Why We’re Moving to Mexico

Photo by Josh Meister Photo.

The most common question we get asked these days is why are we moving to Mexico? And the answer is simple – tacos. Just kidding. But only sorta.

Our intention in spending a year traveling the world was not to find a new place to live. But during the course of our trip, we realized we were not super jazzed about returning to the lives we left behind, and the last few months of the trip turned into a search for a new home, one that’s not too, too far from our old home (ie, not Bali).

PRIORITIES

While we traveled, we saw so many different ways to live and experienced a lot of cultures that prioritized their lives in a way that felt more right for us than the status quo in the United States. Even though we don’t have traditional jobs (we both work for ourselves and can, in theory, make our own schedules), we still dedicated a lot of our waking hours to working, being stressed about working, and trying to decompress from working. Stepping back from that while being on the road was freeing and incredibly healthy.

CHECK OUT MY THOUGHTS ON THE ROLE STRESS PLAYED IN NOT BEING SICK WHILE TRAVELING

WATER

In spending time in cities, beach areas, mountains, and countrysides, we realized we always feel best and happiest by the ocean. No matter how hard we tried to wrap our brains around figuring out how to do that domestically, beachside living in the US didn’t seem to be in the financial cards for us. And in this case, the coastal location comes with a healthy dose of sunshine, which I find myself attracted to like a puppy on a hedgehog plush toy.

FINANCES

Even though we consider ourselves to be somewhat frugal people, there’s an ever-present feeling of trying to play catch up, economically speaking. I constantly fret that we’re not saving enough money. Or we’re not earning enough money. Or we’re not donating enough money. There’s clearly a theme here. In Mexico the cost of living is significantly lower. On average, most things cost about half what they do in the States. And even though we intend to work less, the money we earn will go a lot farther there than in the US, hopefully allowing us to bump up our savings and charitable contributions.

OPPORTUNITY

Really, “Finances Part II”, or “Priorities Part II”. Or a mix of both. About a year before we hit the road, we converted the guest bedroom in our house into an Airbnb room and hosted people from all over the world. We initiated it because we wanted to make extra money, but we found that we absolutely loved it. It was so fun to meet people from all over, to hear about their lives, and to help them have the best experience possible while visiting. During our round-the-world trip we stayed in shared-space Airbnbs as much as we could for the same reasons – to meet locals and to get insider info. It resulted in so many rich experiences, not to mention a couple of ongoing friendships. Living in a vacation area will give us the opportunity to become Airbnb hosts at a higher level, letting us earn more of our living off something we realized we enjoy so much.

FOOD

I touched on this in my post on not being sick while traveling – pretty much every place we went on our trip had better-for-us food options than the US. We find processed or altered food hard to avoid in America, and it was so nice, and so much healthier, to opt out of that as much as possible while we traveled. Yes, of course, there’s fast food everywhere, and any big city has large grocery stores with tons of packaged goods. But in less affluent areas, fresh local food isn’t considered a luxury – it’s the norm, and it’s affordable and good. I think a heavily non-processed-food diet made a big difference in my gut health while we were on the road, and I’m looking forward to continuing to eat that way. We just have to work on our will power to not go overboard on the always-tempting paletas!

CULTURE

We got to experience so many different cultures during our trip, and there were several that we felt aligned with us as people. We adore the bright colors woven into the everyday life of Mexicans, the music, the art and mythology, the festivals, and the sports. It’s exhilarating to embed yourself in an entirely different culture than the one in which you were raised and learn and participate in that newness and oldness. We’re looking forward to a whole different kind of education!

SHINY HAPPY PEOPLE

You’re the average of the people you most surround yourselves with, right? And not that our friends in Atlanta aren’t absolutely amazing, but in day-to-day city life, we encounter a lot of negativity and unhappiness. And road rage. OMG, the road rage! It seeps into you. This is probably obvious, but when people are on vacation, they’re generally happier and smilier and all-around nice to be near. So choosing to base our lives in a beach town where people holiday is to hopefully surround ourselves with good vibes and let that seep in instead.

All images TM & © 2018 Josh Meister Photo and Shari Margolin (unless otherwise stated). Please don’t steal or “borrow” – just be cool, be cool.