Welcome back, tangerineys. If you're new to our channel, I'm Jordan, this is Maddie
and together we are Tangerine Travels.
We're an American couple who moved to Mexico about two years ago after selling everything
we owned in the U.S. Now that we've had some time to reflect on that situation and the whole experience,
we can safely tell you the things that we did
well when we moved and the things that we messed up on. First, let's talk about the mistakes
we made when moving to Mexico.
Probably the biggest mistake we made was not giving ourselves enough time for preparations
to sell almost literally everything that we owned, do paperwork, figure out banking, all these types of things.
I believe it was about six months that we gave ourselves to do all these and it still felt like a
whole big bundle of chaos towards the end the last couple weeks.
It felt like we hadn't done anything, even though we did so much.
Yeah, I think we technically gave ourselves about a year
but
we didn't really get our butts in gear until the last six months. Because it seems like so much time
and then it just starts to dwindle in right before your eyes until we were -
I think it was like the last weekend. We were like trying to figure out how we could get pesos out, things
we wanted to do with the bank; like power of attorney and
payable-on-death
and things like that and like, we still didn't get all of the things that we needed to have gotten done,
done. And that leads us to the next point, which is, not making a list of things -
important necessary things that we needed to do before crossing the border
and after crossing the border, like getting
Mexican car insurance. Yeah, so we're driving to Mexico, our first day on the road.
By the way, who drives like this? We'd be swerving all over the road! [Laughs]
We're driving to Mexico, like we're a few
miles or something away from the border and we're like, "okay, well, we need to get Mexican car insurance."
So, we were calling our U.S insurance company; Geico.
We were like, "okay, how do we get Mexican car insurance?"
That's just one example of the things that should have made it on that list of what we needed to do
before leaving and then after leaving. I feel like this is making it seem like we didn't really prepare,
we didn't know what to do and we weren't planning. We were that whole time!
We were watching videos, and in facebook groups, and asking questions
but there were just so many
things that slipped through the cracks or that just took more time than we expected.
But coming back to that list,
we knew we needed to get Mexican car insurance, we knew we needed
to get our tourist visas after crossing the border,
we knew we needed to get a temporary vehicle import permit
but because we didn't have a list, we forgot about those things at the time we needed to get it done.
Yeah, I mean, it was just like - I remember crossing the border.
We were so flustered and also excited because
they didn't search the car because sometimes they can do that,
like - you know - and take an inventory of whatever you have.
They didn't do that. They didn't have any problems with Laska or her paperwork,
so we were like so thrilled that we got through with no issues at all and then completely spaced
on getting the tourist visa. So then, we had to come back
and we didn't have pesos and we didn't have U.S Dollars. And all of these things.
Basically, something that should have taken 15 minutes ended up taking two hours
with the tourist visa and then we were supposed to get our
temporary vehicle import permit and
because we were just disorganized and without a list,
that ended up being a huge ordeal as well.
You know something I would do if we were to do this all over again...
I would make whatever that list is, of things that I think we needed to have done and then like
post it in a Mexico-themed Facebook group like "Hey,
am I missing anything important on here?" because you will...
inevitably! You will be missing something important.
The next big mistake that we made was continuing our car registration in Arizona.
Why was this a mistake? Since it's registered in Arizona
First of all, it's an expensive state to register your vehicle but also, they require emissions testing.
So, if you need to continue registering it, you may have to go bring the car back to get emissions tested.
Also, you need to continue holding on to your U.S insurance
which has been a huge expense - and it doesn't even do anything.
U.S insurance does nothing for the car in Mexico. So, we're basically
paying double.
So, what would have been a better option for us? Registering the car in South Dakota. South Dakota has
really great laws for expats like us who are moving to Mexico,
where you can register your car in South Dakota.
You aren't required to have any type of residence there. You aren't required to bring the car there in person.
They'll mail you your plates anywhere in the U.S.
That's another thing with registration in Arizona is that they will only mail the stickers to Arizona.
We have had to pay something like
$60 one time for my mom to mail it and have it tracked and everything to get to us.
Mail a sticker. Yeah, just absurd.
But if it's registered in South Dakota, you don't have to carry U.S insurance.
It's cheaper to register it, and you don't have to bring the car back there for emissions or anything.
So basically, it makes it a whole lot cheaper to have a car in Mexico
And easier. The next really big mistake
we made was keeping our U.S phone plan instead of switching right over to a Mexican phone plan.
We had T-Mobile,
we now have Telcel and we pay between
$15 to $25 Dollars a month for basically as much data as we need. It works in the U.S,
Canada and Mexico, and comparing that to T-Mobile, we were paying
$50 a piece; $100 total. That's just so expensive.
We could have saved so much money if we just switched over right away.
The last mistake we feel like we made
when moving to Mexico was rushing from place to place.
We only spent
one or two nights in each city, and it didn't give us enough time to explore and it was really stressing Laska
and us too.
With so much driving from place to place. In our defense, I kind of feel like we had our eyes set on
places that weren't very
similar to Arizona. We've really wanted to get to the beach and to these more desirable
places to go (places at the time we thought were more desirable) like Mazatlan, Puerto Vallarta,
eventually Guadalajara, but yes, I think we should have slowed down.
We should have given ourselves at least five days
maybe in each place, if not a week, just to like give ourselves some
breathing time, allow ourselves the opportunity to get acclimated
instead of feeling like it was just like "go go go go go." "We must do this!" "We must go on on on..."
Okay, so now let's move on to the section of things
we did right. Our successes when moving to Mexico.
One of the best things that we did in preparation of moving
to Mexico was doing daily Spanish lessons.
I don't even know what the experience would have been like for us if we didn't at least have a
moderate grasp on the language and saying it out loud
as we were doing audio lessons, where you're talking in the lesson instead of
just reading things or like doing memorization in your head.
I remember at first you didn't want to do the lessons in front of me
because - No I didn't! -
You didn't want anyone hearing you, not even me. Because I
was so embarrassed, and like timid, and scared of making mistakes.
So, I'm glad we did that because it got ourselves even just
comfortable saying it in front of each other.
I do think we could have done more even.
Like, I'm glad we were so diligent about doing Spanish lessons every single day
but some of my family speaks Spanish, some of our friends speak Spanish,
we should have been practicing in conversations because I do think that we
overestimated our Spanish abilities and then quickly realized
that when we got into conversations with people.
But if you want to start learning Spanish, our favorite way to learn it is through rocket languages.
We're actually an affiliate
and if you're interested in checking out the course,
you can input www.TangerineSpanish.com and that will take you straight to our affiliate link.
Yep, that forwards to rocket languages.
So, if you end up getting a course
then we might get a chunk of change from that which really helps us out to make
more videos just like this one.
But yes, if you're wanting to move to Mexico,
learning Spanish, that is like 100% essential.
I don't think people should have the mindset that you're going to learn it just
by simple immersing yourself in the culture or through osmosis.
It takes such an active effort and daily practice.
Maybe we have a different definition of immersion, but I think that's a very good way to learn the language
but maybe
my definition of immersion would be like, you're in a
Spanish-speaking culture, everyone around you is speaking Spanish.
You are forced to speak Spanish, and forced to communicate in Spanish, and forced to look up everything
you don't know, and say it in Spanish.
But I think what you're getting at is
just the fact that you live in Mexico is not going to make you learn the language.
There are so many people who live here, who lived here a decade and can hardly speak a sentence.
Because it depends on where you are too, like
If you're going to Puerto Vallarta, or Mazatlan, or somewhere here,
like we live in Puerto Morelos, in the state of Quintana Roo
by Cancun and Playa Carmen. Lots of people speak English.
So, thinking that like, "Oh, I'll just learn when I go to Mexico",
probably not going to happen, depending on where you are
and how much of a conscious effort you're making to avoid English.
Yeah, you really have to make an effort
If you want to learn the language.
The next thing on our list of things that we did right was setting a date for when we were going to leave - our
liftoff date, if you will.
Months in advance, we knew the exact date and we were not pushing that back.
This is our deadline, our hard, fast deadline. And it was for a number of reasons
but I'm glad we did that because that leads into our next point, which is not letting our families
convince us not to go to Mexico because oh my goodness!
Once we told our family, they basically tried to do everything to convince us not to go.
They were sending us articles every day, on like the terrible things that were happening in Mexico and
lecturing us, and just constantly trying to think of reasons that would persuade us not to go.
I'm glad we had that date of when we were going to leave and we didn't let them
push us around changing it and I'm glad we didn't
listen to them either because as we know now, and as they know now,
it is not all so bad in Mexico like the news media might have you believe.
Yeah, this reminds me of one of my favorite authors; Jim Rogers, who has literally
traveled - he's driven around the world twice; once on a motorcycle, once in a vehicle. And
he said, no matter where he went on earth,
it was always, "This place is safe, but our neighbors are dangerous."
No matter where it was.
And you know, we've seen that too in Mexico, where it's like when we lived in the U.S,
everyone's so scared of Mexico because "Mexico is so scary and dangerous." And then now being in Mexico,
we kind of hear that sentiment from Mexicans about their south of the border neighbors.
The next thing I think we did right was planning to take as little
of our humanly earthly possessions as possible and
part of this was simply because we have a very small car.
It's a Prius C, which is the compact version of the Prius.
So, we really didn't have room to take a whole lot of stuff
but I'm glad that we didn't go the route of like hiring a moving company and
taking all of the things that we own. Or bringing a trailer or something like that.
Yeah, because as much as we brought, we've still
paired down less and less. And I get that for somebody who's planning on moving to like one place in particular,
it might be cheaper to bring all of your furniture that you've already bought and everything like that
but for
wanting to travel a little bit from place to place throughout the
country like we have, I am so happy that we didn't take more
than we needed. Something else that I think was very important for us that we
did right was signing up for a
Charles Schwab bank account while in the U.S.
Schwab!
Some of the reasons why this is so good is because
there's no account minimums. There're no monthly maintenance fees.
They pay a higher interest rate than almost any other bank account. Also, the big one is
they don't charge ATM fees and they give unlimited
ATM refunds
worldwide. That's a really big deal. One downside to Schwab though
is we have heard some stories from other expats who have actually gotten their
accounts shut down
because they said this account is not made for people
living outside of the U.S. Thankfully for us, we travel around enough
even though we're spending quite a bit of time in Mexico,
we also go to the U.S, Canada, we've gone to Europe, etcetera.
So, yeah
and we also try to be a better customer for them
by trying to keep a little bit more money in our accounts and
also
trying to do as few ATM withdrawals as possible to minimize those ATM fees for them.
By the way, this sounds like this video is sponsored or something by Charles Schwab
but it's totally not. That's just the bank account we picked and use, and we think it was a
good decision for us to make. But where you at Schwab?
Yeah, where are you at Schwab? Come on! Next thing I think we did right was
traveling around the country to find the city that felt
most like home, the cities that we've wanted to spend more time in.
We see it's so often where people are like, all systems go to wherever the place is in Mexico. Often
it's one place
they have vacationed at and liked.
Or that they've never been before but they just heard good things about and that's maybe one of the greatest
successes that we've had and this whole
experience is just going from place to place because you would be surprised but it's actually like when
you get there and how you feel
about the place and we've been surprised by places that we thought we didn't like but ended up loving and
places that we thought we were going to be madly in love with and then kind of
hated. So, what I would recommend to anybody who wants to move to Mexico is
go spend at least a week, at least,
bare minimum, one week, in the place, to see if it's
really all that you hoped it would be, and if not, try another place,
try another place. Go to many places because I think the more that anyone travels in Mexico,
I'm speaking for ourselves, the more we traveled in Mexico, the more we love it. So...
And the more there is to love about it.
This is one of the reasons why
we think it's a really good thing that we tried to pair down the stuff that we own.
Yeah, because if we had a big trailer full of stuff, we wouldn't be able to
unload and load and every time, just go from place to place
but because we don't have a lot of stuff,
we can more easily travel and experience new places.
The next success that we had about moving to Mexico was devouring as much
information, and videos, and content as we possibly could about Mexico
and that includes things like joining
Mexico themed Facebook groups and asking questions and
reading other people's experiences and things. Even though I
don't think there was any amount of information that we could consumed that would fully prepare us, and well,
we know that for sure now,
I still think that learning all that we did set us up for success more than if we were just going to like go and
wing it and hope for the best.
Yeah, I highly recommend watching YouTube videos like one of my favorite channels to watch:
I've heard so many good things about it and I really like them too.
It's called "Tangerine Travels." It's this couple.
who travel around Mexico and make video.
With their Husky! Don't forget about the Husky.
She's the star of the show. Laska, are you kidding me?
This video is brought to you by Laska and she says
if you're enjoying it, you should subscribe to our channel and give her treats. [Laughter]
The next thing on our list that we did right when moving to Mexico was being flexible and
open to things not going quite as planned.
I'm personally very proud of myself
for how this happened and like the growth that
I've had in this department because before coming to Mexico,
everything I did in the day went on my calendar,
appointments, I scheduled everything. So much was planned out, weeks in advance
and so coming to Mexico, it was hard to let that go
but I think really a liberating thing for me to just go,
like we need to roll with the punches because if we get stressed out over everything that didn't go as planned,
I would just be one big ball of stress all the time! I think this applies for
anyone moving to another country. You just have to be flexible and expect things to not go as planned.
Yeah
And that leads us into the last thing that I think we did really well when we came to Mexico.
A success that we had in moving here was being open and
willing to embrace and understand the Mexican culture.
Even though it was almost always
scary or awkward, like one perfect example
I can think of is, there were so many times where
we were like, "Is this someone's house or is this a restaurant?" and
kind of not wanting to step through the doors
because how awkward that would be if you walked in and like "A menu, please?"
And they are like,
"This is my house." [Laughter]
Just as a note of clarity, it often is a restaurant. In Mexico,
there are so many like casual places that are in someone's
like front yard or patio or even inside their house
but it doesn't mean it's not a restaurant,
so I'm really glad that we did that because the more we've stepped out of our comfort zone
the more free we feel to do that and the more we can
really enjoy all these little aspects... Tiny or big aspects of Mexican culture that are just so
different but awesome.
Yeah.
I mean,
there're definitely some things we could have embraced faster or a little bit more and
there's things we're still working on but it's a process.
Yeah, it definitely is, and I don't know, I think it would be hard just to go all out and
totally dive in the deep end completely.
But anyway, if you enjoyed this video, we hope you will subscribe to our channel to see other videos
that we create about our life in Mexico and sometimes other places in the world.
And if you want to see you all of our mistakes and failures and successes from
the beginning... I failed at saying "failures" [Laughs]
And if that's just not a perfect picture of our lives. But anyway, if you want to see all those things,
we'll link to our binge watch everything playlist on the end screen here in just a moment.
You can click on that and see all of our videos in order.
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