Cost of Living in Mexico: Lake Chapala Edition

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👉 Free Moving to Mexico Guide: https://www.entrepreneurexpat.com/mexico

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Remote Work and Online Income Resources:

👉 Expat Income Accelerator course which shows you the multiple ways you can make money globally based on our 15+ years of experience in online business, investing internationally and living in multiple countries: https://www.entrepreneurexpat.com/income

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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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Transcript

Speaker: 0:36

Have you been thinking about possibly moving to the Lake Chip Paul, Mexico area, and you're curious what are the costs of living in this area? In today's video, we're gonna talk about what it actually costs for a couple, with a couple of pets, as well as for a. Family of four to live in the Lake Jal area. We have a couple different towns in the area. As an example, I'm Justin, and on this channel entrepreneur, expat. We talk about everything to do with moving overseas, starting the life of your dreams abroad, and being able to have a remote source of income so that you can do that. Make sure that you like this video and hit that notification bell if that's something you're interested in learning more about and subscribe to this channel as well. All of those things help us, not just help you by making sure that you don't miss a single video, but they also help us with our mission of reaching a million entrepreneur expats and aspiring expats all over the world. one final thing before we get into the content, if you're looking to move. To Mexico, uh, or anywhere else in Latin America for that matter. Definitely book a free consult with our team. You can apply for that. consult@entrepreneurexpat.com slash consult, and we can get you sorted with the visas, the paperwork, the legal, the accounting, everything that you need to make your dream life overseas come true. And you can also download our Moving to Mexico guide right below this video. Now let's dive in and talk about three different towns in the Lake Chapala area. Uh, that would be Kopec, AHI, and Chapala, and some of the surrounding towns and the different lifestyles in those towns and what the costs of living are in those different places so that you can actually see where a good fit. For you might be. Now, first I'd like to talk about what our actual monthly spend is right now we're currently a couple, we're two people, myself and my wife Amanda, and we've got two pets as well. We've got a dog and a cat. We're living in the Dakota PET area in a gated community. And uh, we've got a view of the lake. It's very nice. There's security, everything. We're paying about$600 US per month in rent. Now our utilities, including electricity, gas. Water and two internet lines just so that we have a backup because we do so much uploading and zoom calls and different things like that, so we've gotta have it on all the time. For all of those utilities combined, we're paying about$200 per month. Most people could probably cut this roughly in half. Uh, because we do use a lot of electricity. We've got servers and things at home, and we also have that second internet like I mentioned. So, uh, the average couple, uh, of two people might only spend about a hundred dollars per month in utilities, including gas and electric and all. Of that other stuff. We also spend about$350 per month in groceries. We eat pretty well. We like to eat aera uh, steak. We get fresh chicken, uh, eggs, different types of fruits and, and things like that for dessert vegetables. Uh, so we eat very, very well on about$350 per month of groceries. We'll spend around$50 per month in home maintenance. Unfortunately, with Mexico, sometimes you do have to actually maintain properties a little bit yourself, whether that's. Uh, replacing a light switch or maybe having someone come and fix the plumbing. Sometimes if you get a good landlord, uh, they will reimburse you for those things, but I wouldn't necessarily count on it. Uh, we certainly don't. So that's why we're including that in our estimate here. Realistically, it might even be a little bit lower. It might be actually closer to 20 or$30 a month now that we've gotten, uh, some of the kinks out. But I think it averaged to about$50 per month, roughly. Uh, car expenses, including gas is about$50 per month. We don't really drive too much. Other than to go into town every week or so. Uh, and then occasionally we'll go to Chip, uh, we'll go to Chip, we'll go to Ahi. We'll go to Guadalajara like maybe, uh, every month or two. We spend roughly$150 per month on going out. That's maybe going down to the, to the coffee shop near where we live, or going out to a restaurant in town. Uh, things like that. We maybe will go out on average like two times, uh, a week or so. Uh, so that's about$150. I think that actually has gone down quite a lot. Realistically, maybe we're spending around a hundred dollars a month now on going out, because we have a cleaning lady that comes here twice a week. She cooks pretty much all of our meals. Amanda likes to cook at home a lot. I cook occasionally when I'm not super, super busy. Uh, so that may have even gone down slightly. Now, cell phones, this is actually, uh, again for two people. This is including our T-Mobile, uh, our T-Mobile prepaid lines back home because we just keep those active just so that we can use the wifi calling and still get incoming calls and text messages and two factor authentication messages and things like that through our US numbers. And we also have. Uh, Mexican cell phone lines here. We don't really go out too much other than when we're traveling, uh, to use a bunch of data. So we're only, we're only using, on average about three or four gigabytes per month of data. So total between the two of us, we're spending around$50 US per month on cell phones. I mentioned the housekeeper as well. Uh, she comes twice a week to help us clean and cook and those sorts of things, and that costs us around$200 per month. She'll come for about a half a day, or a little more than half a day, twice per week. And then personal care, so things like nail hairs, biweekly massages, uh uh, sometimes going to the spa, things like that, that cost us about$300. Again, a lot of these things are like very. Uh, just kind of personal expenses, like most people won't, won't necessarily spend as much on personal care as we do, or maybe they're gonna clean their own apartment or cook their own food. Uh, your costs for sure will be lower in a lot of those areas. Health insurance is roughly$200 per month. It's a little under a hundred dollars a month each for private health insurance with really solid deductibles. In total, we're spending for a couple$2,200 US per month. Obviously, like I mentioned, we like certain extras, like massages, like getting our nails done and things like that at home so we don't have to leave too much because it's beautiful here. We don't really like to leave all that much, and of course our backup internet because we run businesses from home. So we wanna just have, uh, extra reassurance that things are gonna work a hundred percent of the time. With that said, plenty of couples can live comfortably in the area on a thousand to$1,500 per month, depending on your town and lifestyle, especially if you're around this area in the Kopec area. Uh, you don't really need to spend that much. You can, you can. Conceivably rent a, a house if you're okay with maybe a little bit more noise or being like right in downtown, you could rent an apartment or a house for as little as$300 US per month. And then a lot of those other elective expenses might be significantly lower. Uh, now let's talk about what most couples spend in some of the other areas. So, like I mentioned, Beck, uh, is around. 300 all the way up to potentially$800 for a one or two bedroom home. Uh, you would see roughly the same prices if you're in a town like San Juan Sala, which is pretty close to here, as long as you're outside the touristy areas. In some cases, your rent might be even lower if you're in Chapala or you're, you're in San Antonio. Uh, Ayaan, which is another town near us. It's like sort of between us and, and Chapala. Uh, you can find houses to rent there for about six to$900 per month. For like a two bedroom apartment or small home. And then Ahe is one of the more desirable areas. This is like a super premium area, so rent is gonna be higher because it's so much more walkable. Uh, it's got a lot more amenities and like coffee shops nearby a lot of different restaurants. And Aha, for those of you that don't know, is actually the largest. Settlement of North Americans, outside of their home countries in the entire world. So there's a ton of Americans and Canadians here, mostly retirees, but the demographics are starting to get a little bit younger as time goes on as well. So the rent in the Ahah area typically ranges from about 900 to$1,500 per month or more. Definitely more. If you're talking like gated community, you want an entire house instead of, uh, instead of just an apartment, you want some, some land or some, uh, yard around you. It could be upwards of$1,500 per month because it's such a high in demand area. Now we're gonna be looking at different places around Lake Al as well, uh, like kind of that way we're, you know, we're going towards Sokoto back here. Is Beck on this side. If you go kind of past around the bend, uh, to the other side of the lake, there's a lot more up and coming developments and things like that. So we're gonna be doing some videos on some other less discovered areas, but these are some of the areas you're more likely to find yourself living if you're an expat, especially if you don't speak Spanish. Ah, he is pretty good because everybody speaks English. Al is also fairly touristic, so a lot of people speak it. English there as well. And then depending on where you are, utilities without the backup internet might be in that$8,220 per month range unless you run heavy AC in one of these towns because. You can run, uh, ac up to a certain level and the costs are reasonable. But once you go up into like the higher tier of electricity called dock, which we try very hard to avoid going into, um, then the, the prices start to go up very, very, very quickly. The good news though, is that it's. It's a pretty temperate climate, so we don't tend to need to run AC all that often. We, we run it a lot, especially in the summer. And up until these months, like right now, we're, we're coming into, uh, the middle of September, so we're still running a little bit of AC now in the past, like two months here. But it's, it's also, I mean, because it does heat up a lot on the second floor, uh, depending on where you live, it might not be as, as warm inside, so you might not even need to run AC at night. Most people don't. And during the day, during the summer. Sometimes it's better to run ac especially if you're, if you're working and, uh, maybe you're, you're really breaking a sweat. You're used to cooler climates. Um, but most people here don't have acs. Uh, like where we live in our gated community, probably about a 10th of the houses actually have air conditioning. Um, so that is one of the things definitely that will, that will, uh, change the variables in terms of the, the expenses. Because if you're running AC 24 7 for whatever reason, you might be spending two or$300 a month in electricity. It's just something to be. Aware of now in terms of groceries. Groceries for two usually run around 300 to$400 per month. Depending on, uh, whether you're buying a lot of imported food and on your diet and things like that, restaurants are pretty affordable. So mid-range dinner for two and ahah might be around the$35 range. And then couples will usually spend anywhere from a hundred to about$250 per month going out, depending on your preferences and lifestyle and things like that. And then housekeepers pretty similar range to what we're paying, you know, in that like 150 to$250 per month. Uh, range depending on the frequency. And then cell, cell phone plans per person, you're paying anywhere from about, uh, 15 to$20 per person at a base level, and that's going up if you need a ton more data, uh, and things like that. So gas right now it's, it's around on par with what Gases and California, it's around$4 and 90 cents US per gallon. Uh, which if you're pretty low mileage like us, maybe you're spending 40 or$50, uh, per month. Now let's talk about a little bit of additional context that you should know. So the current exchange rate is approximately 18.7 pesos per US dollar. But you always wanna be aware of things like currency swings because of course when you're living internationally, your budget can change based on the exchange rate, and you also want to factor in the inflation rate of Mexico. So it's definitely lower than in the US right now, at least according to the real numbers. Uh, Mexico's inflation rate is currently around 3.5%. Per year. So just make sure to build about a five to 10% buffer into your plan. So now in terms of total budget scenarios for a couple, uh, the, the Lakeside, you know, if you're, you're kind of trying to save some money and maybe you wanna live somewhere like Dakota back, uh, that's one of the more affordable towns or chapala in the non touristy areas, you might be budgeting in total around 1100 to$1,500 per month if you are in somewhere like Al or San Antonio. Uh, then it might be closer to around 1600 to 21, 2200 a month, and it's gonna go up pretty significantly if you wanna live somewhere where, like in aah, where there's a lot more foreigners. Uh, it's a much higher demand area. So perhaps you might spend anywhere from 2000 all the way up, two,$3,000 per month or more for a couple. Uh, these are some of the things that push the cost up or down. If you're in somewhere like Ahhe, it kind of commands a premium because it's very walkable. There's a ton of, uh, there's a ton of amenities if you like, having additional internet like us, or for example, uh, backup batteries, that's more of a, a one time investment. But you might buy, like backup batteries have, have extra power and then power, you know, a second modem and then have an extra internet plan. So things like that, redundancies, uh, might add a little bit of cost. Overall, obviously running acs. Could potentially drive up your expenses as well. We're fortunate enough to have a few solar panels here that I installed on the roof, so it keeps us, at least under the dock level, which is the, the, uh, Mexican Power Company's very expensive tier once you pass that threshold. So where we stay comfortably under that every month and we still get to use AC during the day when we need it, and, uh, probably about half the time at night as well. Of course, if you're driving a lot, that means higher gas bills or if you're taking a lot of Uber. Lifestyle things like massages, imported groceries and dining out can also add up. Um, but if you cut those out and you're living in a town that's maybe not, if you're living somewhere a little more affordable, you definitely could land for a couple closer to the thousand to$1,500 per month range. So those are our cost of living examples for the lake chip area. You really can live here comfortably as a couple for anywhere from 1100 up to about 22, 20$500 per month, depending on your lifestyle. So it's pretty cool, especially when you're coming from a town or a city like, like la, like Miami, like New York, where you might be spending closer to. Four, five,$6,000 per month as a couple, if not more, depending on your lifestyle. So we love it here. Uh, we think it, that it's, that it's super worth it. We get a really good bang for our buck, uh, and we're able to invest and we're able to focus on growing our businesses without all of that overhead and that stress of constantly having to make that monthly nut. So if you're interested in working with our team and helping you and your family relocate to the lake chip area, anywhere else in Mexico or perhaps somewhere else in the world,'cause we have partners all over the world now, especially Latin America, we're growing our presence in Europe as well. Just go to entrepreneur xpa.com. Slash consult, book a consult with our team, and you can also check out some of the free and paid resources below this video, including our eBooks and online courses. They can help you if you're a little bit more in the decision making phase. So we'll pop those links on the screen and below the video, and we look forward to having you as a continued part of our journey. Don't forget to like and subscribe, and I'll see you again soon.