Banking as an Expat

 I've lived semi-permanently outside my home country off and on for twelve years. In this time, I've never opened a bank account outside the US.

I did try one time during a long stretch of living in Mexico. I forget the reason why, but it seemed important at the time. It took hours of paperwork. You'd think I was applying for a mortgage or car loan, which in the States is way less hassle than opening this deposit account with a few hundred dollars in it. Finally, the ordeal completed, the banker walked me to the front ATM machines to try out my new debit card. It worked, concluding our business.

A few weeks later, I tried withdrawing pesos from an ATM just to make sure the card still worked. It did not. Back to the bank I went, wasting another afternoon for them to finally inform me they had closed the account on a technicality. Nobody was sure what the technicality was. I had a feeling it was because the address listed with Immigration on my temporary residency card did not match the address I used to open the account. That's my best guess. Fair enough, can't blame them, but then why approve me in the first place?

It took another trip back to the bank to get the cash I had deposited. Never again. I do just fine with the system I've used for many years in several different countries. There's money in my bank at home. In three banks, actually, just in case there's a problem with one, I have options. 

I do not want to ever be left without options to get cash in the local currency when I'm in a foreign country. Larger businesses will take a credit card, but in LATAM cash is king. You can bargain with cash. Conclude your transaction smoothly and quickly with cash. And if you count your change, nobody can cheat you by stealing your information. 

All this may sound troublesome and nerve-wracking but to me it is fun. It's like playing Monopoly with Mexican pesos or Chilean pesos or Peruvian soles or Guatemalan quetzales.

And in general, the exchange rate is favorable to the dollar, giving me more for less. One of the positives about expat life. That, and the weather.

Apartment Living, Airbnb Style

 My theme for this year's A to Z Challenge is The Expat Life. My husband and I began our expat journey in February, 2010, when we sold everything and moved to the Lake Atitlan region of Guatemala. There was a break when we moved back to the States six years later. 

Unfortunately, he passed away in 2018. Two years later, I returned off and on to the expat lifestyle. Eight years later, I am all in. On my own now, missing him, but still spending the majority of my time out of the country.

Many Americans and Canadians, impressed by how cheaply they can buy homes in Latin America (LATAM) promptly invest in property. Bruce and I never did that, choosing not to be tied down in that way. We rented some lovely homes, one especially we never wanted to leave. This was our cozy nest of an upstairs apartment in Comitan, Chiapas. 

None of these were found online, mostly by networking with local folks. 

To the right, is a beautiful home I found with networking locally, when I returned to the single, expat life. It had 3 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms, patios and gardens, large kitchen, dining room, living room. Rent was $500 a month in 2021. Near the beach. I didn't figure I'd ever leave. I lasted 4 years.

Now I find my places online, most commonly through Airbnb. I look for affordability, cleanliness, positive reviews, location, weather, and the responsiveness and gentility of the owners. You can tell a lot about a person with back-and-forth messaging and asking the right questions. 

I really don't need a house or anything fancy. I'm fine with a well-proportioned apartment.

Currently, I'm in an upstairs apartment that has everything I need, plus a few things I don't need but really like: A corner desk, a dining room table, air-fryer, full-size fridge, and stove with oven, specifically. It's in a nice area of a nice city and costs me $700 a month. 

I like it well enough that I plan to return next summer. The owner is happy about that and offered me a significant discount on the rent.

In ten weeks, I'm leaving this city and going to another Airbnb in another location. I get restless and don't like to stay in one place too long. Four to six months is my absolute limit, even if I like a place. Even back home close to my family, I barely last 4 months. 

A person never knows how they will react to loss of a spouse, their beloved companion of many years. But usually within a year, one finds out. For me, it was this restlessness, this inability to settle in any one location, regardless of how ideal it may seem at first.

 Fortunately, I was already very familiar with the expat life, and it wasn't difficult to pick up where Bruce and I had left off. 

My Theme for the A to Z Challenge

My theme for the Challenge this year is The Expat Life. I will post every day but Sunday in April about living as an American Expat in (mostly) Mexico.

If you're interested in signing up for the A to Z Challenge, please go here, to the official website. Sign up begins March 23. The Theme Reveal is an optional Blog Hop for participants to reveal their themes.

Having lived out of my home country off and on for twelve years, I'm excited about this theme because I have so much to share. It shouldn't be too hard to come up with 26 blog posts from A to Z. I like writing them in advance to take the pressure off. Then I can spend time visiting other blogs in the Challenge and discovering new ones.

What are we reading?

 My pattern is to read two books consecutively, one non-fiction and one light fiction. Which one gets picked up depends on my mood and energy level. 

My current light fiction is the Nero Wolfe detective series by Rex Stout. I find them enjoyable, despite usually knowing the endings half-way through. 

The setting is 1940s through 1960s Manhattan. Its streets, restaurants and fancy apartments are featured prominently in the plot and action. Nero Wolfe is a 300 lb., fancy-beer-drinking agoraphobe who stays within the confines of his office, his dining room, and the extensive orchid garden on the roof. 

His assistant, Archie Goodwin, does the detective legwork and narrates the stories.

Rex Stout, like Agatha Christie, having found the formula that made them rich, kept churning out their books one after another for our reading pleasure. Stout wrote 47 Nero Wolfe books, including novellas and short stories. Christie wrote about twice that many, although not with the same characters. And her endings are not easy to guess.

The non-fiction book I just finished is How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big by Scott Adams. The Dilbert creator recently died of prostate cancer at age 68, and because of my son's cancer, I am interested in all things related to this terrible scourge. So, I picked up this one, wondering "What was his life ten years before the cancer?"

The book is memoir-ish, giving it an edge for me over the generic how to succeed book. I appreciated Scott's sardonic humor: "Why would anyone take advice from a cartoonist?" 

I didn't agree with all his theories but found plenty to make it worth the read, such as his distinction between setting goals and establishing systems. (Systems are more effective at achieving success than goals, he claims convincingly. I have since addressed my chronic, goal-setting addiction by rewording them as systems.)

Having finished this, I'm ready for another intelligent non-fiction. 

I have several Nero Wolfe books waiting on my Kindle. I'm not yet bored with Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. I like getting transported to 1950s Manhattan.

A Week in Mexico City

Hello again, Mexico! I flew back in January and spent a week in Mexico City at this amazing hotel from the early 1920s, in a bustling, upscale area of the city. Not fancy, not luxury, not expensive, but very nice and well-maintained. A tiny apartment with a tiny kitchen on the 9th floor. Most importantly, within my budget, as I'm a careful and frugal traveler. 

I spend hours searching and researching locales, hotels, Airbnbs, and neighborhoods to make sure of what I'm getting. Especially since my stays are often a month or longer. I don't want to get stuck, and so far my research has paid off, with only a couple lemons out of twelve years of traveling around Central and South America. And even then, I didn't die. Just chalked it up to Adventure and an Interesting Story. This is not bragging. Simply reassuring people (especially friends and family) that the expat life is working out well. So far so good.

As much as I've been in Mexico, I had not spent any time in the City, layovers notwithstanding. I had resisted it; too expensive, too big, how will I know what areas are safe and interesting? 

But this year, I overcame the hurdles, mostly mental, and went for it. I kept the stay short just in case, but despite the cold, unheated room, it was fine. There were plenty of blankets on the bed, I had brought layers, and during the day when the sun came out, I went out to explore the neighborhood and keep warm in the high 60, low 70s weather.

Below are a few pictures from the area. The first one is the roof of my building, the "laundry room." They allow guests to use the washer and dryer for free laundry services, a nice bonus.

So finally, I broke the wall of resistance that was big, scary Mexico City. Like many others who have discovered this amazing city, I look forward to returning. In fact, I've already got my next stay booked.

From AOL to Substack

 Substack is to Blogger like Tik Tok is to writing letters. Modern, trendy, culturally relative. I follow a few interesting Substacks and thought I'd try setting up my own. I lasted about five minutes before deleting the whole thing, including the app on my phone. It was more a matter of curiosity rather than seriously trying out a new blogging format. I found the site confusing and difficult to navigate.

My very first blog was created on AOL around the year 2000. It was when the term "online log" or "blog" entered the vocabulary. AOL had a site where you could start your own blog. I got excited about the idea of writing an online journal for our older kids leaving home. They weren't the slightest bit interested. They couldn't wait to leave the nest and focus on their own lives. "No time, Mom, sorry, I've been too busy to read it."

My husband was my biggest fan. He actually printed each entry. I have no idea where those hard copies ended up. Probably in a file or a box somewhere that disappeared during a move. Eventually, AOL got sold or otherwise lost the prominence of those early Internet days. Their blogging service disappeared as did my entries, despite what people say about once online, always online. 

I must be an ancient relic, one of the first bloggers on perhaps the first blogging service. AOL, folks! That's the modern equivalent to the Dinosaur Age.

And now there's Substack, popular and successful, earning some folks quite a nice living. Anything where talented and thoughtful writers can earn a living from their craft has my vote. 

Have any of you explored Substack, or set up an account? Probably even more unusual, did any of you start a blog on AOL? I think it might have been called AOL Journal.