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We Moved to Lake Chapala! | Living In Mexico

• Justin Keltner

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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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Disclaimer: The information in this video should not be considered tax, financial, investment, or any kind of professional advice. Only a professional diagnosis of your specific situation can determine which strategies are appropriate for your needs. Entrepreneur Expat can and does not provide advice unless/until engaged by you.

Justin Keltner:

We just moved from Guadalajara to the Lake Chip area here in Jalisco, Mexico, and we're gonna tell you all of the reasons why we decided to move some of the pros and cons of Guadalajara versus Lake chipa. As well as what are the things that you should consider if you're planning on moving to Mexico, where's the best place potentially for you?

Amanda:

Welcome to Entrepreneur Expat. I'm Amanda. This is Justin. And on this channel we talk all about how to make money online so you can go anywhere in the world. We talk about international investments like real estate, and right now we're spending most of our time in Mexico, so you're gonna see a lot of content about how we help our relocation clients. Move to Mexico as well as some things you should consider if you're considering moving to this country. So if that's something that you are 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 are interested in moving to Mexico, whether it's the Lake chip area, Guadalajara, Merida, Mexico City, you name it, we've got a network all over the country, then make sure to apply for a relocation consultation. Below,

Justin Keltner:

and you can also just go to entrepreneur expat.com/consult and you'll see the page and all the details right there. And you may even qualify for a free relocation consultation with us.

Amanda:

So let's talk a little bit about how we ended up in Lake Chip, Paul, because we've spent the last, well, I spent the last two years. You spent the last three years. Mm-hmm. Uh, in Guadalajara. It's an amazing city. A lot of you have discovered Guadalajara because of this YouTube. Channel and a lot of the things that we would share, well, it kind of wasn't planned. The universe kind of planned it for us. This opportunity just kind of showed up without us even really trying to move to Lake Chip Paulo or anything. And we decided that we were just going to take the opportunity because it showed up. So yolo. Yolo, exactly. Yolo. So we got out of our lease in the city and we decided to move out to the lake. One of the reasons why we decided to make this move is because so many of you ask us about the Lake Chapala area, whether it's Chapala itself, or aki or some of the surrounding towns. Now a lot of you're finding out about kopec, which is where we're closest to right now, and uh, we wanted to see it for our own eyes. Part of what we try and do on this channel is, you know, experiment and go through the stuff so then we can. Report back to you. So since this is one of the areas we get asked about the most, and the opportunity just kind of showed up, we decided, hey, let's go check it out so we can report back from the to the YouTube channel and see what it's actually like, uh, to live in this very highly desired area of Mexico. So

Justin Keltner:

I'll start off by just telling you guys a little bit about some of the things that we absolutely love, and we've only been here now. For a couple weeks and we even, we haven't even gotten to experience too much of the area because of course, most of that's been in the middle of a move, bringing furniture back, going back and forth to make sure like our old house is fixed up and, uh, we can get settled here and have all our internet and wires and all the things that we need for our smart home because. You know that, uh, I'm a little, a little obsessive about that. Um, but of course I want our network to work well. I want us to get wifi in every room. So we gotta, you know, we've been, we've been setting up, we've been finalizing all the, all the setup here, um, with our servers, all the things we use for video, all the lighting, all the things we need for our studio. Um, but with that said, we've still had a, a chance to go into town actually yesterday, and this is one of the biggest pros that I think is amazing about this area. Just everything that you can do around here to relax. So, so yesterday we had the chance to go to the thermal spas. There's a place called Al Sala in the town of San Juan Sala. And uh, we just, we're kind of very laid back. We like to just chill. Um, you know, self, self care, I guess you call it. Um, relax. Spa junkies. We're kind of spa junkies. Yeah. So de Sala is actually a. Spa that, that's got a bunch of different jacuzzis. And they're not just normal jacuzzis, they're actually fed by the, uh, thermal water. And the reason that there's thermal water here in the area is because there's actually a dormant volcano, um, right across the lake. You may even be able to see it right there off in the, in the distance. But that volcano, uh, is what heats up the water that runs underground here in this aquifer. And so when you're within a certain distance of that volcano, the water comes out steaming hot. They actually will cool it down a little bit so that it's not too, too hot because it can be, I don't know the exact temperature. I think the hottest one they have is 42 degrees Celsius. And I think even that is cooled down. Um,'cause they have to manage the, the different temperatures and things. But so there's, there's a very hot jacuzzi in there that's 42 Celsius. The other ones are a little bit cooler. Um, but all the different jacuzzis there have, uh, different ingredients that they put in them. So you have a, a jacuzzi that's got wine. There's one that's got oatmeal here. It's Avena. So you, they have a little oatmeal that you can actually put on your face. And the whole thing has like this oatmeal, uh,

Amanda:

hi, uh, hibiscus. Hibiscus, lavender. Yeah, Rosemary. I think Rosemary might be, they're all really good for like different things. Um, but there's all these in the town over called San Juan. To your point, all the water that comes into San Juan is thermal water. So even if you

Justin Keltner:

have a house there Yeah, you're, you're gonna basically have a well where you can get that. That very, very warm thermal water. So you don't need any heating at all. If anything, you've gotta cool it.

Amanda:

Yeah. If anything that, those of you who have been prying properties in San Juan, like in racket club and stuff like that, those houses have cooling systems. Mm-hmm. So all of that to say like, if you like to chill out, uh, if you like to take it a little bit slower, then that's one of the reasons why we like Lake Chapala, because it's not just the thermal waters that we now have 15 minutes from us and all the

Justin Keltner:

spots too, and all the spots.

Amanda:

That are around. It's also like there's more nature, it's more chill. Like even if you go to, um, the, the malcon in Kopec for example, you're surrounded by trees and birds and it's just really nice as opposed to like the concrete jungle, uh, in Guadalajara, which has its pros and its cons. And we'll do another video like really comparing the two. But that's one of the things that we love about Lake Chapala. We would come out here to get a break from the city, and we just decided, you know what, like. We're chill people. How about we just try more chill life for, for a little while? Yeah.

Justin Keltner:

And you touched on another thing. So, so the spas and just the general, I mean, there's, there's actually a few things to unpack there. So proximity to, to spas and other things to relax. Um, more laid back five in general, because this is where people really come to vacation. Um, that's, that's another pro for sure. And then a lot less noise as well. So in the city you can have things like, like people playing mariachi music and. A Banda and like a lot of fireworks and things like that. It's not all the time. It's, you know, uh, sometimes the, the first of the month, sometimes the middle of the month, sometimes all of December, but it's Mexico. Yeah. Yeah. Um, but like, uh, yeah, especially during the, during the holiday season, there's a lot of noise and there's some, for sure in towns like this, but because we live in a, in a gated community, kind of on top of a, of a hill here, you don't really see too much of that. Hey Mia. A little, little cat. Hi. She came to join us here. Video. Um, so yeah, we got What do you, what do you think, Mia? Are you chill? The, the pets also are actually a lot more chill as well, so Mia has been a lot more calm. I think they pick up on the energy. Yeah. A lot, um, of the, of the town versus like being in the city where it's a little bit more frenetic. So just energy wise, it's just, it just feels a lot more grounding. Yeah. And speaking of grounding, because there's so much nature, like in fact right outside, you could probably see that. There's a, a whole like street of grass in our, in our little gated community here that's running, I don't know, probably several hundred feet, uh, up and down this, this area that's in our, in, in this. So that we we're in a gated community and then we have another gate. Um, so that's a lot more accessible here outside of the city as well, because if we were to have something like this with the same amount of, um, space and amenities, it would probably be three or four times as much. Um, and that leads us to another point, which is the cost. We are actually paying about half in rent here, even in a gated community than we were in a house, uh, with no, no additional security. And it's also safer because it's a little bit farther out there. Um, now if you compare it to even countries, let's say like the US where there's a pretty good chance of civil unrest, especially in the larger cities when there are like political things happening and whatnot. I mean, take LA for example, where I lived for, uh, over two years. Uh, there was a lot of. Of civil unrest and things like that happen. And you just don't see that in Mexico in general, but especially not in the small towns. Yeah. So you've got the safety, the security lower, um, just general, like it's, it's less frenetic and a lot less traffic too. Yeah. I mean there's almost no traffic. There's like one kind of major street, the highway that connects little towns here and

Amanda:

yeah,

Justin Keltner:

there's no traffic really.

Amanda:

Yeah. And we'll do another video with updated cost of living once we get past this move. But one thing I will say, which is a caveat. About the cost of living is that it does depend where you are on the lake.'cause for example, if you're in Chapala or Ahi, we were hanging out in Ahi uh, last week. We have noticed that things are just way more expensive, uh, because there are a lot more foreigners mm-hmm. In Chapala and Nahah. Yeah. But if you speak Spanish, uh, and you don't mind going a little bit out of there, like maybe you want to go to the Kopec area or Hoko as they call it, or more towards San Juan co sala, uh, then you can find a lot more bang for your buck. Yeah, so that's the caveat there.

Justin Keltner:

Anything else that I missed in terms of pros? Because there's definitely a lot of them.

Amanda:

Yeah. Um, I would say just generally speaking, the reasons why we decided to move out. Oh, water

Justin Keltner:

in and of itself. Like having a water view. Having water around you. Oh

Amanda:

yeah, of course. I mean, in the city, like you don't really see much of, I mean, like I said, it's concrete jungle. You'll see the hills, you'll see the mountains. But out here, you know, we look outside our patio and it's a beautiful lake view. You see the mountains, you see the. Dormant volcano. If we look over that way, uh, just to the front of the house and the entrance, it's just Green Mountains because right now it's rainy season, so all the mountains are turning, uh, green. But I would say main thing, we just wanted a little bit more of a, of a chill life. And also so did Mia. So did Mia. Yeah. She's calmed down a lot. So is Daisy. And one pro, I would say, which we were not expecting. Um. In terms of Lake Chapala is, or the Lake Chapala area is actually, the infrastructure is pretty good. Mm-hmm. I know that kind of shocked you, so can you speak a little bit more to that? Yeah,

Justin Keltner:

so I mean we, we had a couple little brownouts. I mean there's one brownout the last, not last night when it rained, but like one of the first, I guess the second storm of the season.'cause we just got here right as rainy season in this area was starting. So there's one little brownout where I think things went down for, you know, five or 10 minutes. Um, and then there was another one when you, when you were here, when I had to go back to Gu Lahar to move some more of the stuff, or was that for what, an hour or two?

Amanda:

Yeah, it was only like 45 minutes to an hour. Yeah. And,

Justin Keltner:

and I think now that it's been the first couple brownouts and they've, or blackouts or whatever for, for a brief period of time and they've like fixed whatever they needed to fix, I'm not sure if it's even gonna go down that much more at all. Uh, in capita where we were living in Guadalajara though, um, it actually, uh, sometimes would go down. For hours or half a day, or sometimes even longer, um, depending on how severe the storm was, because the, the area was so old and the infrastructure was really just old and outdated, so it would go down for longer periods of time. Um, it would take a long time to come back up. And now we also do have some panels on the roof that I'm still, uh, getting ready to, to connect now that we move them. Uh, I, we do also have a, a couple kilowatt hours of batteries that I, that I built, like for our. Our home backup, uh, system that, that's connected to like all of the major stuff that we use regularly, like the tv, uh, lights down here, offices, and then all of the, all of the servers and home automation. Um, and the cool thing is the internet is fiber optic. So if the power goes down, it doesn't bring down the internet as long as we have our own backups like inside the house for power. So that's pretty cool. And we have a cell backup. But even with all that said, I mean other than when that electricity was out before we brought all our batteries over, where you had an an hour or so of outage that you could still kind of get on the cell internet if you had to. Uh, it's, it's been been pretty good. Um,

Amanda:

yeah, and our neighbor was telling us that since total play just got here about a year ago and the internet's maybe gone down twice last year in comparison to what we were seeing in Guadalajara. Uh, which was like, I guess,'cause there's so many people. Then, you know, total play would go down. Mega Godley would go down. We had two internets and the starlink. Mm-hmm. Uh, just in case, because we work online, so we, so

Justin Keltner:

it's, it's really important that we need internet stays up. Exactly. Yeah.

Amanda:

And we had been told before we moved out here, uh, by a lot of our Mexican friends, that they have vacation properties out here and stuff like that, that the internet out here is typically better. Uh, number one, I think it's'cause a lot of the places are newer. So a lot of the stuff is underground. And

Justin Keltner:

they don't have to do as much maintenance and they don't because something falls. Yeah. They don't have to

Amanda:

do as much maintenance, things like that. Uh, and in addition to that, there's so many foreigners out here, uh, retirees, digital nomads, uh, people, snowbirds, uh, investors and things like that. We'll get to investing in a second that the infrastructure for those things is typically better, uh, in this area because it was kind of like, um. I don't think people really know this, but like Lake, the Lake Chapala area has only really begun developing in the last few years, uh, in comparison to Guadalajara, which is like a 500 year old city. Exactly. Yeah. So, uh, that goes and Alto's

Justin Keltner:

a pretty old lonna also.

Amanda:

Yeah. So, uh, different strokes for different fruits. And then the final reason why we decided to move out here, and then we'll do like a proper pros and cons because, uh, part of what we like to do on this channel is. You don't have to do what we do. You know, we understand that there's different profiles, so we just try and kind of lay it all out and then you make the decision that's best for you, or we can help you make a decision that's best for you. Sign up for one of those consults and we can help you

Justin Keltner:

entrepreneur expat.com/consult.

Amanda:

But one of the reasons we decided to move out is because, uh, because we help so many people with relocation and many of them are interested in this area. We also work with a lot of people who are interested in investing. In Mexico, we'll be doing another video on a lot of the investment opportunities and things like that with one of our real estate partners. Uh, but basically we know that this area out here is brimming with opportunity. You know, Al nah, maybe not so much anymore. Uh, it is a very desirable area for very good reason and we'll show you guys videos later. So the prices are definitely a lot higher there. Um, they're probably running outta space soon. Um. But the other areas around the lake, oh my gosh, they are fertile ground for real estate investment, uh, opportunity. We are on a side of the, on a side of the lake right now where now they're opening up Oxo, they're opening up pharmacies, they're opening up, um, more developments and things like that. And that's usually a pretty good sign.

Justin Keltner:

And in fact, we're gonna go to, uh, town by Lan pretty soon. We're gonna show you the video. And, uh, there's, there's a lot of open space, a lot of land out there. Um, and it's, you know, not that far from Guadalajara still or from, from other major towns. Yeah. Uh, so we're gonna start showing you guys a lot of the even more underdeveloped areas where in the next two to three years there's gonna start to be a lot of growth. There's, so there's a lot of ground floor opportunity there right now.

Amanda:

Yeah. And that's one of the reasons why we decided to move out here as well, is'cause we wanted to see it and we wanted to be closer, uh, to, because there's more opportunity for us. Yeah.

Justin Keltner:

Um, as investors and as. People that that work with. A lot of investors who have come down here, were like, where can you really get your, the best return on investment? And to Amanda's point, chappal, sure there's a lot of good investment opportunities still same without, but it's, those areas have already been like super discovered. Uh, and so they're either adequately rated or potentially a little overrated in my opinion. Um, and we'll get some, some more insight about a few of those different things from some, some real estate professionals.

Amanda:

Then a final thing is just, it's pretty convenient. So Chip, the Chapala area is only about an hour from Walla Hara when there's no traffic. When there's traffic, there's more. So you have to figure out kind of like your, your, when your comings and goings, uh, into the city and, and, uh, monitoring the traffic and things like that. But when there's no traffic, you know, it's an hour to Guadalajara with traffic.

Justin Keltner:

It's only about an hour and a half. Yeah. Pending.

Amanda:

Yeah. So you're very conveniently located to Mexico's second largest city. So if you need to go get your city vibes, or for example, we had to go to Guadalajara over the weekend to go pick up my passport from DHL, uh, in the city.'cause that was already in process. Or if you have to run errands, uh, that need to be done in the city.'cause perhaps it's not available out here, it's not a big deal. Mm-hmm. Uh, to go into the city. It's also. Still relatively close to the airport. I mean, the airport's kind of like the halfway point between like Guadalajara and then the Chapala area. So you're still not far from an international airport either. So, you know, when we came out, we would come out here and we would go to the thermal spas and things like that. So we were already familiar with the area and when the opportunities showed up, um, because we were already familiar, we were like, okay, that, that sounds like a really good time. We're not far from the city, we're not far from an airport. But it feels almost worlds apart. It does, yeah. From a major city in a lot of ways, because it is a lot more relaxed. It is a lot more chill. Much

Justin Keltner:

more country vibes.

Amanda:

Yeah. A little bit more country vibes, more Pueblo vibes. Mm-hmm. I would say, rather than major city. So if you're interested in something like that, then you know that could be good for you as well. And then this isn't really a concern for us, but it is a concern for some of you who watch. Is, uh, this whole area, particularly al Nah, not so much where we are, you'll need to speak a little bit more Spanish, uh, where we are. But you know, Al nah specifically is a soft landing, uh, for people who are starting. Yeah. A lot of people speak English. Yeah. A lot of the, the

Justin Keltner:

signs are in English and Spanish.

Amanda:

Yeah,

Justin Keltner:

just like the us.

Amanda:

Uh, so for those of you who are looking for a soft landing as you embark on the international lifestyle, or maybe you're moving to Mexico, then yes, Al nah. Are considered, uh, soft landings for foreigners. So I think that's it in terms of all the reasons why we decided to make the move when the opportunity showed up. Can you think of anything else? I think we just wanted to chill out for a while. We wanted to be closer to real estate opportunities that we know were, we're happening out here. Uh, and we really wanted to try it out because we get so many questions about it that we're like, Hey, why don't we just like go live over there, see what it's like and report back

Justin Keltner:

exactly. Yeah, that's about it. And we're gonna do a video with some more specific pros and cons of each as well. So make sure you like this video and, uh, you'll be shown more of our content and also subscribe. If you're watching this and you've seen our videos before and you're not already subscribed, what's going on? Subscribe. Make it Happen. Sorry Mia. It was loud, wasn't it? Uh, subscribe to this channel and if you're interested in moving to Mexico or anywhere else in Latin America. Definitely book that consult@entrepreneurexpat.com slash consult and our team of expert real estate, immigration and legal people are going to be able to help you with that move. So we'll, we'll talk to you and, and show you exactly how you can do anything that you want in terms of coming down here. Uh, and we'll go over your partic particular personal case and, uh, and help you create a plan.

Amanda:

Thanks so much for watching and we'll catch you guys on the next one. Say

Justin Keltner:

bye Mia. Bye. Okay.

Amanda:

I know you got the cat, so,

Justin Keltner:

oh, Mia's. Mia's gonna be famous, huh?