HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO MOVE TO GUATEMALA?

I get asked a lot, why do I live here instead of Canada? What is the true cost of leaving Canada and coming here? Is it really that much cheaper what would it take for somebody to move to Guatemala? I'm gonna tell you today what my life was like when I lived in Toronto Canada because I think that's a good place to start it's an expensive city but it still a lot of the stuff applies and what my life is like here in Antigua which is an expensive tourist town in a cheap country what is the true cost and I'll break it down for you if you like this video please subscribe to feel free to share with friends Luna Listo? first up housing housing is the major difference I way overpay for my place and I pay about 500 American dollars a month it's a one-bedroom it's got a courtyard a beautiful big kitchen a great big bedroom a living room a bathroom lots of closet space i 100% pay for my neighborhood I live right in the thick of it and Antigua and its expensive where I am but it's still only five hundred US dollars a month in Toronto I was living in a place that was about thirteen hundred US dollars a month it was also a one-bedroom with backyard bottom floor of a house in a great neighborhood in a cheaper part of town on the west and in a place called Roncy's I've heard that my place is going for over $2,000 now because the market is just insane so the number one thing that will change when you leave Canada or the U.S. is your housing is gonna drop significantly so that's like a really big piece I mean having a quarter of the price of my housing worth it still in housing here because how things are really big one basically if you're gonna move here you've to understand that this whole town has a UNESCO designation and since it does have you know a designation the rents are really damn high and because the rents are really high it goes the same amount for a beer as a coffee here and it costs the same amount at for a coffee as it does for a meal so you're looking at about 30 Q which is about I don't know five bucks American I think a Canadian dollar so it's a little hard to do the American exchange so you're looking at spending about five bucks American on a meal that's like a sandwich or a salad or something it's the same for coffee it's the same for a beer and it's even more for artisinal beer so if you're looking to recreate any of the things that you love from home you know take out nice restaurants they have them here not as much as they do in Toronto and not at the crazy high price point but it's quite a bit of money considering what a poor country this is so here we're at Chermol we're at a restaurant and this which is an amazing octopus salad it only cost me five American dollars but this which is a great beer who cost me four so it racks up pretty quick when you're at restaurants here however I'm going to show you the market tomorrow and you'll see that there's also a ways to be hella cheap so we talked a little bit about housing and about restaurants here and yeah I'm sure you're sitting at home in New York or whatever going it's like $16 dollars for Starbucks here that's cool but you also make a lot more money nobody moves down here to work 100 hour work week okay and if you're gonna be making Guatemalan Quetzales a meal that's last night's meal at Chermol you know ended up being my salad and a beer and an empanada for Luna ended up being like around $17 American dollars and I know you're like oh well that's nothing I spend out on a sandwich but you won't be making that kind of money down here at all at all at all okay but here's where things get really good it's that the markets so the markets here are incredible the food in Guatemala specifically this is a part of the world is known for its farming known for its organic food they ship something like 60% of their produce to the States the climate here is cold enough where you can grow broccoli and garlic but it's warm enough that they also have papayas they do import food there's a lot of imported tropical food here there's no way that you can have the amount of papayas that are here if they weren't importing and growing fake frankenfood but they also have a lot of organic and to meet your farmer you just have to go to the market and you can talk to people there everybody knows where their food came from a lot of people are growing it in their backyard it's not a mystery like it is in Canada and I really believe in my heart of hearts that clean food is a basic human right we shouldn't it's not just for the rich you shouldn't have to pay so much money for it I mean I'll just give you a quick look at one part of the market this thing is vast it goes on forever and it's totally worth it you can for about $15 bucks American buy all of your groceries for the week here so this is where you save the money here's the rub yeah things sound cheaper and whatnot but how are you gonna make money when you get here so most foreigners people like me we're here on tourist visas we're not residents it's actually hard to be a resident unless you have a baby in this country it's a lot of work it takes time it takes money it takes a lot of forms and a lot of BS because this whole system runs on BS a lot of people what they do is they work in bars or they teach English those are those are the two main jobs that people do down here unless they have some savings and they come down and they open a hostel or they open a bar or restaurant that's it a bar shift here you're looking at making like good money at a bar is 300 quetzals for the night and that's like get $45 so when it costs you four dollars a beer and you make $45 a day you do the math it doesn't actually end up being that much cheaper here the only way to make this whole thing work is if you make money outside of the country and bring it in for me I've had a company in Canada since I was 23 years old I work online I don't make enough money to live in Canada with the job I do but my Canadian dollar goes a lot further down here and I don't have to work a hundred hour work week to scrape by in my two thousand dollar one-bedroom apartment so instead I work like 30- 40 hours a week I make probably about like 30 grand a year Canadian and I live on that well it cost me about two grand American and month to live I also teach yoga here a yoga class gets you on average about 100 Q for an hour class so that's like $15-$16 American dollars however that'll get you a little further so what are the main perks of living here the main perks are not having to work as much to get the things you want if you're a parent you can get full-time childcare here for about 200 American dollars a month that is a vast difference from home you get to spend more time with your kid it's a simple life things are cheaper if you make money outside of the country you don't have to work as much to get nice things you can have an apartment for five hundred bucks a month you can work 40 hours a week you can have that old 50s lifestyle those are the perks clean you know organic food that's accessible at a really cheap rate great street food for super cheap you know you can get a great home cook street food meal for 5 American dollars that's the perks that's why you move here the downside is that you're gonna have to give up a lot you are now an immigrant or an illegal immigrant in another country and just like all immigrants in the world you're gonna have struggles that immigrants have there's a lot of process things take a long time you have no rights you have to get used to that there is no fashion there is no pop culture there are no concerts you have to give all that up and you will never eat good Asian food again no matter how much you pay if you move out of Canada from Toronto what do I miss I miss Jamaicans I miss jerk chicken I miss Caribbean culture I grew up with that I miss that so much I miss people understanding my inside jokes I miss sarcasm I miss Asian food like I could eat Pho and Vietnamese noodles and dim sum and sushi till the cows come home it's all I really eat when I'm home when I'm not having jerk chicken and I miss gay culture I miss going out on a Thursday night to like you know a lesbian hip hop night I miss having trans friends I miss the diversity I miss all of that I really do I miss all of that but what I don't miss and what I will never miss is people complaining about the weather because they have no real problems you know people spending more time on making money than growing relationships quality over quantity you know feeling stressed out all the time feeling like I'm never gonna get ahead you know constantly needing to be in a box everybody's pissed off stressed out overworked and underpaid and I don't miss any of that the things I gave up were not that meaningful to me I don't care that I don't know anything about fashion I don't care that I don't see any advertisements or have it in cable TV or go to movies I miss them a little but not a lot I don't care that I don't have Starbucks I don't care that I don't have Asian food although I miss it like crazy Oh what I would give for a good Chirashi Don you know but you know I can take vacations to get that I can take a flight and go somewhere that has those things usually the blush off the rose for me when I go back to Toronto in about a week you know I I find it really exhausting to be a parent there I find it hard to connect with people and these things are so meaningful to me family and community and God are more meaningful to me than money power and sex and I'm definitely living in the right country for those and you know what if you love fashion and you love going to concerts and you know you cannot live without Vietnamese noodles like if that's you then stay in the West it's worth the hustle you know but if it's meaningless you can do what I did so that's how I did it please if you like this subscribe or like it I mean give it a little like this it's like so easy give it a little like if you have questions leave them below if you want me to make a video that's more in depth about a specific topic or if I miss something let me know otherwise life is not about working in paying bills life is about living and you do it whatever way works for you adios baby

Channel: Travel Mama Anna Von

Views: 148,276

Rating: 4.758121 out of 5

Keywords: travel mom, mom travel, single mom, traveling with kids, Latin America, Expatriate, Ecotourism, Tourism, Destination, Nature, Woman, Culture, Anna Von Frances, Luna Tuna, Perhaps You Need A Little Guatemala, La Antigua, Antigua Guatemala, Guatemala, Visit Guatemala, Family Travel, Family, Solo Travel, Central America, Living in Guatemal, Howmuch does it cost to move, Moving, Housing, Making Money, Working Mom Abroad

Id: SIAFLQrUcZ4

Length: 11min 21sec (681 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 15 2018