Mexico: The Great Caper
Denver, a great American city, and like many, increasingly out of reach for moderate income people and retirees.
Updated November 2023
By definition, great cities everywhere come with a bigger price tag. Rent prices in the U.S. soared in 2021 past pre-pandemic projections according to Zillow, growing 9.2% year over year to $1,843 a month on average. The cost of living in Denver long ago cut a swath of my single friends out of the city, scattering them to Virginia, the Carolinas, and Arizona.
Moving to a smaller, less expensive town is not uncommon when retiring or nearing retirement. During the Great Recession, when I was struggling even to find contract work, a few people suggested that I move somewhere with a lower cost of living, like Irving, Texas they said. Supposedly there are even cities in America that I could live in for under $40,000 a year, such as Canandaigua, New York, or Munhall, Pennsylvania.
The thought of moving to Irving, Texas panicked me in a way that the idea of moving to a foreign country had not. Realizing my reaction was more than a little strange, I tried to figure out why.
Being from a small town in southwest Oklahoma and attending the University of Oklahoma, I had spent a fair amount of time in Dallas. I knew the museums and art walks compared well to any big city. My friends in Texas looked great and had nice cars and places. What more could a girl want?
Mexico's cliff divers in Mazatlán. A different culture, a new life.
So I pondered that ticky-tacky future, the condo in the decent area that I could afford, the malls, the trips to Kroger and the conversations I would have over dinner.
In my head I lived an imaginary day in Irving Texas as well as a number of the “25 Cheapest US cities.” I lived only that single imaginary day. One day, I reasoned, would be much like the next.
Those places terrified me.
At that time, I had never met anyone of my profile, single, no children, over 50, who had moved to Mexico. I surveyed my friends for their opinions of such a move. Other than vague comments, they seemed conscious of the disingenuousness of promoting a move to a U.S. city they’d never consider themselves.
To approach the subject from a different direction, I asked them whether they were more likely to visit me in McMinnville, Oregon or Mazatlán, Mexico. They laughed and never answered the question. Mexico was crazy but they weren’t signing off on Mobile, Alabama either.
Moving to Denver five years earlier, alone and without contacts had been hard, even with the advantages of a grasp of the native language and familiarity with the currency. Adventurous as I am, I dreaded being dropped down, commando-style, alone, into yet another unfamiliar territory, much less a foreign one.
However, once I started digging and networking, I eventually found the someone-who-knew-someone who had made the move south (way south). Some had second homes there. Other went for keeps. What I found once I moved there surprised and thrilled me.
More than a million Americans and 500,000 Canadians know the “secret” of Mexico, living there full-time and delightedly out-of-the-box. I can’t estimate the number of people from the U.S. and Canada who live in Mexico part of the year, not the mention all the French, Italian and Germans I meet when I go out.
People buy three bedroom homes on golf courses for $350,000 or rent in the most scenic areas of town, on or near the beach I have, or in colonial districts like I have, for less than a 1,100 a month. Days are filled with surprises, new insights and the unfamiliar. Going out no longer requires a budget review.
Some expats live quietly. Others are wild. They cluster in expat bars, restaurants (and increasingly, pickle ball courts). In Mazatlán, a few construct rafts that they float up and down the streets of El Centro after tropical rain storms. You hear them laughing with their fellow crewmen if they’re all on a caper. One, when he goes home to Canada, his adult children say he sounds like he just got back from summer camp. I have met a surprising number of single women here, as well as single men. Maybe they’re all running away, like me, from one of America’s Cheapest Cities.
As Oscar Wilde said, "Anything that is popular, is wrong." I feel we have crossed over, through fear of the unknown, through common misconceptions about Mexico and through human susceptibility to do what other people do.
In every meaningful conversation among expats in Mexico passes an unspoken, mutual acknowledgement of a fellow countryman who, too, questioned the status quo, and came out happy and free on the other side.
About the author, Kerry Baker
I am a partner with Ventanas Mexico and author "If Only I Had a Place," a guide to renting luxuriously in Mexico. In 2019, I released The Mexico Solution; Saving your money, sanity, and quality of life through part-time life in Mexico. Most recently I published The Lazy Expat: Healthy Recipes That Translate in Mexico, a cookbook for snowbirds, travelers and expats seeking to maintain a healthy diet in a foreign culture.