Why We Left an Anthology of American Women Expats

by Janet Blaser

  My daughter was in college now and I needed a way to keep my income coming in, so I dusted off a primer I’d written for a client about an e-commerce program I’d installed for them called osCommerce, that allows a website to accept and process credit cards. My book was the only book on the topic, and it became a runaway success! I branched out to write about other e-commerce programs, and they too were bestsellers for the genre. It was a wild ride for a few years.

  I’d been meandering my way through life, had earned and lost in the inevitable tech downturns and then earned again. I spent a lot in the good times, traveling the world and indulging in crazy hobbies like track cars (I worked my way up to be a Porsche Club instructor), scuba diving and endurance horseback racing, 25 or more miles. I don’t regret a minute of it.

  When I saw the real estate downturn coming in 2005, I put my house on the market expecting it to take a long time to sell. But it sold very suddenly, and I needed to find a place to live while I finished another book. Mexico finally seemed like the right place, but San Blas had become too hot and salty and jungle-y for me. Same problem with my favorite dive spot, Cozumel. So I asked my mailing list of women who love Mexico where I should move in Mexico, and Chapala, Jalisco was the overwhelming answer. Only 12 hours from Laredo, Texas, or a two-hour plane ride from Austin to Guadalajara International Airport. On faith I loaded up my Jeep and my dogs and headed that way. My horse, Pico de Gallo (I call him Pico for short), stayed in Texas while I scouted out the location. He’s a spicy Paso Fino, a South American breed with a special smooth gait. “Paso Fino,” loosely translated, means a “fine ride.”

  I still remember the first time I crested the mountain pass that towers over Lake Chapala: bougainvillea bursting in color around me, the white town of Chapala shimmering below next to the blue water. I cried because it was so beautiful. I was immediately bonded to the town as I made my way down the mountain and through the shaded, tree-lined main boulevard. I can’t explain it except it felt like mine, like I was coming home.

  I toured stables in the Chapala area, and when I found one after a few months I drove my Jeep back to Texas to get my horse. I loaded him into my horse trailer and brought him to the border. A customs broker imported him for me, verified he had all the necessary shots and paperwork, and gave him to me on the other side. We traveled slowly, stopping every couple of hours for a rest and a stretch. Luckily my horse loves to travel. When we stopped at a hotel for the night, I inquired about boarding my horse at the local vet but they happily indicated a place in their backyard that I could let my horse stretch out.

  I lived in various places around Lake Chapala, including on the secluded south side where my horse lived happily next to me in a pen I had built on the beach. My horse and I went camping into the high mountains where we rode for days and days. I finished more than a dozen technical books, mostly while gazing at the lake from my laptop, as I am right now. I also wrote columns about my south shore discoveries for the local monthly paper.

  But writing is often a labor of love. It’s hard to support yourself solely by writing, and even harder to amass retirement amounts. Most people don’t think about this part. You must juggle multiple books to keep their life cycles and sales current. As each book is waning, you must have a new one to promote. Only half the work is writing; the other half is promoting. I had a good life, but I needed more than I was making to sustain myself well into retirement. A quip about technical writing says that it’s the form of writing where you actually get paid, and there’s a lot of truth to that. But I’d have to work until my Social Security days or even longer if I were to continue that lifestyle.

  I’d read financial books about a subject called “FIRE”—Financial Independence Retire Early—several times in my past. It finally hit home. Maybe I’d finally matured. The FIRE philosophy is very compatible with living in Mexico because the lower cost of living can let you retire much earlier. I knew I had to make a run for it if I was going to retire before my Social Security years. It would take some massive effort. I decided to take the plunge, ripping up credit cards, “paying myself first” and getting into investing as if my life depended on it. Because it did. The FIRE method got me focused on exactly what I needed to cut free. It also taught me how to live on a specific amount of money in advance, so that when I retired I knew for a fact that I could do it, because I’d tried it out already.

  I was still living in Mexico when I was recruited to do technical writing exclusively for a tech startup. I didn’t even have a resume ready. I assumed that while I was in Mexico everyone had gone digital like on LinkedIn, and paper resumes were passé. But I got the job anyway. I moved back to Austin with my horse and Mexican street dog, Chuy.

  I wrote like a banshee for the startup and came home each night completely wrung out. Besides hacking my finances with FIRE, my hobby became hacking my health so I wouldn’t end up with wealth but not health. Some estimates said being in optimal health is like having an extra $100k in your pocket, and I took that to heart. Losing weight is worth a certain amount. Exercising is worth another amount. It all adds up to money in your pocket.

  I’m too embarrassed to tell you how much money I saved each and every week, even every day. It was crazy. It was what kept me going. I updated my financial app each week with the new number. I subscribed to FIRE publications to inspire me and keep me on track. I was pretty obsessed.

  While I was doing this I downsized to save even more. Like saving on health, money saved is money earned. First I moved from a wastefully big house to a two-bedroom apartment with a garage to hold years’ worth of stuff from treasures to junk. After the first year I got rid of the junk and stopped renting the garage. The next year I moved to a one-bedroom apartment across the hallway to save another $500 a month—that’s $6,000 a year, just for not having a guest room to use once or twice a year. My living room was piled with boxes for a few months until I got rid of most of that, too.

  I kept traveling to Chapala, looking at houses to buy, trying to “time the market,” waiting for signs that house prices had bottomed, and eventually bought a vintage fixer-upper house for cash. This was at the end of the buyers’ market, and I may have gotten the last good deal in the area before prices started rising. The house had been on the market for more than half a year, and it looked like it might have some foundation problems that were scaring potential buyers off. But I bet that it didn’t and put in an offer that was quickly accepted.

  I painted the exterior walls a vivid orange and cobalt blue and hand-stenciled motifs above doorways and windows. Since it was high on a hill overlooking the lake, I named it Casa Acantilado or Cliff House, and painted a whimsical picture of the house that I then had made into a ceramic plaque with its name for the front door. My new home!

  Just when I thought I’d saved enough to retire young and get Mexican residency, in 2017 the Mexican government moved the finish line by changing the value at which the minimum wage was calculated. Because retirement savings are a multiple of this number—something like 25,000 times the daily minimum wage—this meant I had to work longer to qualify for residency. I tightened my belt even more so I could get it done fast. Now I skipped Starbucks, opting for free company coffee. I made my lunches every day. I kept heating and cooling to a minimum, even in Texas, allowing my body to acclimate as much as possible. I didn’t buy a lot of extra work clothes. I didn’t go out to eat a lot, and no pedicures or massages. I kept telling myself that each sacrifice was a thing I’d reap later in Mexico.

  I kept my eye on the prize so I could retire as quickly as humanly possible. My retirement account made a beeline straight up, and—ka-ching!—before I knew it, I’d made more than the minimum amount my financial advisor said I needed. I was walking a razor’s edge with my health from all the stress, so I knew it was time to go before I developed any serious health problems. Working at the startup fulfilled a life dream of mine, and I’ll always remember it fondly. Maybe
it will even go public, and I’ll make some money from my stock.

  I arranged for my horse to be shipped again to the Mexico side of the border, got a shipper to move my stuff and headed south with my dog Chuy. I picked up my horse in Nuevo Laredo and had an uneventful drive to my home in Chapala.

  It feels like I never left! Many of my health issues resolved once the stress melted away. This tells me I inflicted most of my health problems on myself; that love/hate relationship I had with stress. But I at last had proven myself; I’d succeeded at my own definition of success, and I was happy.

  I am so lucky to live in a real Mexican barrio, a working-class neighborhood full of hard-working and hard-loving people where my neighbors all know me. And I have a Mexican family here; the family next door has adopted me as one of their own. While the married couple are my caretaker and housekeeper, they’re so much more. They’ve taught me about Mexico and her ways. They’ve helped me with my Spanish. And I help them, of course. We’re like family.

  There are a lot of new expats in the Lake Chapala area now, and it seems there are a lot more planning to come here the minute they’re able to. The newer expats seem less well-prepared than in the past. They seem more afraid to speak the language and assimilate. I do worry they’re here for some of the wrong reasons, like purely political or purely financial. But coming here just to escape something is not a good reason to be here. The “escapees” quickly lose the dream and leave. If you’re coming here because you’re drawn by the energy, by the magic of Mexico, then this is your place.

  So why did I leave America? At first I was in search of wild adventure, a break from the uniformity and conformity of expectations and from the sea of whiteness. Later it was my escape from adult responsibilities, my sanity check, an oasis of sun and fun and diving.

  Today Mexico feels like my home; this is my normal. It feels right to me. I get culture shock when I go north now, rather than when I come south. I get stressed when I go north, but when I return my stress disappears at the border. I feel cradled in the hands of Mexico. The land where just greeting someone on the street results in an open smile without reservation, the real person shining through. Not the tepid smile of a fake polite social mask. That genuineness alone would be worth it to me.

  I wish I’d had the courage to get here sooner, but life kept getting in the way. I enjoyed the heck out of my journey, though, so I have no regrets. I wake up every day in Paradise and have to pinch myself because my vacation never ends. I love Mexico for all her foibles and contradictions. She teaches me something about myself each day that humbles me.

  Kerry Watson wanted to live in Mexico since her first trip when she was in her 20s and spent her whole adult life trying to get there. After growing up in Minnesota, she earned an MBA when that was unusual for women, and worked in high tech, which allowed her to travel the world and indulge in crazy hobbies like track cars, scuba diving and endurance horseback racing. “It seems I spent much of my adulthood checking boundaries,” she says. Kerry began going to the Lake Chapala area, living in various towns including the secluded south shore, and writing technical books. It was love at first sight. Finally she made the break and retired for good.

  9. “Finding Joy”

  Lisa D. Lankins

  Mazatlán & El Quelite, Sinaloa

  The moment he asked me why I wasn’t working for him in Mexico, I knew I was going.

  I’d felt a little sorry for myself for a couple years before that. My parents had both passed away and I was divorced a few months later. I didn’t have kids, and I was feeling lost. At one point, a friend at work looked at me while I was complaining and said, “You’ve got to be kidding me! I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love my husband and my kids and my life, but YOU are free to do anything you want!” It didn’t hit me until that point just how true that statement was, and shortly after, I stopped feeling sorry for myself. I was decidedly looking to make the best out of my life, but it had nothing to do with coming to Mexico—or so I thought.

  My plan was to go back to school and became a naturopathic physician or a midwife. I was looking into schools and scholarships or grants for women of my age (44), when I ran into this guy who was a good friend of my father’s. He owned a small hotel in Mazatlán, Sinaloa, Mexico, and after we’d talked for a bit, he invited me to come work for him as the public relations person at the hotel.

  With two good jobs in the medical field, one at a hospital as a ward secretary for almost 15 years, the other as the doctor’s nurse at an OB/GYN clinic for almost 10 years, plus working on the side as a certified doula for four years, it seems like it might have been a tough decision, but it wasn’t. It was about following my gut instinct, which was yelling at me that I had to go.

  I’d studied Spanish nearly my entire life and the idea of moving to Mexico just felt right. I had been to Mexico with my family many times since I was a little girl. I wanted to improve my Spanish, and since I try to listen to my premonitions, I knew it was right for me. It was July when I met the hotel owner, but not until December that I went with him and his family to Mazatlán to check out the hotel and decide if I wanted to work there.

  Mazatlán was beautiful. Twenty miles of palm-lined beaches. The hotel left a lot to be desired, but the house I would live in was right on the beach, with a pool. The owner let me stay in the guest quarters of his house, next door to the hotel. I figured I´d be able to make some positive changes at the hotel and would love it.

  I asked for two weeks to make up my mind after spending the week there, although I was already pretty sure. Once I decided that yes, I was definitely going to do this, I felt excited and couldn’t wait to get down there. The doctor I worked for asked me if I was sure. I told her, well, the worst thing that can happen is I’m back in two months, homeless and jobless, right? Life is too short to NOT take some chances. I didn’t want to arrive at the end of my life with regrets for not having done something I wished I had. That goes for telling people I love them as well. I make my share of mistakes, but I don’t ever regret having tried.

  I gave the doctor two months’ notice, since she had a small office and I wanted her to have time to find a good replacement. I sold everything I owned for pennies on the dollar in garage sales on the weekends. The plan was I would drive to Mexico by myself in a van owned by the hotel. I packed what few possessions I had left and spent the night at my sister’s house to say my goodbyes to her, my brother-in-law and my cherished nephews, who were eight and 17 at the time. I figured it would be a four- to six-day trip and planned to stop outside of Los Angeles to visit my older sister for a couple of days. I drove south from Portland to L.A., over to Phoenix and crossed the border at Nogales.

  My younger nephews, my sister’s boys, were the toughest thing for me to leave. I felt like their second mom. The night before I left, when I stayed at their house, the two boys sat on my lap and gave me lots of hugs, a little crowded but an appropriate goodbye, at least for the short-term. They had wonderful parents, and I knew they wouldn’t have wanted me to not go. They could see I was excited and happy about going.

  I guess I was nervous about driving in Mexico alone, something I hadn’t really thought about. Once I crossed the border, I drove to Ciudad de Obregon and found a hotel. I parked the van and literally had to peel my fingers off the steering wheel—I had a total death grip on it. The next time I made this drive, I knew I was home, and I was never nervous again about driving in Mexico.

  I had already travelled quite a bit in my life and in fact had worked as a travel agent for a big tour company when I was in my 20s. I travelled as much as I possibly could and had been to Mexico, Hawaii several times, many of the Caribbean Islands, and most of the East coast of the United States, visiting New York, Washington D.C., Miami and New Orleans. My parents gave all four of us the travel bug by driving from Portland into Mexico to Ensenada every winter, stopping at Palm Springs and Disneyland on the way. Then when I was
12 we started going to Hawaii every year, with a week in Victoria, B.C., Canada every summer. When I was 20, I tried to move to Victoria, but ran into a Catch-22 with finding a job and getting a visa; they really weren’t keen on having a young, single, American moving into the country.

  Even though I felt that I was good to go, nothing could have prepared me for the reality of life in another country. I was also going under a different pretext than most people; I would be getting my visa with permission to work and would have no income from the States at all, and only a very limited amount of savings.

  The hotel job was a bit of a mess. The employees were stealing lots of cash from the owner, which he didn’t tell me until I got there. So instead of being a well-liked person, I was considered the “enemy” and treated as such. The guilty employees worked in the office and made my life really difficult, lying about me, stealing from me and threatening me. Six months after I arrived my salary was cut to half of what I’d been promised (which is illegal in Mexico, but I didn’t know that at the time). Not being someone that gives up easily, I found another part-time job as an editor for a local monthly English publication to make ends meet.

  I had told my girlfriends that I was going to just work and volunteer and wasn’t going to go out with anyone, ever. I was serious, but they all laughed. Well, that lasted only a few months, and soon I found myself falling for a professor from Mexico City I met at another small hotel nearby where he was the manager. I went there to use the internet and cheap phone service to call my family twice a week. After six months, he was hired to teach in one of Mazatlán’s most prestigious universities and we decided to move in together. I desperately needed to get away from living at the hotel; it could be a 24-hour-a-day job if I let it, and now I had a second job, too.