically it's geo arbitrage. for the win. So what is geo arbitrage? It's when you get paid in a higher value currency, in this case USD, because we're both from the United States. Most of our clients as of right now are American and Canadian, although we do have people from other countries who are now watching this channel. We're more than happy to work with you guys as well. And then you go live in a lower value currency, in this case, the Mexican peso. There's so many different combinations of how you can do this in terms of geo arbitrage. That's just our current combination. And, I mean, I'll give an example because Lorena, who helps us with the house, she helps with the cleaning and the cooking, she's here today, and we'll send her to the local shops to go grab food for us and cook for us for the week. She spent 17 today on meat, chicken, vegetables. And another
Justin Keltner:15 on other stuff that we needed at the store.
Amanda Abella:Yeah, and that 15 she'll make food for us for most of the week. So it's very high quality living, fraction of the price. geo arbitrage for the win all the way and that's one of the reasons why we really like Guadalajara as opposed to, for example, Mexico City. My mom was just telling me this the other day while we were catching up. She follows some YouTubers who travel a lot, they're living in Mexico City, and she's like, I'm glad you guys are in Guadalajara and not Mexico City because A. Mexico City looks like pure chaos, It is. I don't know if you've ever tried flying through Mexico City, but it is pretty chaotic. It's an amazing city, but it is a bit more chaotic than Guadalajara. In fact, a lot of people living in Guadalajara are from Mexico City because they needed a break from Mexico City. But the other thing that she said was, you know, I was watching these YouTubers and they're saying they're, one of them's from Argentina, the other one's from Estonia, and she was saying how their pay, the rent that they're paying in Mexico City was more expensive than the rent in Estonia. And immediately I was like, well, are they in Polanco or Roma? Because then they're getting gringo price if they are in those places. So even in terms of even Mexico City, you can save more money here on things like rent than perhaps you would be able to in Mexico City. Although if you're coming from the U S and Canada, Mexico City is still a good deal
Justin Keltner:compared to any city in the u. s or canada other than maybe some small towns you're paying A fifth or a quarter as much between like things like rent groceries, uh home services personal care pet sitters all those sorts of things like you're you're literally getting cost of living for You 75 percent off in many cases. Uh, and it's not like you're sacrificing a bunch of
Amanda Abella:to do
Justin Keltner:that. I mean, this is a wonderful neighborhood. I don't know anywhere in the U. S. where you can walk to as many things. As you can hear New York that also doesn't have a huge problem with crime and homelessness and everything else. I haven't I haven't seen it Uh here it's very safe even walking around at night taking our dog out on on walks at you know nine or ten o'clock or Uh, let's say you have a night out you go out to the bar Like you're probably not going to get mugged Walking back to your house or on the way to the you know to meet the uber or anything like that Relative to a lot of major u. s cities. Guadalajara is actually extremely safe You People have asked us, uh, on and off the channel before we started posting as much content as we have about Guadalajara. They said, well, can you find everything you need here? It's like, yeah, there's a Walmart five blocks that way. I mean, there's a Home Depot. There's a lot of local stores like local hardware stores, um, local corner stores and things like that.
Amanda Abella:There's doctors. There's doctors. Yeah,
Justin Keltner:there's an OXO on every corner, which is kind of like the 7 Eleven here. So you can find absolutely everything. Now, sure, certain, like, high end electronics are a little more expensive here, but you're saving way more every month on rent than what you would pay, let's say, in the difference of a new iPhone, iPhone, so it's not really that big of a deal, and you pay rent every month, and you buy an iPhone maybe once every year or two, if that.
Amanda Abella:The next thing we really like about Guadalajara, although I suppose this is basically Mexico in general, is that it's very, uh, community oriented, and people are very social here, and it's To be social in Guadalajara number one because you can walk to everything and be social but number two Mexicans are just social I think is a part of it and in Guadalajara in particular There's always something going on. So for example on Sundays, they will close down a lot of the major roads for the ciclovía So like basically everybody on the city except me because I don't know how to ride a bike But basically everybody learned to
Justin Keltner:ride a bike in one of the other videos You should go watch it. You'll remind yourself how to do it.
Amanda Abella:That's a
Justin Keltner:running joke here now.
Amanda Abella:Um, but they'll shut down a lot of the the major streets and things like that and then everybody will take their bike out and they will bike all throughout the city. So that would be an example of something they do here. Or yesterday we were at the park because we graduated from our sixth grade. Seven month meditation class here in mexico. We have a joke that all of our mexican friends are moonlighting shamans So, uh, they had an event at the park. They had our graduation. That was beautiful. That was in community now There's a posada on tuesday, which is a like christmas parties like a
Justin Keltner:barbecue. Yeah, like a cookout
Amanda Abella:No, no, because I asked lorena and she's like I was like, what do you take to a posada? And she's like nothing and i'm like, oh But they're asking, she goes, Oh, so it's like convivian, conviviancia, like a potluck. This, anyway, this, this posada is potluck style. Um, but, and then others apparently are not, but we got invited to our first posada. One of the, I mean, when we were going to that fancy gym down the street, I had just met people in my dance class and in five minutes, they were inviting me out to coffee. Like there's just always something going on here because people are social and they. They value that part of their lives. I think part of what goes on and again, Mexico in general here, right? But we see it definitely in Guadalajara. Somebody had brought up in the comments yesterday, which we noticed yesterday at the park, which is like, The families here are so happy in, in Guadalajara. We've seen people
Justin Keltner:people out much more often and families. They're happy, they're at the park, they're entertaining themselves, they're having fun. People here just like to actually be in community, to enjoy themselves, to enjoy their, their family. And that, that was another one of our points here, which is people are just like really, uh, happy here in Guadalajara. Especially compared to a lot of, a lot of places in the U. S. or Canada. They're, they're happy, they're enjoying life. It's not about just working all the time and just living. to work like it is a lot in the West.
Amanda Abella:Yeah I mean you see people out in the plazas like enjoying a light show on the cathedral you see people out at dinner all the time or having a coffee or Again, they just invite you out places five minutes after meeting you because that's mexicans are very warm like that And uh, you know, this is something that comes up a lot in expat videos and people who've lived overseas Mexico is no exception to this rule, which is, generally speaking, other countries and other cultures, it's a lot easier to be social than it is, for example, in the United States or Canada or the UK.
Justin Keltner:Now, another reason that we love Guadalajara, we hinted at this earlier, but the neighborhoods are super, super walkable. You can walk to the barbershops, to the restaurants, coffee shops, anything you need is pretty much in walking distance. I think maybe we use the car once or twice a month and it's usually for going out of, out of town somewhere.
Amanda Abella:It's Right,
Justin Keltner:it's usually for some kind of trip or if there's something where we need to take the dog somewhere with us or whatever. Then we'll take the car, but most of the time we're walking, occasionally we'll take an Uber to go somewhere once every week, or once every two weeks, but 90 percent of the things we need are within a 5 to 15 minute walk, which is amazing, and because everything is in walking distance, you also get a lot more exercise versus just hopping in your car and being super lazy every time you need to go somewhere, so that makes a huge difference in health, in getting sun, in being outside, breathing fresh air, whatever. All of the above. It's amazing
Amanda Abella:Another thing that we really like about guadalajara and this is actually why we prefer it to the beaches to each their own So we're just going to give our opinion here Is that guadalajara has some of the best of mexico and what mexico has to offer in our opinion? mixed with international living and a more cosmopolitan lifestyle. So Jalisco, which is the state that Guadalajara is in, is literally the birthplace of tequila and mariachi and some of the most Mexican things you could probably think of are from here in Jalisco. So you get a lot of that here in the culture, but it also has a very cosmopolitan international living. Like there's a, there's expats about an hour away in Chapala. And in Ajijic, uh, we'll get to how easy it is to travel to places momentarily. But, you know, there's expats over there and now there's more foreigners moving to Guadalajara. I've seen Americans, Canadians. You've run into a couple of Ukrainians here in Guadalajara. There's people from Haiti. There's people from India. Um, so it's becoming a much more international living kind of city, which Really cool. It's very multicultural in that way as opposed to Mexican beaches at least on the west coast where our experience has been Whether it's you know, it's either basically like an expat Enclave like Bucerias where everything is in English loved Bucerias. Don't get us wrong The food was good. The beach was nice, but like everything I didn't see a Mexican anywhere. Everybody was American or Canadian. Um, and that's not necessarily our vibe. Like we want to live in other countries to experience the other countries. No, no shade if you prefer that we understand that that's just easier for some people and Bucerias is beautiful We got kind of a similar vibe in Vallarta when we were there Last year just on a way bigger scale Bucerias Um, and then or so it's either that where it's like i'm not even in fucking mexico right now I'm hanging out with a bunch of americans and canadians like You're in their little colony.
Justin Keltner:You're in the little
Amanda Abella:colony You Right, or it's like Los Ayala or Gu Vitos, or Lapita, uh, which we were at all those places in the last month or so, which is like very Mexican, very, very Mexican. Um, which is like, you know, that comes with its ups and downs, right? So if you don't necessarily like Banda music, playing 24 7 at
Justin Keltner:full volume at
Amanda Abella:full volume. At full volume
Justin Keltner:from multiple loudspeakers
Amanda Abella:All around you all around
Justin Keltner:you different angles,
Amanda Abella:Or someone trying to sell you something every 30 seconds, although we did find some good stuff from the vendors that were coming around. Or people shooting off fireworks randomly in the middle of the day. Daisy
Justin Keltner:not like
Amanda Abella:Daisy did not like the fireworks. Because it's December 1st, right? And I'm like, what, are they celebrating that rent is due? Like, I'm so confused. Uh, but we asked, there were fireworks going off at La Feinita in the middle of the day. And I was like, what is going on? What was that? Was that a firework? Yeah, it's fireworks. I'm like, why are they shooting off?
Justin Keltner:december? That's why like wait, that's a whole month. What
Amanda Abella:do you
Justin Keltner:mean?
Amanda Abella:So if you don't like that, cause that's, that's typical of the Mexican beaches and things like that. They're a little and a lot of
Justin Keltner:small towns, too
Amanda Abella:And a little and a lot of the small towns, uh, they're a little more well, the beaches are way more chaotic The the beaches are a little chaotic So if you don't like the chaos, like we're just staging our lives where we're like, you know What we're we don't want the chaos, but we're not ready for a retirement community like busidious either Like can we find something in the middle? Uh, guadalajara has been a really good uh mix of What we're looking for and I think you just find that a little bit easier in the cities In Mexico, the beaches seem to be in one extreme or the other.
Justin Keltner:Yeah, but even though, you know, you've got a lot of that international living, you've got a lot of great things that are from Mexico already in Guadalajara, you can also travel to a lot of those places like the beaches with ease. And now with the new road that they opened, the new toll road, you can get to Vallarta in about three hours, three to four hours, depending on the traffic there. Uh, sometimes even faster if you're a speed racer, so there's a, there's a brand new road through the, through the mountains that gets you to Vallarta. You can get to Tequila in about an hour, hour and a half, uh, and they also have a really good international airport. It's one of my favorites because you can fly nonstop from here to South America, you can fly at least to Panama City. And then get to anywhere in South America, you can fly non stop from here to about ten major cities or more in the U. S.
Amanda Abella:Madrid.
Justin Keltner:Depending on the week, you can fly to Madrid. Uh, I don't know if they have flights to Asia yet. You may need a little hop, skip, and a jump, uh, into Mexico City first. But, you can get to pretty much anywhere from Guadalajara and the airport, unlike Mexico City, is Well contained it's not massive. It's super accessible
Amanda Abella:not
Justin Keltner:It's not chaotic. Exactly so it's just a really good balance and a really especially if you're trying to To be in guadalajara, for example, but also visit other places in mexico like we are there's also non stop flights to to a lot of uh, Different, know state beach cities like not just driving. Let's say to vallarta, but you can also take a short flight Non stop now on Valeris to Puerto Escondido, which is in Oaxaca, and I think probably Oaxaca City as well. I'll have to double check that, but there's a ton of places. You can go to Miami non stop. You can go to LA Direct as well. I believe Dallas. There's just so many, so many connections and
Amanda Abella:keep adding new connections as well And new new routes and flights and things here in Guadalajara because the city's growing pretty fast Uh, and it's actually growing really fast. Like, if you look at a lot of the architecture videos of what's going on here, or the development projects, the air, uh, airport projects. I mean, it's, there's a lot of economic opportunity in this area in Mexico. I would argue there's a lot of economic opportunity all over Mexico. right now, but you definitely see a lot of that development happening here in Guadalajara. All right, and then probably reason number one why we love Guadalajara is the weather. We love the weather in Guadalajara. It's very temperate. It's like California, but warmer. Because California is definitely a lot colder than Guadalajara, but you have like that temperate climate all year round. The only downside is I wasn't used to it, so like my skin and hair would like dry out, but you can it is a
Justin Keltner:little bit of a dry. is a,
Amanda Abella:it is dry. Um, but you know, you just put extra moisturizer and conditioner and you're pretty much good to go. You make sure you take care of yourself at the salon and getting your nails done and all that stuff. Um, and facials and all that. Otherwise, yeah, your hair and skin are gonna dry out here in Guadalajara. That was a little bit challenging for me. Uh, but other than that, other than two months out of the year where it was unbearably hot, but we were told that that was a bit, uh, out of the ordinary for Guadalajara for it to be that hot. Other than those two months, it's really freaking nice weather. All year round. I mean, the amount of money we save by not running air conditioning, like those of you in Merida or Cancun or Playa del Carmen or Puerto Vallarta or the beach towns, any beach town, you're going to be running that AC all the time. You're spending
Justin Keltner:300 a month, which could be half or a third of your rent, just on electricity. For those acs and here on average our electric bill comes out to like maybe 25 30 every month
Amanda Abella:Yeah, because we barely use the acs We only use them those two months when it's like ungodly hot or at night But other than that, we're not really using it because you don't need to use it In guadalajara because the weather's so freaking nice all year round
Justin Keltner:And finally, definitely not least, we have a lot of very friendly people here. In addition to the people being happy as we mentioned before, they're very friendly. They're very accommodating. Uh, if you don't speak Spanish, most of the people here will go out of their way to try to understand what you're saying or help you out in some way.
Amanda Abella:Google Translate. Yeah,
Justin Keltner:there's just a culture here of being kind and polite yeah polite and kind to your neighbor that you don't see Especially a lot of places in the West unfortunately.
Amanda Abella:Yeah You know I have found that people in Guadalajara tend to be very polite and very warm and welcoming and again very social like I was Saying before I mean I've had situations where like our neighbor invited me to her sister's baby shower So I can start getting to know people, uh, in the neighborhood or in the neighborhood, or if we need help or needed to call in a favor, like, Hey, we need to find a place to live. Uh, can those, we were taking like a holistic healing class about a year ago, we're like, we need to find a place to live. And immediately. Yeah. They were all finding leads and things like that. I do, I have found that that is more common, uh, here in Guadalajara and in the cities in general, then perhaps the beach towns where there's a little bit left to be desired, uh, in that department. But again, the beach towns are just way more chaotic.
Justin Keltner:Yeah. Cause they're mostly just. It's geared tourists and extracting as much money as they can from you. Here, you're living with a lot fewer, I mean, very, there are a lot of tourists, but compared to the population.
Amanda Abella:Mexican tourists, usually. Exactly. Yeah.
Justin Keltner:But also, like, most of the people here, especially in our neighborhood, are not tourists, versus the average place that you're gonna go by the beach that's at least nice, it's gonna be saturated with tourists. I don't wanna go live with a bunch of American tourists.
Amanda Abella:Yeah, me either. And then when you're in the tourist areas, everything's more expensive, people are a little bit more price gougy when it comes to that, there's, you have to be a little bit more careful. And. Yeah. Depending on where you are in the beach the customer service is lacking. Uh Here
Justin Keltner:it's very good. Here
Amanda Abella:It's very good in guadalajara. So it's just a different. It's just a different vibe Okay, like it's like we said in the beginning of the video We've been traveling a lot throughout mexico since we arrived well since I arrived a couple years ago you arrived Before I did and we've been traveling a lot In the country and what we have come to realize about ourselves is we really like You The cities in Mexico. They are a vibe, which was kind of surprising because you thought you were done With I did
Justin Keltner:I was bored and I didn't have really a big network here I wasn't doing that much in the town itself and I was like, ah I just need to go to the beach and be one with nature
Amanda Abella:Well also
Justin Keltner:even before that I got scammed In Puerto Escondido, trying to find a place. I lost a bunch of money on that. And then on top of that, I went there to visit and it was ungodly, like insufferably hot. The infrastructure was terrible. The power went off every 15 minutes. The internet sucked. I was like, okay, I'm going to stay here in Guadalajara with my two fiber internet connections and a Starlink backup just in case and power that's pretty stable.
Amanda Abella:that We
Justin Keltner:didn't even mention the infrastructure, but yeah. Compared to the beach towns, especially the more undeveloped towns where, uh, I, I believe it's a little more desirable for people that like to, you know, travel and live kind of off the beaten path. The infrastructure just is not that great. Sure, you have cell service. Sure, the internet like mostly kind of works, but especially places like Sayulita, It's just not that reliable versus in Guadalajara. We've never really had major problems with the internet We have two just because we do so much online It's nice to have a backup And if somehow, you know a tree falls in the line and whatever and both of our internets go out We still have a star link that we can reactivate Um, but for the most part 99. 99 percent of the time our internet is fine, and it's super fast We have almost a gigabit of speed up and down and so You We don't have to worry about things like infrastructure. So that's kind of like a bonus reason is the infrastructure is really, really solid, arguably better than a lot of cities in the U. S. because the U. S. so spread out and has such legacy infrastructure. I mean, imagine, you know, you're, that's a video You're a town that only can get Comcast and you're limited to like, 100 megabits down and 10 up or something and especially in a town. That's and you're paying out the ask for it It's like here. Everything is fiber.
Amanda Abella:That's actually another video We'll have to film which is things that are you no longer believe about the United States after living in the United States and one Of those is like really good infrastructure and you're like well Actually, yes and no But, you know, we've had this discussion before, those of you who are more interested in beach towns, because to each their own, we just prefer the city from what we have seen. I think that beach towns are really good for investment opportunities, especially the ones that are more developing. Um, but for living, I don't want to live on the beach. Investment and make money off of it, sure. Live, I'm gonna, I'm, I'm gonna stick to Guadalajara on, on that one.
Justin Keltner:And if you'd like to join us here in Guadalajara or somewhere else in Mexico, city of your choice, if you're looking to come down here, explore Mexico and check out what it might be like to actually live here, then you're definitely going to want to first download our living in Mexico guide. And if you're interested in relocation services, you can see the link below it's entrepreneur expat. com slash
Amanda Abella:relocation,
Justin Keltner:relocation. And book a call where we can talk to you about working out all of the logistics so that you can get here safely easily and efficiently And if you need an online location independent business to be able to do that, if you're still working on getting that remote income going, then you can also find the link below or go to entrepreneurexpat. com slash call. And we will chat about building you a location independent business so that you can actually focus on enjoying your life, serving people that need you and not working for somebody that you hate doing something that you do not love. Instead, do what you love, do it from anywhere. Live the life of your dreams. That's what we're all about here guys
Amanda Abella:basically if you already meet all the requirements for moving to mexico all the financial requirements for investing or moving Then make sure to book a relocation call because we can actually hook you up with our Real estate agents, uh, attorneys to help you with the immigration process, accountants who will actually work with expats. And if you haven't hit those financial requirements yet, or you are still stuck at a job that does not allow you to work remotely, then the place that you need to start is a location independent business consultation. Cause that would be the problem that we need to solve first before we could get you to Mexico or really anywhere that you want to go in the world. So
Justin Keltner:So book one of those calls below depending on your needs We will be having a chat very soon And thank you so much for being a subscriber Make sure you click that subscribe button if you haven't already so that you don't miss another video and we'll see you again very soon