- We all make mistakes.
Sometimes it's unfortunate that we have to make
the same mistake twice or three times,
but the good thing is, is we can always learn.
I made a mistake moving to Mexico.
(somber music)
Hey guys welcome back to The Single Dad Nomad.
If you don't know me, my name is Nicholas Demski
and I'm here on a mission to help
people live better worldwide.
Now today I'm not going to be going in depth
on processes in order to move worldwide,
or the benefits of moving worldwide,
in fact I'm doing the exact opposite.
I'm going to be explaining to you
the reasons I regret moving to Mexico.
So without any further ado, let's get salty.
(somber music)
I'm actually not too salty about it because
the first reason I regret moving to Mexico is my fault.
Like I said, it's a mistake I've made more than once
and that's committing to something long term
before I actually know what I'm getting myself into.
You know, I first did this back in 2015.
I took a teaching job in Colombia that I found online
and moved down there, and it wasn't
exactly the situation I thought it was going to be.
And I had signed this contract and taken this job
and everything and got an apartment,
and within a month I knew I didn't want to be there anymore.
So I had made a big mistake about moving down
to Colombia without doing due diligence.
And I told myself I'm never doing that again.
I'm always going to go somewhere first
before committing to like a year long stay.
And I messed up this time going to Mexico
and that's what I regret is that I didn't go down there
just on the tourist visa like I could have.
Instead I immediately went for temporary residency
while I was still in the United States.
I just had a good feeling that
I was gonna love being in Mexico and
that I was gonna stay there and enjoy myself.
I'd done a lot of research and everything.
But when I got down there it just again,
wasn't a situation I thought it was gonna be,
it wasn't as enjoyable as I thought it was going to be.
And so, my first big regret was moving there without
doing my research about where I was going to move to.
So you can easily avoid that mistake
by not going for residency first.
If you're thinking about moving to Mexico,
just go down there on a tourist visa first.
I made a video about it that you guys can check out.
It'll teach you how to do that.
But if you're going to move to Mexico,
do it on the tourist visa first
and then you can get temporary residency later,
or permanent residency later or whatever.
Just give yourself time to research where
you're gonna live because that was my big mistake
and first regret of moving to Mexico.
(somber music)
Number two is a little bit ironic,
but it's actually that I didn't move to Mexico soon enough.
I've actually spent about probably three or four months
just continuously debating with myself
every single day, should I move?
Should I not move?
Should I move?
Should I not move?
What I should have just done instead of torturing myself
for months on end and trying to figure out the logistics
and how much is it gonna cost over this amount of time?
And what are the benefits over here?
And what are the downsides over here?
I should have just moved on the tourist visa like I said
and figured it out while I was there.
I would have been a lot better for me.
I wouldn't have set my expectations up to a point
where they couldn't have been met,
and I could have just been there experiencing it
instead of sitting there debating with myself
and making myself miserable for months
and it would have been much easier.
So, my second regret about moving to Mexico
was that I didn't move there soon enough.
(somber music)
And the third reason I regret moving to Mexico,
and I actually mentioned that I did a lot of research,
but I could have done more research actually.
I could have figured out that my cost of living
would have been actually cheaper in Colombia than in Mexico.
Now because I didn't do enough research about
comparing those two countries, I just assumed oh, well
it's Latin American it's gonna be roughly equivalent.
And so I guess the third thing that I regret
about moving to Mexico was not comparing
my options enough properly, I just rushed things,
I was hasty, and I messed up.
(somber music)
Number four, and I already kind of mentioned this.
The reason that I think I didn't do enough research
into other countries, say like Colombia,
instead of just Mexico, was because I had just
initially first looked at the flights.
So when I was looking at flights up in the United States
down to Latin America, I was looking at Costa Rica,
and Mexico, yes Colombia too, and I saw
that the flights were roughly one to 200 dollars
down to Mexico, maybe two to 300 down to Costa Rica,
but then it shot up to four maybe
500 dollars per flight down to Colombia.
And obviously I'm a single dad, so I have to pay
for two flights, and so I was weighing that pretty heavily.
And what I should have just done
was said to myself, well I can get the more
expensive flight to go down to Colombia
and reduce my cost of living over the course
of six months, it would have balanced out.
So you know, I made that big mistake by deciding
where to go based on the cost of the flight.
I should have thought more long term about it
because once you finally do move to another country
your cost of living is gonna be so much lower
that you're going to make all that money back
on your flights within three or four months pretty easily.
(soft guitar music)
So the fifth thing that I regret about moving to Mexico
was that the bureaucracy was mind numbingly slow
or it would be double the cost through an agency.
Like I said, I got temporary residency when I went down
there so I used an agency actually while I was in Mexico
to help me out with that and it cost
about double the cost to use the agency,
but it did help with all the processes and getting it done
and I became a temporary resident in Mexico.
Obviously a big waste of money,
but it was a good lesson learned.
But one of the things that I found when I got down there,
and one of the reasons that I really wanted
to be in Mexico was one, I wanted
to get on their public healthcare.
In the states it's just crazy expensive.
You know I was looking at 250 dollars a month
for health insurance plus 13000 dollar deductibles
plus insane copays and all this, and so,
I was just like why don't I just move to Mexico,
get temporary residency and get on their public
healthcare system and then it will just basically
free healthcare for me and my daughter, awesome.
But when I got down there and I applied for it,
I actually got denied because I have a pre-existing
condition, I have asthma, it's not really a problem
even though I do technically have it.
And if I'm say, living in a big city,
I can feel my lungs getting a little busted up
by the air pollution, but the fact is, I got denied.
And that was just one part
of the bureaucracy that was annoying.
The second was changing your address there
is just a pain in the butt because the directions
online aren't very clear and then you go into the office
and you don't have all the papers you need,
or all the forms, and they give them to you at the office
and then you have to reset your appointment
and then go back in and do it again,
and you know it's all in Spanish
and so just a lot of that was quite difficult.
But the one that really got me,
I was trying to get transportation,
I was trying to buy a motorcycle while I was down there.
I got my motorcycle driver's license before I left.
I went to the store, I went to go get my motorcycle,
and just for whatever reason they couldn't process it.
I tried to buy on my credit card, I tried to buy
on my debit card, I tried all these different ways
to finally buy my motorcycle,
I need it because I'm walking everyday.
And so after spending about four hours in there
trying to get this motorcycle bought
I was just like you know what?
I'm just gonna go, this is just a giant waste of time.
And so I tried a few more times to buy it online
after that and it just never worked.
I don't know what was going on.
I guess I can't really blame that on bureaucracy.
Maybe it was just fate, destiny,
telling me to get out of Mexico.
And so I eventually did.
(techno beat)
the sixth reason I regret moving to Mexico,
and I don't know if this is that I regret moving
to Mexico, it's just something that kind of
annoyed me while I was down there.
And this happens as a traveler you know,
when you're a white male and you go to other countries,
people just automatically assume you have a ton of money
for whatever reason, you know?
They're locals, they live on their minimum salary and stuff.
And so they just have this perception that oh,
any white man that comes from another country,
they just have a ton of money,
they fly here first class, et cetera.
Okay, not true.
But, what really annoyed me is that some of the locals
down there, like people that I've lived around
and would talk to everyday, not just like random people
on the street, they would beg me for money every single day.
Like, there was this one guy, he was my neighbor,
every single time I talked to him he would start
bringing up about he needs money for this,
he needs money for that, and go get a job.
Stop begging me for money everyday, okay?
I'm not gonna give it to unless
you're actually providing value to me.
If you're sitting on the corner of a street
playing music or something like that,
I'll drop some money in there.
But if you're just gonna sit there and just
So I think this is number seven.
The seventh reason I regret moving to Mexico
was that the power would go out all the time.
Now I actually talked to the landlord before I moved in.
I was like I work online, I need good connection everyday,
I need this and that and he told me yeah, yeah
everything is good, it's all good.
It's all good, this place is just normal place whatever.
Okay, so fine we move in.
But within a month or two, I mean the power
was going out at least once a week.
It would disappear for up to eight hours,
up to 12 hours sometimes, like I remember one day
it was gone from 7am until 8pm.
There was no power in the entire city.
it was like there would be entire days
where I couldn't get anything done
and we would just be feeling miserable all the time.
And we would have food in the fridge that we'd be worried
about going bad and I wouldn't want to open the fridge
and let all the cold out, and it was just,
it was really unstable and it didn't have the facilities
and the infrastructure that I was really looking for
as a digital nomad and a single parent
who has to bring in income every single day.
(soft music)
Which brings me to my next point.
I think this is number eight.
The eighth reason that I regret moving to Mexico
was that besides the power always going out was,
if we had the power, well then the internet would go out.
was working while the internet went out
it would be so slow that I couldn't get
anything done and it was just a mess.
Like I said, there wasn't the facilities
and the infrastructure in Mexico
that I thought there was going to be.
If you lived somewhere like in Mexico City
or Puerto Vallarta, you can get better infrastructure,
but I was looking for a small town, small community
and I didn't really expect it to be so poorly developed.
You know, and I hate to say that because I love Mexico.
I'm not trying to be rude and I'm not trying
to downplay their system over there.
Like I said there's lots of big cities
where there's plenty of infrastructure
and you could go be a digital nomad there no problem,
but where I moved I wanted to live in a small town
on the coast, I wanted it to be quiet,
I wanted it to be a good place for Auburn to live.
Obviously that's my daughter, I want her to be happy,
but as someone who has to work online,
it just wasn't a good situation at all.
So those are the reasons that I regret
moving to Mexico and I'm out of coffee.