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Will you still live in the U.S. 20 years from now?  

91 members have voted

  1. 1. Will you still live in the U.S. 20 years from now?

    • Definitely Yes
      29
    • Leaning Yes
      13
    • Leaning No
      36
    • Definitely No
      13


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Posted (edited)
6 hours ago, troph said:

trans pecos is a great place to disappear. very appealing.

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Edited by Bullneck
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Posted
6 hours ago, troph said:

average monthly expenses in mexico can be like $1500/2500 per month (before you splurge). if you can trade your house for a house or condo in mexico then you are mortgage free and their property taxes are next to nothing. tax treaty so no double tax on income, similar income tax rates. healthcare is western, American/Canada trained doctors in the popular spots. residents are in the Mexico health care system and you can get additional coverage. residency requirements are manageable. temp I think is less than $100,000 in cash and a very modest income requirement - nomad work or investment income is fine as I recall.

ineffective cost wise to borrow for housing even when you can, so you should pay cash.  housing varies. there is some very expensive real estate in Mexico but there's considerable value too. We are currently looking at Puerto Vallarta and San Miguel de Allende. PV is extremely hot and humid in the summers - and that's by Texas standards - and most only winter in PV - at least 5 months out the year are tough - by May it's hot, and it's still pretty hot and humid in October. But November through April can be really nice. SMA is in the central mountain region about 6000 ft elevation so it can be quite mild.

once you can determine your housing situation, then it's all downhill from there.

full time assistant - grocery shopping, errands, miscellaneous personal assistant stuff, $5 USD per hour.  $1000/month and you're getting a pretty solid assistant. you can add gardeners if you need one, a cook, maid service too for part time next to nothing.

PV has 35,000 US/Canadian ex pats, SMA something like 10,000.

Cartel violence is aimed at rivals and gangs, Mexico has virtually zero non-cartel gun violence. So school shootings, movie theatres getting pelted with ammo, concerts, malls, indiscriminate gun violence is not a thing.  violent crime is higher in Mexico but it's predictable.

remains to be seen how politics will change things for expats but there's a decent chance we are applying for temp residency this summer.

there is a similar equation in southern Europe - Portugal, Spain, Italy, Montenegro, Greece, Croatia. Housing is always the wild card but there are plenty of opportunities. Costa Rica, Panama, South America as well, plenty of opportunity where your money will amplify 3-4-5x compared to in the US.

At this point I don't see how we stay, the ability to retire early and not go bankrupt with health care is just too inciting.  Tradeoffs are real, but for us, if our actual cost goes down to $5000-6000 per month, then we should have plenty to travel ALL the time - a month or two in the US in places we love should be infinitely doable. So live in SMA or PV and summer or winter or travel all the time wherever, even a month in California or Colorado is completely doable. picking up flights from PV to ATX for a weekend to see a baseball game at the Disch or even going to a concert and staying for a week suddenly becomes not a dream but an easy reality. spending an entire summer in europe becomes easy too, no housing costs to speak of, you can pick up and go.

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Posted

I have Irish citizenship so hopefully that’s will be my fallback. My daughter does as well so I’m trying to talk her into university there. We shall see

Posted
6 hours ago, crash_davis said:

Going to check out San Pancho, MX area in July. 

Too remote for us to consider for full time but we’d love to visit for sure. 

Posted (edited)

Merida is looking pretty awesome right now. The problem is I have two kids in grade school and with about the transition and schooling situation.

Edited by TankedBevo
Posted
Just now, TankedBevo said:

Merida is looking pretty awesome right now. The problem is I have two kids in grade school and with about the transition and schooling situation.

Merida is safe and great but holy hell that place is way too hot for us. 

Posted

Shouldn't there be a precursor question, do you expect to be alive in 20 years? 

I had need thinking 35ish more years, which would be about 100, now 20 years seems more like why worry about living in the coming dystopia.

Posted
2 hours ago, Wally Fairway said:

Shouldn't there be a precursor question, do you expect to be alive in 20 years? 

I had need thinking 35ish more years, which would be about 100, now 20 years seems more like why worry about living in the coming dystopia.

After the easy pickings of trans folk and brown people the next up are the olds. Only the extreme wealthy will have the resources to die with comfort and dignity. So trust your family, be uber wealthy or find somewhere else to grow old and die.

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Posted

Hoping to have Italian citizenship within a couple of years and if a big shift back to normalcy hasn’t been made here in 2028, I think it will be time to move on. I’m sure a lot of Germans in the 30s didn’t think they would ever leave their home country either, but shit happens. 

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Posted
On 3/9/2025 at 10:47 AM, Biff Tannen said:

Hoping to have Italian citizenship within a couple of years and if a big shift back to normalcy hasn’t been made here in 2028, I think it will be time to move on. I’m sure a lot of Germans in the 30s didn’t think they would ever leave their home country either, but shit happens. 

We had a long lunch with some of my Mexican family this weekend (a branch that lives mostly in Guadalajara, and bitches about that city).  My wife and I mentioned that I was looking into my options for Mexican residency/citizenship, as we were discussing our current US shitshow.  At first, they were puzzled, but then....

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Posted (edited)

My wife's stepsister has talked about moving to Spain. I've been looking into, and occasionally talking to my wife about, moving abroad (Australia, Spain, or Germany maybe). Ive tried not too talk to her too much about stuff like this because I can tell it starts to stress her out. As we move further down the authoritarian dictatorship, I expect the US to be like Hungary and Russia. Young, educated Americans will leave.

I'll add my wife and I are both veterans that never previously considered living outside the US. We do have two small kids, 4 and 6.

Edited by Schulz2.0
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Posted
On 3/10/2025 at 1:05 PM, Schulz2.0 said:

My wife's stepsister has talked about moving to Spain. I've been looking into, and occasionally talking to my wife about, moving abroad (Australia, Spain, or Germany maybe). Ive tried not too talk to her too much about stuff like this because I can tell it starts to stress her out. As we move further down the authoritarian dictatorship, I expect the US to be like Hungary and Russia. Young, educated Americans will leave.

I'll add my wife and I are both veterans that never previously considered living outside the US. We do have two small kids, 4 and 6.

If you uproot your kids, I would do it in the next couple years.  Impacts of uprooting for kids under 8 are not that bad in my experience, over that and their brain has to deal with a lot more loss.  YMMV.

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Posted
On 3/10/2025 at 1:57 PM, Brisketexan said:

We had a long lunch with some of my Mexican family this weekend (a branch that lives mostly in Guadalajara, and bitches about that city).  My wife and I mentioned that I was looking into my options for Mexican residency/citizenship, as we were discussing our current US shitshow.  At first, they were puzzled, but then....

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I've had a soft spot for Guadalajara ever since I got busted spectacularly for lying about having a hotel reservation when all the places were packed, and instead of making us go sleep in the park, the clerk found us a suite at the hotel next to the train that runs to Tequila.

She apologized that it would run us 30+ bucks.

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Posted (edited)

Along the lines of what Troph said above, I'll be 60 this summer and I'm thinking the olds might not have such a rosy future here. 

Just thinking out loud a little, you can spend 180 days in Mexico just with your passport. I assume that's 180 in a one-year peiod, but I've seen where some people have spent almost their whole 180 days, went somewhere else for a couple of weeks, and then returned to Mexico for another 180 days. I doubt that's something a person could get away with with any regularity ... BUT, you can also spend 180 days in Canada, 90 in Spain, Italy, or Portugal, etc.

Short of actually getting citizenship somewhere else, I could see us country-hopping just to stay away from the US as much as possible, at least until we're too old to do that. I'm wondering if a person could accumulate enough days in-country that way in one or more of those countries, to the point that they could satisfy residency status requirements. I'd love citizenship, but simple residency is fine in most countries afaik, esp as long as it keeps me out of living in a potential hellscape that may be what the US is heading to.

Edited by wood
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Posted

You will still be taxed like a us citizen. And now we are have destroyed our relationship with other countries so don’t count on our passport being golden like it used to

Elections have consequences unfortunately

(I need to renew my Irish passport asap)

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Posted
On 3/19/2025 at 9:30 PM, Goofyboy said:

We are looking at Portugal and if we stay in the US, Colorado.

This is us as well if you add NZ to the mix.  The wife and I have been actively looking at selling both houses and setting up shop in the Boulder area.

Posted
1 minute ago, GlenFromTheMailRoom said:

This is us as well if you add NZ to the mix.  The wife and I have been actively looking at selling both houses and setting up shop in the Boulder area.

The very conservative folks up here are super butthurt about liberal Californians and Texans moving in.

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Posted
39 minutes ago, Schulz2.0 said:

The very conservative folks up here are super butthurt about liberal Californians and Texans moving in.

Counterpoint: fuck 'em.  Fuck all conservatives.  Fuck 'em to hell.  Treat them the way they want to treat everyone else.

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Posted
2 hours ago, Schulz2.0 said:

The very conservative folks up here are super butthurt about liberal Californians and Texans moving in.

We're pretty politically moderate and have owned a home in the Durango area for 5 years now.  We're pretty used to it and can tune them out.

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Posted
4 minutes ago, GlenFromTheMailRoom said:

We're pretty politically moderate and have owned a home in the Durango area for 5 years now.  We're pretty used to it and can tune them out.

one of the drunkest nights of my life was in Durango. great town /csb

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Posted
39 minutes ago, GlenFromTheMailRoom said:

We're pretty politically moderate and have owned a home in the Durango area for 5 years now.  We're pretty used to it and can tune them out.

To be fair, I work at a refinery. If you aren't pretty firmly on the right you're considered a radical liberal.

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Posted
On 3/24/2025 at 5:42 AM, Schulz2.0 said:

The very conservative folks up here are super butthurt about liberal Californians and Texans moving in.

I remember when I was up in the mountains living around almost all conservatives. Stranger in a strange land at that point, but it sure was beautiful with the cleanest air I've ever taken in up in the High Rockies.

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