Word association time: what word comes to mind when someone says Sicily? Probably mafia or Godfather, first. Maybe cannoli, but that could be linked to the famous “Leave the gun, take the cannoli” line from the movie, too. Until fairly recently, it was fair to connect the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea with organized crime. Mafia control, portrayed in the Godfather movie trilogy, got so bad in the 1990s that they literally blew up several judges who had the audacity to question their hold. But la Cosa Nostra (as they are known) overplayed their hand, and the bombing led to a sustained campaign to break them down. Successive Italian governments tracked them down, and even Pope Francis joined in, excommunicating them in 2014. After thirty years, organized crime has returned to the shadows, unable to flex its muscles in the daylight.
But Sicily remains a poor, underdeveloped place with an abundance of history and culture. Whether the former attributes outweigh the latter is a matter of personal opinion.
The Norman palacea church with Norman aspectsbut notice the Arab andother influences mixed in
We started our tour in Palermo, the island’s one-time capital and largest city. Palermo was a royal city, and a must-see part of the Grand Tour for European nobility in the eighteenth century. It has a proud heritage that mixes Phoenician, Roman, Greek, Norman, Arab, and Spanish influences. But today these influences largely reside in monuments and meals, and the main feel of the city is a blue-collar, slightly grimy vibe. I’d call it Naples without the cachet.
Norman ceilingByzantine artworkArab influences
The other large city is Catania, on the east coast, literally in the shadow of Mount Etna. It has some of the same challenges, but seems a little more successful, having more a university town vibe than Palermo. The volcano is a must-see tourist stop, so that’s one advantage; it also accounts for unique soil and terroir, benefiting wines, cheeses, vegetables and the like.
Catania central squareRoman thermal suite under the CathedralOne small lava field on Etna, which dominates the eastern shore
Getting around Sicily is a challenge. First, it’s large. Second, it is mountainous. It does have a bus, train, and car routes, but all of it runs on a sinuous network that could make a Formula One driver queasy. Palermo and Catania have decent airports, the latter subject to Mount Etna’s whims. So you can spend a lot of time getting from one site to another, or even around a town.
Monks built a earthen wall to protect against the 1669 Etna eruption. Now they have a two-tiered campus
The small towns in Sicily are inviting, once you can get to them. There life operates on a different level. They benefit from the fertile volcanic soil and the warm and (usually) moist climate, but mostly from the history. On the island, you can find some of the best Greek temples, Roman villas, baroque churches, and even Punic sites.
A Greek, a Roman, and a Bishop walk into a bar…
Maybe you like history?
From Garibaldi’s campaignGreek mythology in a fountaintemple/mosque/church
How about scenery?
Marble quarriesSurfside vistasstreet scenes
Of course there’s always the food:
Sicilian street food lunch at Florio wineryPork ribs in spicy saucePasta Alla NormaCaponata and “spicy” potatoesStufatino (beef stew)Lamb & potatoes
Sicily? Worth a visit. Given the geography, I suggest a tour, especially one themed to what you like: history? Food? Wine? Your ethnic background? One challenge is that Sicily is already warm in the traditional “shoulder” season, so the crowds start building earlier in the Spring than elsewhere in Europe. As to our sweepstakes for another expat site, this visit confirmed it is off our list. While it is charming and alluring, it is too hard to get to and too hard to get around. If I was an Italian-American looking to rediscover my Sicilian roots, it might be a different story.
I know, you’re thinking, “Bari? Why are you in Bari? Wait, where is Bari?” Answering the last question first, Bari is a port city on the Adriatic coast of Italy, across from Albania, and it’s the capital of the Italian region of Puglia, often referred to in English as Apulia. But to make it easy, Puglia is the heel of the Italian “boot.”
Little ears and ravioliand pizza, of course
“Why” merits a longer answer. This part of our trip is to experience a taste of expat life in southern Italy. Like we did in Spain’s Andalucia in January, we’re visiting this expat hot-spot to see how it “feels” to us. No agenda, no list of must-see/do’s, just six nights in Bari Vechia (old town). Southern Italy has become something of a magnet for American expats, especially those with Italian roots. The region has great weather, great food (‘natch), and decent value for cost of living, including housing.
We arrived on a Wednesday evening, expecting a quiet, work-night scene for a regional capital of 300,000+. So we were surprised by large crowds, closed streets, and a very festive atmosphere. When I asked the taxi driver if this was a normal sight for a late Spring weekday, he said, “no, it’s the festival for San Nicolas.”
Basilica of San Nicolas (very Norman or Romanesque!)
Now I knew Bari had an affinity for Saint Nick (San Nicolas de Bari is one of his official titles), and I knew all about Saint Nick in his Santa Claus personna, I even knew he originally was Bishop of Myra, in present-day Turkiye. But his feast day is December 6th, not May 9th. What gives? Seems we stumbled into an interesting historical phenomenon which goes back over 900 years, involving Muslims, Catholics, Orthodox, Turks, Byzantines, Venetians, relics, miracles, and Vladimir Putin. Seriously.
The Saint, back from his boat trip and walk around town
Nicolas was a famous Bishop in Myra, martyred during the Diocletian persecution around 343 Christian Era (CE). He was a Greek living in the Roman Empire, known for his piety and many miracles. Although there are no definitive accounts of his life, his cult emerged after his death. He is beloved by both the Orthodox and Catholic Rites of Christianity, becoming the basis for Santa Claus in the latter, while there are more churches dedicated to him in Moscow than any other Orthodox saint. He is the patron saint of sailors, prostitutes, repentant thieves, brewers, pawn-brokers, and students, groups which are certainly not mutually exclusive.
The saint’s remains resting place, and the devotion they attract
In 1054 CE the Church split into competing Catholic and Orthodox branches in the Great Schism, and in 1087 the Seljuk Turks overran the Bishopric of Myra, capturing the tomb of Saint Nick. A group of merchants and sailors in Bari, Italy, decided to raid and return (most of, Venetians later grabbed the rest) the saint’s remains to Christian hands. They brought them back to Bari on May 9th, establishing a “feast of the translation” (i.e., transportation, which sounds so much better than “theft”) at a new church in Bari. We had wandered into the middle of that feast.
The Crypt Church
And what a feast. Dignitaries from East and West attend, this year the biggest being the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem. The statue of San Nicolas is collected up by the faithful and processed down to the docks, where sailors take it out for a night at sea. The next day, they re-enact the “translation” and the faithful gather to welcome their beloved saint home. The statue has a “skirt” attached to it (covering up the men carrying it) so it looks like it “walks” up from the port to the basilica. It moves to a spot on a promenade where it stays while masses of Thanksgiving are held in the Basilica Catholic Church upstairs and the Orthodox Crypt Church below, where the saint’s remains, well, remain. During the final mass, a priest crawls under the altar to the tomb containing the remains, unlocks it, and draws out: water. Although the box containing the bones is sealed, some form of liquid, called manna by the faithful, has been accumulating since the saint died. Of course this manna has miraculous properties and is diluted and widely shared among the believers.
One of the clothes used to collect the manna
What’s really a miracle to me is the way Catholic and Orthodox get along so well during all this, whereas in Jerusalem and elsewhere they are usually at each other’s ecclesiastical throats. For example, even Putin was allowed to make a pilgrimage to Bari in 2007! So Bari is full of Orthodox and Catholic faithful.
The view from our balcony: three eras of church wall
Pulpo looked better than it tasted
Bari Vecchia, where we stayed, is a typical medieval maze of tiny streets, repurposed castles, palaces and churches, with a blossoming harbor and new city spreading out landward from the small peninsula. The entire area is easily walkable: mostly flat, and our evening passeggiata often went completely around the seafront. There are oodles of cafes serving up espresso, osterias for seafood, pizzerias for focaccia barese. The locals are especially proud of their local pasta, called orecchiette or little ears. Women still set up tables in the narrow streets and make the pasta fresh while you watch. We were impressed with the local Primitivo and Negroamare red varietal wines. The pasta and focaccia were excellent; we have yet to find pulpo (octopus) which rivals what we find in Mexico, but the search goes on!
Waiting for focacciastock photo, because we ate it too fast!
In addition to all that Saint Nick history, Bari has a surfeit of other historical regimes. Its earliest traces are Phoenician and Greek, then Roman, Byzantine, Norman, and finally Spanish, with each group leaving a mark architecturally. Under the Aragonese Queen Isabella, Bari passed to her daughter Bona Sforza as Duchess. She later married and outlived King Sigismund the Old of Poland, holding both titles (Queen of Poland and Duchess of Bari, among others) at the same time. So much for the patriarchy.
Old Norman castle,updated with Aragonese battlementsPolignano: jump in!
We took two day trips from Bari: thirty minutes south (on the local train) to Polignano a Mare, and forty minutes north to Trani. We wanted to see what smaller, less touristy towns in the area were like. Polignano is a small town famous for its cliffs, and Red Bull even sponsors a cliff diving event there every year. Trani has a bustling port and a fantastic cathedral.
Seaside Cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
To be honest, the entire coast of Puglia is filled with small-to-medium sized towns that are very similar. Each has a small beach or port area, an old city, then a newer development (usually around the main train station) which consists of apartment blocks. Weekend or Summer vacation apartments for Italians stretch out from there. I would be hard-pressed to tell you which to select to visit; all have something to offer, but there isn’t a lot to distinguish between them in my opinion.
Puglia has been a tourist destination for Italians–looking for a quiet, inexpensive beach/shore trip–for a long time. It delivers on that promise, and remains less expensive, less pretentious (I’m looking at you, Amalfi coast), but still pleasant. Whether it has what it takes to be right as an expat haven for us? That’s a question still pending!
I only had to pay the tour guide five Euros to concoct a story requiring everyone to kiss under this arch to ensure a happy marriage.
In discussing the cost of living for expats here in Mexico, I have at times mentioned the exchange rate. I’ve never spent much time discussing it, because I have always felt it’s an environmental condition, or as the saying goes, “it is what it is.” Over the six years we have been expats, I have noticed many expats who are fixated on the exchange rate. It obviously does have some implications, but perhaps not for the reasons many expats think.
Here’s a handy chart showing how the Peso had varied with the dollar over the period we have been visiting/living in Mexico. We bought our first home here in 2012 (just off-chart), but the Peso had been steady at around 12 MXP – 1 USD for several years. We finally retired and moved here in February, 2017, and the Peso had depreciated to 18 MXP to the dollar.
US Dollar to Mexican Peso conversion rate, 2013-Present (from Xe )
Now we had done our research and knew that the cost of living in Mexico was already less expensive than in the United States. But by the time we arrived to live as expats, Mexico was on a half-price sale. And with a few perturbations (more on those later), it stayed there until the pandemic hit.
Those were very good days to be an expat, especially if your income, pension, or investments were denominated in dollars. The only exception to the rule was for American products. For example, what if you wanted to buy a jar of Skippy’s Extra-Chunk Peanut Butter, labelled in English and imported from el Norte? If the domestic price there was $8.00 USD, you would incur a mark-up and tax leading to $10.00 USD total price, but you were buying it in Mexico, which meant the price also had to be converted to Pesos. At a 12:1 rate, your cost would have been $120 MXP, but at an 18:1 rate, your price was now $180 MXP! Basically, the stronger your dollar was, the more expensive any US products you wanted. But in general, buying local products and services, expats with dollars benefited from a strong dollar.
What causes those spikes and drops in the chart? It’s a complex process, which leads most investment advisors to caution against currency speculation: there are just too many variables which are entirely out of one’s control. For example, if a country undergoes political disruption, that causes investors to pull money out of that country, weakening the currency. The same goes for if a national leader starts doing things like nationalizing industries, or decides to devalue a currency overnight to fight rampant inflation. While there are warning signs of such events, they are hard to read, and can be disastrous to currency traders or investors.
There are also some pretty consistent factors affecting the relative strength of a currency. In addition to monetary and political stability, there is remittance flows, foreign direct investment, the overall state of the nation’s economy, and foreign demand. These combine in the case of the US dollar to keep it the world’s (unofficial but real) reserve currency. Everybody wants dollars when exchanging goods and services, because they know the value of the dollar is strong, stable and universally respected. That’s also why that factor is unlikely to change in the near future, and certainly not quickly.
In the case of Mexico, remittances from Mexican migrants (legal and otherwise) in the US are at a record high. Jobs are plentiful, pay is increasing, and they are sending more money back to their families than ever before. Large chunks of foreign direct investment (FDI) are moving to Mexico as part of the move towards friend-shoring, that is, moving manufacturing to closer, more friendly countries rather than places like China. Mexico’s inflation rate is slightly less than in the US, and Mexican banks are offering high interest rates on savings/investments. Which makes the Peso stronger against the dollar.
Those with dollar reserves notice they don’t go as far, but they don’t notice that US products are a little cheaper, too. It all depends on what you spend your money on. Some expats live on fixed incomes and can really feel 10-20% price swings. Others try to buy extra Pesos (by exchanging at an ATM) when the rate is favorable. Nothing wrong with that, as long as you have a secure place to store them and you take into account the fees you might incur with the bank. The thing is, even if you’re exchanging $500 USD at a time, the difference remains small. At 20:1, you received 10,000 MXP; at 16:1 you get 8000 MXP. Most people are exchanging far less.
Some expats try to get around the currency changes by having their income/pension/social security deposited directly into Mexican accounts as Pesos. Of course, the bank is either charging a fee or determining your exchange rate, and they’re making money either (or both) ways. Not to mention for American expats, there is the issue of FATCA and FBAR compliance if you have foreign accounts. Never heard of it? You should!
FATCA is the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act. Essentially, it requires banks to submit data on any foreign accounts held by Americans. It’s why some American banks discharge expat accounts or refuse to permit expats to open accounts, because the banks don’t want the headache of the reporting requirement to the IRS. FATCA also requires expats holding more than $50,000 USD in foreign accounts to file a report to the IRS and pay taxes on those accounts.
FBAR is the Report on Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts, a form American expats are required to file annually (with their taxes) but this report goes to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), not the IRS. This report is mandatory if you have a total of $10,000 USD in any number of foreign accounts (bank, mutual fund, bonds, etc.) at any time during the year. Since this is a tool to combat financial crimes (not for tax purposes), the US regards failure to file as a very serious offense (likewise, conscious attempts to avoid filing, like manipulating transactions to stay below the $10,000 USD limit). The US also does not recognize ignorance as an excuse for failing to file the FBAR, although there are ways to avoid criminal penalties through voluntary make-up reporting. Needless to say, all this is a lot of work to go through.
Post-pandemic Peso-Dollar exchange rates settled in around 20:1, which was really great as it was easy to mentally calculate (drop one digit from the Peso price and divide by 2= Dollar price). Lately the Peso has strengthened to under 17:1 to the Dollar. To me the biggest change is mental (dividing by 17? Fuggedabouit!). Mexico is still inexpensive at this exchange rate. So I have to make my Skippy Extra-Chunk last a little longer? No problema!
Many of you might have felt Part Three sounded pretty good, so what are we doing in Part Four? I’m going to argue that Parts One through Three are necessary but insufficient for Smiling Retirement. Part One is essential, because if you don’t understand the concept, you’ll get it wrong for sure. Part Two removes the greatest friction: resources. Part Three puts you in the right position, but just. By Part Three, you’re existing (as a retiree), but you’re not living. You can’t get to the smile until you’re living.
So what’s the next step? It’s the hardest one, I’m sorry to say.
Many people go through their whole lives just existing, not living. They work to provide shelter, food, and some degree of comfort. They rest to recharge and resume work. They recreate for the same reason. They procreate (or not) because, well, that’s what we do. This is consistent with all animal life on the planet. Whether you think what differentiates us from other animals is a soul or higher intellect (or both), there is a difference. What’s the purpose of the difference? It gives us the opportunity to consider the big questions that the higher intellect inevitably raises.
Who are you in particular? We often answer that question in terms of relationships (“I’m a father, a husband, a son”) or associations (“. . . a former official, a Catholic, a fan of . . . “). But who are you essentially?
Why are you? Not in contingent terms of “when your dad met your mother” but why you, why now? For what purpose?
These are tough questions, easily avoided while working to live (i.e., existing). But you understand the concept of retirement. You have prepared financially. You have vacay-ed and experimented to a place of comfort. You can ask those questions, and better yet, you can start to find answers!
What are those answers? Yours might be different from the ones I would share. Mine are based–as you no doubt have guessed–in the Gospels and my Catholic Faith. I believe in Truth (the capitalization is important here), and truths. The latter is contingent and personal, but must in the end lead to the former, if they are indeed “true.” So there is no reason to fear them. The search itself is satisfying.
Is it possible to just continue existing, and never address the hard questions? Sure. Birds do it, bees do it, even dogs do it. And billions of people do it too. Retirement as I have described it is a rare blessing, an opportunity not to be missed. And what an opportunity! Because seeking those answers (whether you find them or not) leads to a certain satisfaction. And that satisfaction generates a smile.
What’s with the emphasis on the smile? It’s a simple gesture, universally recognized. It’s a moderate emotion, not a belly-laugh. It’s pleasant. There is a degree of amiability, knowledge, and just plain old friendliness in a smile. And it’s genuine. It makes life easier, for the one smiling and for everyone who sees it.
Here’s hoping you not only retire, but you get to be a smiling retiree!
You “get” the concept that retirement means not working, and you’ve arranged a pension or nest egg which should cover your costs till you head for the great beyond. So now you just retire and start smiling, right? Wrong. The transition may be jarring, and if not done well, can lead to many outcomes other than Smiling Retirement.
That video I mentioned in Part One talked about the Vacation Phase of retirement: the few weeks or months where the lack of structure provided by work gives the new retiree the sensation of being on vacation. Days become irrelevant, or as retirees joke, a week consists of “six Saturdays and a Sunday.” Things like school calendars, holidays, and long weekends can creep up on you since they no longer seem relevant. Most everybody enjoys this at first, but eventually the sameness of the lack of structure begins to grind on you. We generally limit our tours and cruises to ten-to-twelve days for the same reason; otherwise, it all begins to blend together.
Turns out, humans need routines. If work doesn’t provide one, you have to come up with your own. The beauty of retirement is you’re free to develop your own. Perhaps you’re a night owl who had a career which required an early morning start; now your day can start at 10:00 am and end at 3:00 am, if you like. Never had time to fit in exercise? You do now. When do you eat, and what’s your big meal? All up to you. And you can change it, to see what works.
I started eating a huge breakfast (bacon or sausage, eggs, avocados, tomatoes, hash browns or a bagel) every morning, after a career of having only a banana and a cup of coffee. It was heaven, and I didn’t need to eat again until dinner. But while I enjoyed this schedule, my digestive tract didn’t, and it made its objections known. I switched to some fruit or yogurt and coffee in the morning, and a large lunch in the mid afternoon, which my body ratified. I moved exercise to the late morning after only exercising after lunch for decades. I found starting my day with prayers meant I didn’t skip them later, and I was in a better mood regardless of how I slept. You get to experiment with things you always did one way, because now you can.
If you don’t establish a routine, you’ll get bored. Then you’ll feel a powerful pull to go back to work, if only for the routine. Or you might substitute some other thing (volunteering, for example) for work to provide your routine. But that is putting the cart before the horse, so to speak. Find the routine that works for you, makes you comfortable, then fill in your hobbies and activities around it.
Experimentation is just as important when developing your new (or rediscovering your old) interests. Take up the guitar? Why not! Learn to cook Welsh Rarebit? Sure! Join a charity or service organization? Of course. But whatever you do, never, never, never impose a “success” filter on it. It’s ok to consider whether you can afford a hobby (financially or in terms of time), but don’t start evaluating “am I any good at this?” or “is this doing any good for that?” Those are business/work concepts, and you don’t do that anymore, right? If you like it and can afford it, keep doing it. If not, don’t.
It is easy to fall back into workday notions of success, competition, and merit. But you’re living, not working. Perhaps we can learn something from the way children behave. When a child finds something they really enjoy, they’ll get lost in it. They don’t start asking “how good am I?” “or “what’s the purpose of this?”, they just enjoy themselves. They haven’t met the work world yet, but they have mastered one key to retirement!
The vacation and experimentation periods of retirement are incredibly rewarding. Getting to try out new things without any pressure to “do well” or “succeed” is liberating, once you understand it. How long do they last? How long do you last? To some extent, the two timelines are the same. As time goes by, you’ll find a daily routine that fits. You’ll find hobbies and interests that fit, and people who also fit. But all that may change. Friends asked me why I stopped attending a group, and I said (truthfully) “it seemed too much like work.” You may get too tired for pickleball, or too old for globetrotting, too bored for politics. It happens.
Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that this phase is just a transition. You may enjoy the transition, but you haven’t reached Smiling Retirement yet!
St. Paul’s first letter to Timothy (chapter six, verse ten) tells us “the love of money is the root of all evil.” Hard to improve on that. Mark Twain allegedly did so, quipping “the lack of money is the root of all evil.” When it comes to retirement, both maxims apply. As with working life, more money means more opportunities. Worker or retiree, you can be a happy, poor person, or a miserable rich person. The differences appear in the many ways you get there.
The key point is this: since you’re not working (remember our definition from Part One), your ability to generate resources may become limited. If you have a pension indexed to inflation, consider yourself greatly blessed. If not, there’s social security as a safety net (if you’re an American). If you have invested in a retirement account, it may continue growing, but you’ll be tapping it as you go, which limits the overall growth and total available. The inputs side of the equation, less a winning lottery ticket or a rich uncle’s will, is a fairly constant constraint.
Meanwhile, you do have great control over your expenses. Your spending for commuting, maintaining a wardrobe, and business expenses all drop dramatically. You can live where you want, which could be much less expensive. You can take time to comparison shop, and seize opportunities for deals and discounts which were out of reach during the workday. But you’ll also want to do things previously postponed (like travel or a hobby) which might be expensive. And you’ve got to place a bet which most of us avoid: how long am I going to be doing this? Most importantly, you control this variable (expenses, not when you check-out).
Since financing retirement is mostly a math problem, it is actually the easiest part to master. When should you start saving for retirement? Yesterday. Money set aside early compounds (remember the magic of compound interest?), turning the few dollars you saved in 1978 into thousands today. The amount is much less important than the fact of investing and not tapping it early. By the way, this is my biggest complaint with Millennials and Zoomers today who are living the digital nomad lifestyle, in effect moving retirement forward so they can enjoy it while they’re young. Your traditional work years (ages 20-50) are your peak earning years. By reducing your income in this period, you reduce what you can invest, and thus surrender significant compounding of your investments. I hope they are doing the math, too, while trekking across the globe!
How about those other young folk buying into the FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) concept. Basically, the idea here is to restrict your spending while young, invest wisely, then retire very early and live off the wealth you created. Some challenges here are: (1) actually restraining your spending while young (hard, not impossible), (2) investing smartly to maximize your wealth (hard, not impossible), (3) guessing how long you’re going to be retired if you do so very early (damn near impossible, but essential to solving the FIRE calculation). It’s a simple math problem for a 65 year-old retiree to project they’ll live approximately fifteen more years, and a small error is easily covered. But a 40 year-old retiree planning to live another forty years? This is double jeopardy, where the “scores can really change!”
Great Christmas Movie!
What if you don’t have a pension, didn’t save much (or anything) for retirement? Well, you have a lot of company: 45% of baby boomers in the US have zero retirement savings. If you’re planning on retiring under these conditions, you’ll need to seriously consider how to drive your cost-of-living down to meet your social security level means. Folks who through no fault of their own found themselves retirement age but with no other resources were a major source of expats in Mexico once upon a time. That is becoming more difficult to pull off, as the Mexican government keeps raising the income requirements for residency (temporary or permanent) while tightening up enforcement of tourist visa overstays.
I’m not going to get into all the ways one can amass wealth, as that is a path well-trod by many financial planning experts (which reminds me, retaining one of these experts, especially one who gets paid by the size of your holdings and not by the amount of trading, is a great idea!). Suffice it to say: live within your means, invest and diversify, avoid keeping up with the Joneses, and don’t get divorced. Maybe I will write a blog on how to amass wealth.
more life lessons from Die Hard
To finish with one more Die Hard reference, the “fly in the ointment, the monkey in the wrench” of retiree financing is your health. Health care costs, whether routine or traumatic, can bankrupt even the frugal, life-long saver. Having good health insurance is critical, but hard to do. You can’t really save your way past the risk of long-term care expenses. You will get old, you will get sick. Maybe you’ve won the genetic lottery. Maybe you exercise and eat a healthy diet. We all do what we can. I prefer to think of it this way: if you face life-or-death health issues, retirement financing is the least of your worries.
In Part Three, we’ll consider how to transition to retiree, smiling or not.
I recently saw a Tedx talk (link) which did a good job of discussing the phases of retirement. Still, some things bothered me, since some of the language (e.g., “squeezing all the juice out of retirement”) seemed to convey the exactly wrong sentiment in my opinion. So I decided to gather my own thoughts and write about it, as that’s what bloggers do. I’m not exactly an expert on retirement, but I do have some credentials, which I’ll cover as we go. So far we (important change of subject pronoun there!) have faced none of the financial or existential challenges which are so common among retirees. So we got that going for us. . . which is nice.
Before we dig in, may I take a moment to point out just how weird the concept of retirement is? For all of human history, people worked and raised families until they were too old or infirm to do so, then they died. The rich never needed to work, so they found ways to spend their leisure, and eventually they died, too. But nobody “retired.” Rome gave its soldiers a pension, but that was because having poor-men-with-combat-experience-lying-about is bad public policy. Otto von Bismark introduced the modern concept of retirement in the 19th century by forcing Germans over the age of seventy to quit and accept a government payment. Even as late as FDR’s successful enactment of social security in the States, many people of retirement age were opposed to the idea of having to stop working! Population growth, the industrial revolution, and the rise of the middle class all combined to popularize what we now call retirement. So it’s fairly recent and not at all surprising humanity hasn’t quite mastered the concept!
So what is retirement? In its simplest form, it is a period of life in the absence of work. To differentiate it from other times without work (i.e., unemployment), I would add “the need to” before work. Pretty simple, but you would be amazed at the number of people who fail to get this definition. I think here of friends who talk about their “retirement job,” “part-time retirement,” “semi-retired,” or “retired except for. . .”. Nope, not retired, that’s all. Not that there’s anything wrong with continuing to work, or working less hours, or working with less stress: all great concepts, and rightly to be praised. Just not retirement.
Notice that in the definition I have proposed (a period of life in the absence of the need to work) need does not necessarily denote resources. Need can be financial (e.g., I have to keep working to pay off my mortgage) but it can also be purposeful (I have to keep working because I’m the boss, that’s who I am), or evasive (I have to keep working because I don’t know what I would do with myself), or well anything. Need just represents the “what” which comes after “I have to keep working because . . .”
So the person who takes on huge responsibilities in volunteer positions during their retirement? Are they truly retired? Perhaps, since only they can answer “why?” they do so. The point here is not to judge what options anyone chooses, but rather to clearly identify what we are talking about when we say “retirement” so we can then move on to how to be a smiling retiree.
Next up, Finances, or the way we go about retiring!
Facebook just reminded us we passed our sixth anniversary of moving to Mexico. Time to take a look around and see what’s changed here, and what remains the same.
First and foremost, there are more people around here. Not just expats, but also chilangos and tapatios looking to live the good life. Now that we are post-pandemic, there is a steady stream of NOB social media posts about “moving to Mexico,” and the snowbird season is especially noticeable for the crowds and traffic. But weekends year-round can be overcrowded, too. Now, to keep things in perspective, lakeside remains a string of small villages nestled ‘tween the lake and the mountains, and most of the time it still feels that way. But at times and seasons, one starts to feel the “where did all these people/cars come from?” vibe.
Weekends wall-to-wall
Several of the grand development projects intended for lakeside have flopped. The eyesore along the libramiento, on the hill overlooking WalMart, is in suspended animation: no building, maybe not even any advertising. Just an ugly road zigzagging up the mountain. May it always be only so. The seven story apartment complex on the lake near La Floresta got cut down to three or four stories, which was all it was originally approved to be. The assisted living facility west of town seems to be financially stuck, not completely finished. It’s still hard to do big things in Mexico; that hasn’t changed.
The eye-sore…
Which is not to say there is no development. Lakeside has been a beehive of what is known as “in-fill,” where small parcels or lots are transformed into little complexes of homes or apartments. This is happening in the village of Ajijic and westbound towards the county line with Jocotepec. There are some larger developments intended along the libramiento, and perhaps in and east of Chapala. There is also a continued gentrification challenge, as cash-heavy gringos buy traditional casas in Mexican neighborhoods, then gut-and-remodel them into much larger, more expensive properties.
Despite all this development, there is still no serious government plan to improve infrastructure. There are condominios with problems accessing water, others areas face sewage run-off. Internet access went from poor to good (not by NOB standards), but it is spotty by location, with the usual problems of intermittence. Still, it is generally good enough for streaming and perhaps working online. And the roads. . .well, they merit some paragraphs all their own.
Cobblestones + rain = potholes (baches)
First, we have mostly cobble-stone streets. They are the local tradition, quaint, difficult to walk on, and easily damaged. And when I say cobble-stone, I do not mean pavers, or bricks, or anything else other than STONES which are cobbled (placed) together to make a surface. During our rainy season, when some streets become streams, the stones get dislodged, and gradually grow into wheel-eating baches. Eventually the government hires someone to carefully replace the stones, usually after the rainy season ends. Rain-n-Repeat.
Given the lakeside villages lie between a lake-and-a-mountain range, there is only one major road crossing the area, with no space for another. The government occasionally adds traffic lights, which don’t help, since they are neither timed nor use sensors. All these lights do is spread the traffic jams smoothly across the area. Everyone notices that when the lights go out during the rainy season, traffic flow actually improves. Add in numerous gringos whose licenses NOB would have been suspended decades ago, young tapatios who think any straight road is a potential drag-strip, trash-trucks, gas-trucks, vegetable-trucks, families on scooters, pizza-deliverers, and people tripping on cobblestones and you can see why some folks find the traffic maddening.
the car-tastrophe
The most obvious and nakedly terrible change was the redesign of the intersection of the libramiento (the main bypass leading in to Ajijic) with the carretera (main street) in front of WalMart. Months of work and apparently minutes of planning resulted in a concentrated series of lights, right turn lanes, no left turns, topes (speed bumps), bus stops, an access road (with dividers which can be driven over) that safely brings all traffic to a standstill, except late at night, when everybody just drives through regardless of the lights. There is literally no legal way for drivers coming from the east to turn into WalMart. It is a spectacle that must be seen to be believed.
The government did complete a cyclopista, a bike lane running the length of lakeside. It was widely derided by expats as a white elephant project, and even locals objected because it ate a parking lane on the carretera. But it turned into a field-of-dreams moment; they built it, and now it’s full of cyclists and pedestrians! Of course, gringos flying down the bike lane in electrified bikes are a new menace to left turns. But that’s Mexico, two steps forward, two steps left, three steps right, one step back, and what were we doing, anyway?
One thing unchanged is lakeside remains dining-out heaven. There are more, more diverse, inexpensive but good quality restaurants than any comparable town on the planet. The restaurants constantly come and go, or just change locations. The staffs move around, too. We often find we are re-introducing ourselves to a waiter by saying, “weren’t you at X and then Y restaurant?” Prices have been hit by inflation and a small appreciation by the Mexican Peso. But here’s a telling example. We went out for German food yesterday. Yes, German food in a tiny Mexican village. We had two suppen as vorspeisen, a bottle of German bier, two glasses of Mexican wine, and two servings of German-style goulash (beef) with red cabbage and spaeztle. Delicious, and quite authentic (we used to live in Germany). Total with tip? $1000 MXP, or roughly $50 USD at current rates. Of course one can eat much more frugally, but you get the point. I can cite German, French, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Middle-Eastern, Thai, Indian, Vegetarian/Vegan, Russian, Jewish Deli, Venezuelan, Chinese, Japanese/Sushi, Vietnamese, Argentine, Tex-Mex, diners, pubs, and maybe even a few Mexican places, doncha’know?
We’re seeing more, younger expats. The pandemic sent several million baby-boomers into early retirement, and that’s something (I can attest to being) much more affordable in Mexico. We also see more young families, who are looking for a quality-of-life improvement. The weather, the cost of living, and the cultural emphasis on family over financial success all play parts. We don’t see as many of the young, single, digital nomads. They tend to head toward bigger cities, as the night-life at lakeside can be limited.
The increase in migration from the United States to Mexico has led the Mexican federal government to be more rigorous about immigration status. The financial requirements keep increasing (they don’t want indigent visitors any more than any other country does), as do the enforcement of things like tourist visas, property ownership, car buying, et cetera. On the plus side, they are streamlining the actual process of crossing the border at airports, so it’s much smoother and faster.
The weather remains near perfect in this expat’s opinion. Long-time expats assure me it was warmer in winter way back when (twenty years ago), but I remind them they were much younger way back when, too. We still don’t have and don’t need heating or cooling. I have yet to start my gas fireplace for any reason beyond cosmetic. I admit the climate here has greatly reduced my tolerance for extremes. I used to run daily in Washington, DC, whether in 100° F “black flag” heat-warnings or two feet of snow and ice, always in just a t-shirt (sometimes long sleeve) and shorts. Our recent visit to Panama left me seeking shelter from the tropical Sun, and our December visit to northern Italy had me shivering uncontrollably. I guess my blood has officially thinned.
Commercial development has started to spread along the carretera west of Ajijic, much like it once did east through Riberas and San Antonio Tlayacapan. There are more restaurants, shops, and services, although again they come and go without any sense of a development plan. Nothing captures this better than the sad tale of the dog shelter, which gringos requested and the local government funded the purchase of a property. Which ended up being next to several developments. Which meant 24 hour-a-day barking. Which led to petitions to move or close it. And another government effort to find a place, which apparently fell through and, well, you get the picture. One thing that has not changed is the absolute necessity of visiting a neighborhood before living here, and also looking at the land around it. Your small set of homes amidst groves could later have an auto-body shop, a dog run, and an evento (party palace) next door.
Some expats tell me the locals are starting to resent the expats for driving up prices. WalMart’s prices don’t change due to the expats, and the locals shop the tiendas, where they never pay “gringo taxes.” Expats do run up real estate prices–the gentrification problem I mentioned earlier–but that happens regardless of who is buying: Mexicans from Mexico City (Chilangos), Guadalajara (Tapatios), or expats (Gringos). The problem exists anywhere there is a desirable place to live. Regardless, everybody seems as friendly as ever, and this remains a great reason to visit or move here.
What about crime? Well, one becomes accustomed to waking to the sound of automatic weapons fire, and cordite-in-the-morning? It smells like victory! I kid of course, the only consistent noises we hear are cohetes (fireworks) and roof dogs. Nothing tells you you’re dealing with a newbie expat more than if they ask “what’s with the fireworks?” or “why are there dogs barking from rooftops?” Seriously, lakeside remains a Mexican Mayberry. We have predictable crime patterns: before Christmas, there are a raft of petty thefts and purse-snatchings, as some desperate people try to eke out some extra cash. After an election, the police are hesitant to make arrests because they don’t know how the new administration will respond. Sometimes a few new crooks come into the area and we have a string of car thefts or mustard-bandits, until they get caught. The degree of violent crime is such that no one thinks twice about walking around at night in the village. Can you do that where you live?
What do we have more of? More hospitals, clinics, doctors and dentists than you would imagine, especially since we are a short drive from Guadalajara, which is Mexico’s medical centro. We have two hospitals and a hospital-like clinic just around Ajijic. A couple more private international schools have opened, along with the existing public schools and the technology training center. More real estate firms (‘natch!). A dozen or more thrift/resale/antique shops. More Costco re-sale shops, who travel up to Guadalajara, purchase from Costco, then stock shelves locally.
Living among an aging retired expat cohort, one change is constant: good-byes. We’ve lost amigos to death, family emergencies NOB, and health issues. More newbie expats arrive than depart, and while this discomforts some old-timers, life here would be less if it was otherwise. Like the steady flow of people into the United States (I’ll write more on that in the near future), the steady flow to lakeside attests to one thing: life really is better here, if this lifestyle fits you. It sure fits us!
One of the surprising aspects of expat life is the reality of having a maid, gardener, or both. North of the Border (NOB), such attendants are part of the Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous. Some others may have an occasional cleaning service, or somebody who mows the yard or cleans the pool. But full-time domestic service? No, that’s out of most people’s reach.
Iconic scene from Roma
Down here, it’s as common as huevos con gusto. There have always been domestic services available here, as the movie Roma (2018) highlighted. Like so much else in Mexico, there was a huge, unregulated market in such work (I used the past tense purposefully there, as it’s changing, slowly). Why so many maids and gardeners? Labor is cheap in Mexico; the Mexican federal minimum wage* this year was 173 pesos per day. Yes, that’s less than $9.00 US dollars a day. Which means it is very affordable to pay someone to clean your house or tend your garden. And most expats can afford to pay much more than that minimum wage, making domestic work very lucrative for people who’s other work opportunities may be quite limited. Which in turn affects the local economy: there are maids (mainly women) who make more money than their bread-winning husbands. And gardeners (mostly men) who make as much as professional employees.
The work varies greatly. I know expats who have workers visiting two (or more) times a week, cleaning, cooking meals, doing laundry and ironing. Others simply have basic cleaning chores done. Some have live-in help, which also extends to home care for older/infirm expats (care which is much more humane and affordable than NOB). Gardeners’ work varies between seasonal plantings and topiary sculpting down to just cutting back the vines and pulling the weeds.
The relationship between the expats and their domestic workers also varies. I know of expats who become more like abuelos (grandparents) to their workers, giving them gifts and integrating into their families. I know of others who don’t make inflation adjustments or skip some mandatory payments because they know there isn’t an enforcement system. There can be trouble brewing both ways: treating employees like family or not even as fellow human beings. It’s a delicate balance and one which most expats have never faced before.
While there are management services which can do all the work of hiring and coordinating workers for expats who so desire, most manage the workers themselves. Until recently, this sector was totally neglected by the government, but now laws are pending which make it a recognized economic component and require certain workers’ rights and owners’ obligations. Such as? Workers are guaranteed vacation time/pay, a Christmas bonus, pregnancy leave of twelve weeks with full pay, and separation payment reflecting years of service. The law will require a signed contract specifying the nature, hours, and type of work, and the worker/employer will need to register with the government. The owner will submit payments to the InstituteMexicano del Seguro Social (IMSS) to cover eventual social security for the worker.
All of this new regulation is part of Mexico’s continuing effort to become a civil society of laws which are actually followed. Some of the rules I cited have been technically on the books, but unenforced, leaving workers no option but the largesse of their bosses. One reason why so many Mexicans work “off the books” or run small, unlicensed tiendas (shops) is that they cannot afford to pay taxes and social security and health insurance on such meager income. Of course, that also leaves the worker/owner very vulnerable to market changes, illness, old age, or even quarantine. And the Mexican government idea of a social safety net is called “la familia.”
Even if the pending changes take root and are enforced, many expats will still have maids and gardeners. They may continue to work off books, or go with those intermediate managing services which take care of all the bureaucracy. The latter will cost more, if only to keep wages the same while paying for social security and management. I would call it a classic “First World Problem,” except we’re in a developing economy. I think it’s all for the best, for the workers, for the expats, and for Mexico.
*The Mexican federal minimum wage changes annually, and there is a slightly higher wage rate for those Mexican states adjacent to the US.
Sports is often the location where good grammar and vocabulary go to die. I am almost certain the devolution of regardless into irregardless happened there, as well as the execrable “pro-active” (as if active is not, what, active enough?). It happens when managers, athletes (or announcers) seek to make an intelligent comment. They want to sound more refined, and it leads to atrocities against the English language. Sometimes the malaprops are humorous additions: “GI-normous” probably got started this way, as did the tendency to add the prefix “Super” to anything and everything (note, the first Super Bowl wasn’t even called that!).
When an athlete got injured, people would say “she broke a leg” or “he pulled his hamstring.” Somehow using an action verb got to be too difficult, so today they say “he has a groin” or “she had a knee” meaning not that they are in possession of such things (usually two), but that they have an injury to said part. But I’m not here to further dissect sports English (I know you’re relieved).
My dear wife Judy “had a knee.” Friends will remember (back in February) I blogged about our experience with her knee pain, visits to the doctor, MRI, Ultrasound, ultimate diagnosis (and this is a direct quote, “she’s weird” but “there is nothing wrong with her knee that we can see”) and recovery through rest and anti-inflammatory medications. Given the doctors could find nothing to operate on, she went about life as before, but any attempt at exercise met with quick pain and swelling, relieved only by rest and medication. Rinse & repeat. For weeks. We finally settled on her doing nothing but stretching and mobility exercises.
In March, while visiting our daughter in Cincinnati, Judy heard a loud “pop” in her knee (followed by a sharp pain) as she walked up the stairs. She was down for the count for several days, and only barely recovered enough to avoid a wheelchair for the return trip to Mexico. But we were facing (oft-delayed) trips to Europe, Indiana, and Oaxaca, so what to do? Judy decided to gut it out, walking as much as she could, resting when she could, and hoping to make it to July when she could go back to the doctor with the possibility of a new diagnosis.
Dr. Neary will see you now
And gut it out she did. Complaining in our family is part of the usual conversation. One is not only allowed to kvetch, one is encouraged to do so. As I learned in the Army, an officer really worries only when the troops stop complaining. But pain is entirely a different matter. We have a legendary disdain for pain. It’s not that we don’t feel it; oh, we do. It’s that we choose not to acknowledge it. My dad once fixed a dental problem at home with a rasp. My daughter once swept the floors with two broken arms (hairline fractures, but the story grows taller on down the line). I rejected twilight anesthesia for shoulder surgery as a teen so I could watch it. When I went to the emergency room for a ceramic shard stuck in the top of my foot (Safety tip: no ceramic items in the shower!), I complained that the ER doctor was “fishing around in there!” He handed me the forceps and said “then you do it.” I did. So with a lot of wincing, Judy made it to July.
Now she had swelling and pain, and the new MRI confirmed a tear in the knee meniscus. Was it always there? Probably not. Was it so small it was missed? Maybe. Most likely, it was something less than a tear that was just waiting for the right kind of motion to rip. Presto, we had a surgery date for Hospital Américas in Guadalajara.
Hospital Américas is what we would call an outpatient surgery clinic. It’s a small facility stuck between malls, hotels, and some large hospitals near the Colónglorieta in midtown. We had a 7:00 am appointment, so we stayed at the nearby Hilton Midtown the night before. We even did the day before up right by going to brunch at Porfirio’s, one of Guadalajara’s best restaurants.
Post-op recovery in her room.
Judy went in at 8:30 and was out a little after 10:00 am. Surgery went well. A stitch in the meniscus, a little shave for a ligament, a nip-n-tuck in some “clicky” tissue. We owed the hospital $11000 MXP (aapprox $550 USD) at departure, but we didn’t pay the surgeon until a few days later. His bill ran $35000 MXP or about $1750 USD. Judy is home and resting comfortably, already walking some with the help of a walker. It will take several more days for all the effects of surgery to wear off.
As the person accompanying the patient, and therefore completing all the necessary paperwork, I admit it was a bit daunting. Mexican medical bureaucracy is no different from bureaucracy anywhere: there are forms to fill out, disclaimers to sign, bills with “medicalese” to decipher, rules to comply with, and everything is in written or spoken Spanish. For example, the Hospital Américas computer system insisted Judy must have four names (as is common in Mexico), but she has only three. So they substituted my first name for her third name in the system. Does it matter? No. Was it a cause of momentary confusion? Yes. The woman in billing wasn’t sure what to do with an American credit card, so they charged me an extra 5% fee. Could I have argued about it? Yes. Was it worth it, when the alternative meant finding an ATM and taking out a wad of cash? No. In the end, we got good, friendly, and competent medical service at what I thought was a bargain price.
And Judy may be ready for the Chivas season; the way they’re scoring goals, she couldn’t hurt their chances.
