$1,000 monthly Budget in Puerto Vallarta - Interview & Lifestyle

in today's show i visit with francine britton educator author and founder of the active learning alliance and now a mostly retired expat living in puerto vallarta for less than a thousand dollars per month we'll visit her apartment that's just half a block from the beach and tour some of her favorite spots in the zona romantica neighborhood where she lives walking around my neighborhood even just coming up my stairs you see a typical hacienda style building with lots of brick work lots of tile work a great big open air terrace in fact the terrace is the biggest space in this building the ocean is 67 steps away from my front door so you hear it constantly and it changes it changes in the winter it's a very rough loud surf and in the summer time in springtime it's much more gentle so that is constantly in the background as you're walking up and down the street and over to the park and down to the pharmacy or to pick up laundry and then the street sounds are wonderful the vendors are all set up on the malecon people are just going about their business and then you have the tourists mingled in to this mix which makes things a little bit louder at times especially in the restaurants and bars in the evening but pretty much it's a very gentle lifestyle here we're in a little tiny part of puerto vallarta called emilio zapata it's also known as the romantic zone and the historic area of town i have been in mexico since 2011 starting my 11th year here this neighborhood is great i'm actually when you go out my front door 67 steps from the beach i can do everything that i need to do within a four block radius i sold my car a couple of years ago it's certainly not necessary here and this is one of the most popular areas of town the local farmers market normally sets up every single saturday during high season there aren't enough people here to keep it going year round my laundry's on the corner my coffee shop is around the other corner you can walk the malecon which is about two and a half miles long for a great great ten thousand steps every morning uh great life great great place it's called a novelito right where i live right where we're at right now because the mountain and the river and the ocean all collide and that's called a nobullito so it's considered one of the nicest neighborhoods to live in the landlord's father used to be the first mayor of puerto vallarta and they owned all the way around the corner and sold out to the condominiums but kept this whole block for themselves and then these are apartments these three doors behind the coachera door is a great big hacienda style courtyard that the mom lives in and then i live upstairs and another son lives on the top and next door is the uncle and the aunt and their kids and then there's a tenant on the third floor so a lot of gringos have you know bought the different buildings and rent them out and across the street is another big hotel and then a couple of really small little homes and my laundry's on the corner try to keep everything in a four block radius of my house how loud is the street during high season it's not because it's a dead end oh there's very little parking and this is quite an upscale restaurant so it doesn't get a lot of noise my rent is amazing i pay 9 000 pesos a month for this amazing space it's totally safe and secure and depending on where the dollar is that's anywhere from 419 dollars to 450 dollars a month and it includes all utilities gas electric internet water so it's a one payment a month and that's it it is a deal and there are many deals around you just have to be willing to search them out be willing to live in a neighborhood that is a mix of all types of people and you've got the ocean right down at the end of the street so i couldn't be in a more perfect spot [Music] my monthly budget is around 4 to 4 25 for the rent i spend about 50 dollars a week on food my other expenses i don't have to have a health insurance i worked for a non-profit and they provided health insurance for life because i worked in a lot of third world countries so i'm well under a thousand dollars a month i want for nothing i go where i want to go i eat out i meet friends i go to the theater here i'm always in the shops looking around so it's it's easy to do it under a thousand dollars a month healthcare imported by arta has a couple of different strands if you are a permanent resident here you can qualify for the same insurance that the mexicans qualify for if you're relatively healthy and under the age of 70 and that will run you about 30 dollars a month and it's you use the state-run hospitals private insurance again you have to shop around it can be anywhere from 100 a month to 500 a month depending on any pre-existing conditions you can also buy travelers insurance if you're only going to be here for a year but if you're planning on being here permanently definitely look at the state system i sold my car two years ago the cobblestones here are very hard and the weather is very hard on a car when i drove to mexico 11 years ago in a brand new car i figured it would be the last car that i would ever buy and i was correct so um there's no need for a car when you're living in puerto vallarta to get around i normally walk however about once every three or four months i'll go to costco or sam's club and i'll take an uber because i know i'm going to be carrying things if i just want to go exploring other neighborhoods like cinco de dre or versailles i will take a bus everything is within a four block radius that i could possibly need sounds great portify arta is the second safest city in mexico and it's been this way since the 1950s and 60s when it became a popular tourist attraction and many movie stars many people with a lot of money started building houses here so it's maintained its safety throughout the last 40 50 years so yes i feel extremely safe here and very privileged to be able to walk wherever i want to walk do whatever i need to do and there's very very little crime in downtown and you don't want to walk around clutching your handbag with a gold necklace around your neck and a very expensive pocketbook because that sets you up but if you just go about your normal routine and now i'm so local in this neighborhood that everyone knows me so that's another safety factor in puerto vallarta you do not need to speak spanish the key requirement for just about every job here is that the employee have some english however speaking spanish is wonderful i encourage everybody to learn the language i'm a permanent resident here and i'm bilingual and i find that i speak spanish to the waiters and to the people at the grocery store and the laundry and they answer me in english because they really want to practice their english so i don't use as much spanish here as i did when i lived in ajijic or on the other coast this is the first of our lifestyle videos where i talk with real people at their homes talk about their budget and share their lifestyle please let me know in the comments below if you would like to see more of these types of videos here on living overseas tv i met up with francine for breakfast at her local coffee shop and joined her for a typical day in her neighborhood you've got your grilled cheese sandwich there yeah you're regular yes my regular all right well one of the things i like is in this neighborhood is there's so much color and so many of these older places that really have taken care with the original wooden doors and the carved wood the tile work and this is super special the owner built all of this and he has his mom up in the penthouse the owner of the little cafe but this is particularly gorgeous this is a strip that i walk every single day it's got everything that you can imagine from serrano's meat house which is fantastic for steaks to the pharmacy the place that i get my nails done is here and we're gonna walk and come to a little cafe and an art gallery that's attached to called dimitro and the cafe is uh you buy a book you leave a book and you get usually end up with a nice little credit towards whatever books you want to buy in the future okay we're at una pahina in el sol the page in the sun and you're going to meet my friend gina lopez gina is 80 years old she's been coming to vallarta for 40 years has lived here by herself permanently for 22 on a very tiny budget and she is dynamite [Music] gina is the manager of dimitro gallery which is part of page in the sun and she works six days a week and very happily sells art she interacts with all the artists and can tell their stories so very well and she's just a joy to meet and know sculptor jim dimitro is the creator of several of vallarta's most iconic sculptures and small versions of some of his work can be found in the gallery a miniature of the dancers vallarta dancers is one of the most photographed sculptures on the malecon and the bronze of a burrow being pulled and pushed by small boys is an icon in the neighborhood park the gallery also showcases work from other artists has an area for classes and workshops and hosts visiting artists as well and this is jose baldi he's a visiting artist from mexico sharing the same space as the gallery is the bookstore where francine is looking to exchange her store credit for a book are tired of reading the books over and over again you bring them here you get a credit and then you can shop and pick out any book that you want there's hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of books in here they're in spanish they're in english i saw one in korean the other day um lots of sci-fi lots of history lots of classics this is a wonderful service um it's like having your own little library right here in inside a coffee shop pontiac did i use my credit my book was 140 pesos i had 200 280 pesos credits so i can buy another one the next time i come he's a professional dog walker oh that looks like he has so many this is one of the original apartment buildings condo buildings that was built to house the incoming tourists about 40 years ago it's one of my favorites because the architecture is not new just wonderful one of the magical words in the mexican language is the nogolito and they're rare it's where the mountain falls into the river which leads into the ocean so we're standing at the nogolito of puerto vallarta this is the quali and the mountains are the occidental sierra madres that are in the background and of course the pacific ocean okay we're at the local saturday farmers market it's called tres gallows i una guyena three hens and a chicken and this is on the little island tell me about it yeah this is on the uh the island of the river quali and the island divides the north part of the city from the south part of the city thank you so this is organic here totally yeah completely organic herbs and ginge fresh ginger fresh red beets turnips no must total how are the prices here for organic super these are um 15 pesos so it's about 60 cents 60 us cents for a big bunch of either coriander or parsley or thai basil oh you have the seboyas no these are lemongrass lemongrass oh wow they come in from their farms from the outlying areas like boca raton and el torito miss maloya [Music] locally made locally made this is a very very good organic market so english is perfecto okay so we're gonna go next is my friends igor and ann and they run a service called can't stop cooking for the whole village and they are americans but they lived all over the world so they cook from all over the world so i usually get three or four meals from them i've ordered five things for 500 pesos so this is ideal here we've got your chicken and chorizo bake the shepherd's pie which is actually an english speciality and salmon lasagna chinese chicken and sweet corn soup and then this is filled with quinoa rice stuffed pepper very nice i like your workspace here too and now we'll get the laundry and we'll end up in the office with mr rudy's art okay 39 pesos it's about 1.75 and i love it because they iron here too so they do all my planchato if you hand that to me and we'll head to the office okay this is a beautiful primavera tree it's the most famous tree in mexico it blooms usually in late february but we're a little early this year this is my friend barbara hi barbara good morning hi this is my friend jim hello how are you and your name again these are the guys that run the french bakery next door to francine's work it's excellent i highly recommend it the puerto vallarta villas real estate office is a great place if you're looking to rent or buy a villa but it's also a great place for art hey we're in my office which is in puerto vallarta villas realty office and i also do some travel agency work for virtuoso i host cruises and i'm absolutely delighted that within the last couple of months we've also made an art gallery here and i'm going to introduce you to rudy blanco what happens is that we used to have a gallery downtown but because of everything that happened we have to close so now we took advantage of this space here uh francine invited us to bring all of our stuff here and present it to the people that pass by and see if we could uh make some money now with all this crisis so we're taking advantage of this this spot and trying to see if we can get some artwork to be solved last month the artists that show here made about 30 000 pesos which is phenomenal considering it's a pandemic so we're very happy to help them sell their work and our walls were empty and now they're full of the most bright youthful wonderful art mexico's part of iota's finest artists and we're so happy to have them here so i do this a few days a week for a few hours a day and it's a wonderful part-time gig if you would like to know more about living or retiring abroad or about being a digital nomad make sure to subscribe and click the bell so that you'll be notified when our cost of living guides and 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Channel: Living Overseas TV

Views: 678,812

Rating: 4.9421339 out of 5

Keywords: Moving to Puerto Vallarta, Living in Puerto Vallarta, puerto vallarta expat forum, living cheaply in puerto Vallarta, puerto vallarta retirement blog, puerto vallarta retirement communities, relocating puerto Vallarta, expats in Mexico, what's it like to live in puerto Vallarta, puerto vallarta expat blogs, expats in puerto Vallarta, expat living in puerto Vallarta, Nomads Living in Puerto Vallarta, Retires Living in Puerto Vallarta, living in mexico, moving to mexico

Id: DbT5_QuCBis

Length: 19min 13sec (1153 seconds)

Published: Fri May 14 2021