Expat Life in Ajijic. Q and A

hi friends what's on my mind today well I was going to go wait somebody's calling what are you asking me I don't know your friend Donna Mickler what are you what was her last name Nicola I thought you met after she got married why am i coming all the way over here for that conversation well I was gonna go out there and sit by the island and make a video because I'm tired of the echo in this room and I decided to work on my sound quality today well that didn't work cuz the wind came up and then I'd need a different camera and a microphone lots of time I was thinking about that the guy next door started sawing tile he's redoing his bathroom so I came up with this what do you think it's the cushions off of the purple couch set up like a little sound booth and I've tried this and I think it's going to work real well so I hope that you are getting less echo but now I'm not totally happy with the lighting so we're gonna go with this for now I'll keep working on it please enjoy my stories or whatever else today so what's really on my mind today well as a lot of days a comment and these were nice comments that I enjoyed I do enjoy your comments and if you haven't noticed I answer most of them let me talk about giving you a heart the reason that YouTube's do that is because when we go back through the comments to see where we left off answering them and if you have several hundred today this can get to be a chore the heart tells us where we left off it doesn't necessarily mean we loved your comment I think it would be more accurate to say if you don't get a heart we didn't like your comment anyway I liked this comment and it was from Frosty owl mom frosty alle mom wrote can you do more Q&A Jerry yep that's what we're gonna do today here was the question did you and your wife think about the possibility of a home along the Pacific or the Gulf at all well not very seriously and I'll tell you who I we came from Portland Oregon after 27 years in the rain and yes we're looking for sunshine but not too much of it we've been to many places all along the Pacific coast of Mexico and we enjoyed the beach in December in July it's hot and it's humid there are several months of the year that you just do not want to be on the beach any time of the day between say 10 o'clock in the morning and 4 o'clock in the afternoon it's just hot and humid and you'll be living inside in air-conditioning and maybe getting some enjoyable hours in the evening up here in the mountains at 5,200 feet in elevation it's never ever hot and humid we we live with our doors and windows open all year round so no we did not consider a permanent place to live anywhere near a beach in Mexico that would be good for December in January maybe not the rest of the year for us I used to live in Florida so I know what I'm talking about and I've been to beaches in many different places in the world and I'm not really a beach person anyway but that's why we did not look for a place along the coast oh speaking of the coast we also have friends who have a very good friend who lives in Manzanillo and Brisas and we were able to go and stay there and enjoy she has a house right on the beach with a big swimming pool right on the beach also so he could swim and listen to the waves at the same time swim in her pool and we have another friend who has a couple who have a house in guayaberas and we haven't been there but we've been invited a couple of times and we look forward to doing that sometime and I only mention it so that you don't forget it and you know who you are room 183 and I'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt that room was not a word for cell room 183 says hi JC I'm a recent subscriber in California I have some questions for you does mail get delivered to each home yes mail gets delivered to each home a comes round with a motorcycle whether or not it gets delivered in a timely fashion maybe another question when I order stuff from I order stuff from a website in China and it takes it takes one day to get from Hong Kong or Singapore to Mexico City and then it takes about five weeks to get from Mexico City to ahi geek and once it gets to a geek several times I've had to go down to the post office and give them a tracking number and say where is this and a couple of days later they'll bring it to my house you would think that that might be an unusual occurrence but it's happened over and over again the last thing I ordered I ordered it in March and I went down there at the end of April and said you can you find this and two days later he brought it to my house on the motorcycle that's the Mexican male yes they delivered every house eventually where was I with the mail system support a small eBay business well outgoing mail you can for about five pesos which is like between two and three dollars you can have guaranteed 15-day delivery with a tracking number in the Mexican Postal Service and I've used that a couple of times to mail stuff to the United States and it worked it's all I can tell you what I'm was a return of a kindle to Amazon Pennsylvania and it got there and was no problem and it cost like I said it was fifty two pesos to mail the Kindle so if you're mailing something small I guess an eBay business that you covered your costs of three to five dollars for mailing I guess the answer would be yes it would support a small eBay business and of course if you want to pay a little bit more there's esta feta UPS FedEx DHL they're all got offices right here now hehe can utility bills be paid automatically or online yes you can pay bills online you can pay your telephone bill online you can pay your electric bill online water Bell use you get it once a year so no I don't think you can pay that online there's a story about that years ago I went to the telephone company I said I'm leaving for three months I would like to pay my telephone bill in advance and the lady said you can't do that I said well how am I gonna pay it you know this was before you could pay it on the internet you can't pay it on the internet now anyway she says he can't make you can't do that and I asked several times and it wasn't entirely a spanish-english problem but there was a communication gap there and finally I gave up after several tries and turned to leave and she said but you can make a deposit so I made a big deposit and they took the bill out of the deposit and I've done the same thing with the electric company only I had two meters and one meter used a lot of electricity and Automator didn't use much electricity so like the like the monthly it's bimonthly actually every two months the bill would be like a little less than a thousand pesos for one of the meters and the other one it would be like fifty or sixty pesos a little bit of nothing so I went and they said well you have to go out and actually make the deposits into the machine out in the hall over there in chapala so I went and I didn't really understand how to do it so a guy came along to help me and we stuck my bill with it's got a barcode on it select my bill in the machine and it said you know deposit your money so I did well I deposited several thousand pesos into the one that uses none I think I had figured it out I had paid like seven years in advance that bill is still zero every month because they're still taking it out of my thousands of dot pesos worth of deposit so yeah you can pay your bills online or in advance if getting Social Security in the United States do you file taxes in both countries well you only have to file taxes if you make money so if you don't make any money in Mexico you don't have to file taxes in Mexico in the United States it doesn't matter where you go or where you make money the citizen of the United States is followed by the IRS to the odd ends of the earth you can live in Antarctica you still have to file US taxes if you're a US citizen so do you have to file both countries you have to file in the United States no matter what if you make money if you don't make any money in Mexico you don't need to file in Mexico how much is car insurance I have a van and I have a BMW and the van is about 3,200 pesos that's like 160 hundred seventy dollars at today's exchange rate for a year and that's liability only it's an old van and I don't insure it for comprehensive plus another reason for not doing that is because body work here is not like in the United States it's inexpensive that old van of mine before I brought it down here my daughter-in-law borrowed it to move with and she dented up both side doors and tore hole in the running board I got a check from Allstate Insurance for that for like twenty six hundred dollars worth of damages and I never had it fixed I got to fix down here for a hundred and seventy five dollars total so I don't have comprehensive just liability thirty two hundred dollars a year on the van the BMW also only have liability on that and liability in Mexico by the way includes bail bond insurance which means you get to call the insurance company's lawyer to keep you from going to jail if you have an accident and that's important I think it's it's about twice that much it's like three thousand pesos every six months but it's because it's a sports car high horsepower whatever just cost a lot more in the van in short that's car insurance can you get a health care plan on a tourist visa yes you can get a private health care plan on a tourist visa you can't get the government IMS or seguro popular unless you are a at least a temporary that's temporal resident of Mexico and certainly you can as Permanente thanks I'm working my way through your videos that was roomed 183 Diane and and she wrote this today would kind of spired me to make the video on making hi JC I just recently have been watching your helpful videos on Mexico I am thinking of retiring there partly because it is too expensive to live in the United States yeah I'll give you that one but I have a few questions I'm not sure you have answered yet one I have three cats can you drive your cats in carriers across the border in your car is is that feasible with regard to Mexican regulations I'll have to wait a few years if it's not because they're my babies and they're young not to worry Diane you can drive through the border with your cats you're required by Mexican law to have current vaccinations and a medical certificate I believe within the last 30 days from a vet that you know says yeah they're healthy that's the law the practical thing is but don't do it without these paperwork but this paperwork but I have never been asked and I've haven't done it for a few years but I went back and forth with two cats in my motor home and nobody ever asked about it and I know other people who come and go with their I don't know anybody that comes and goes with cats but with dogs and nobody ever talks about getting asks for the paperwork at the border coming south into Mexico going north to the United States if you ever want to take them back you'll need the paperwork from another travel vlog in Mexico it was mentioned that the plumbing for toilets is only one inch in diameter in Mexico and you have to place your used paper in the garbage can instead of the toilet so as not to clog up the toilets I find this idea distasteful and not terribly sanitary is this true yes Diane it's true but it's not everywhere there are old sections even here in on the north shore of Lake Chapala via nova for instance I went to rent a house up there before I owned the house here and they told me I couldn't flush toilet paper down the toilets some of that is because yes the old plumbing is very small and it will clog up but that was like 50 years ago so if your little bit a really old house that has real old plumbing that can be the case but modern plumbing is just not like that there are customs in Mexico that are difficult to get rid of and that's one of them as a matter of fact there's a sign in the restroom at Costco in Guadalajara in the bathroom and it says please put your paper in the toilet because so many Mexicans believe that you need to do that everywhere and you don't need to do it everywhere anymore so if you're told that place you can rent just rent somewhere else that's the only place I know of around here at Lakeside maybe a couple of older neighborhoods in chapala or that kind of plumbing might be a problem by the way while we're talking about that and he says it's distasteful and it grosses our out I've certainly been in restrooms like that where there are trash cans full of used paper and it does not smell now I can't explain to you Hawaii but as an RVer I can also tell you that a lot of our viewers do that they don't put paper in their holding tanks and again I I've tried that in my motor home I don't continue to do it but it doesn't smell again I can't tell you why it's probably enough about 12 paper for today her third question do you know any single widowed women who moved to Mexico on their own Diana I've been married 46 years I'm not allowed know anything about single widowed women but seriously yes I know many and there are probably more single widowed women here on the north shore of Lake Chapala as expats stand there are single widower men I think that's just the nature of the human race that women live longer than men yeah there's there's a lot of single women here and there are clubs and social gatherings and plenty of opportunity to have an enjoyable life as a single woman on the north shore of Lake Chapala thank you for your questions Diane I hope I answered them I'm moving on let's see this is beyond time and that's th why a me I thought that was cute a be on time as rosemary how does that go does it amaze you that over 31,000 people love to hear what's on your mind today yes yes be sometime it amazes me beyond time since I enjoy your conversational style I appreciate you and your stories thanks I would love to see old photos of when you first visited and then ultimately moved to Mexico well I'll put a few old photos in here if I can find of it here's an old picture that's me performing behind the Teatro de Giotto in the historical district of downtown LA next question this is from Melissa honey do you always smack your lips when you talk yep and you're not the first one to mention it you're not the first youtube commenter to mention it but the first person to mention it was probably a speech teacher in college yes I could I do smack my lips when I talk I'm sorry you know I'm still working on being perfect it has been my observation the human race that a whole lot of you gave up on that and just decided to quit while you're ahead I'm still working on that one thanks for pointing it out hey if you like me give me one of those thumbs up and please subscribe and hit that little Bell so you know when I post next please share me with your friends on social media thank you for watching I hope you enjoyed what was on my mind today

Channel: JC Travel Stories

Views: 11,655

Rating: 4.9535785 out of 5

Keywords: Why Mexico?, Erin's Travels, Tangerine Travels, Jerry Brown Travels, Kinetic Kennons, Retired Life in Mexico, cost of living in Mexico, Retire in Ajijic, Retire in Chapala, Lake Chapala, RV in Mexico, How to retire in Mexico, medical cost in Mexico, drug cost in Mexico, rentals in Ajijic, Is Mexico dangerous?, Mexican cartels, retire in an RV, boondocking, dry camping, expats, expat life, Q and A, Q and A Mexico, True Mexico

Id: Gsm6m6JcFsg

Length: 22min 22sec (1342 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 02 2019