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The story to this point has Bruce and Mary conceiving the dream, concocting the plan, and waiting for their house to sell to finance their escape to México. They do get to México, let’s see how that goes.

We were diligent in the listing and the marketing of our house. We listed with the best realtor in town, prepared the house exactly as he advised put his suggested price on it and we waited. And then we waited. And waited. Our routines remained the same: a workweek for me of a mind numbing 86 mile commute to a high stress, straight commission sales job and Mary’s cubicle existence, with the highlight of every week being Friday night happy hour at brother Neil’s. We were among the many to usher in the housing market bust.

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“How about leasing the house?” our daughter Helen asked, “Just put it on Craig’s List!” She and her boyfriend Caleb had just secured a nice apartment in Uptown Minneapolis via a Craig’s List listing. 

Leasing, hmm. With our equity in the house I was sure we could lease it with a positive cash flow, but how the heck could we buy our Mexican B&B? I did the math with our finances. If we sold the little bit of stock we held and maybe cashed in some life insurance we could come up with a down payment and enough money for cash flow and start-up for maybe a $100,000US B&B, if one in that price range with financing available could be found. I contacted Rick, our man in Mérida, and he assured us that he could find us something. I told him he would be the first to know of the lease of our house.

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I quickly went online to Craig’s List to post our 4 bedroom, 3 bath, two year old split for $995 per month plus utilities, hoping for a quick deal. Helen just as quickly called me an idiot, that the rent was way too low. She was right; I was an idiot and so were all the people inquiring. I reposted at $1275, still way in back of market according to Helen and Caleb, and evidently so because in a flash we had a one year lease deal signed with a single dad with a big income, effective February 15^th 2008.

And then we caught our breath. We decided that Mary would put in her notice for January 15 to get a jump on organizing all our possessions and I put in my notice for February 1^st. We decided to spend the first month in a condo on the beach to “decompress” and see if we could forget our own names. I emailed Rick right away let him know we had leased the house and we were coming on down. I explained that we didn’t need his $300US crash course in Mexican real estate but we still wanted his representation after our vacation on the beach. No response. I emailed again. Still no response. Okay, have it your way, I thought. But this caused us to think, what if we can’t find a property that will work. Then I took a look at our finances once more and figured that we could, if nothing worked out, simply take a year off and not damage ourselves too badly. This outlook actually made the whole venture even more exciting, the pressure was off. Great if we find a property and put down stakes and if not we’ll have our first vacation over 10 days in our lives.

We went online to buy our one way tickets to Mérida, the capital of the state of Yucatan.

The next post has Bruce and Mary lowering their blood pressure as they explore the Gulf Coast from their beachside condo just outside Chicxulub Puerto. How does this lesser known resort area compare to the Riviera Maya? Are Canadians really that crazy? Will Bruce and Mary really forget their names?

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Stay tuned gentle reader; the next post will be coming and that right soon.

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Respected reader, this true story began with Bruce and Mary conceiving their Mexican dream and then taking action to form a plan to set themselves free. They’ve put their house on the market to finance their move and that is where this post begins. If you also dream of setting yourself free in Mexico, read on and learn much from Bruce and Mary’s mistakes and successes in this venture.

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With our house on the market we started actively scouting the internet for a B & B or small hotel. We concentrated our search in the beginning, on the Riviera Maya coastline. Although we’d vacationed all over México, our latest trip had been a backpacking affair down and up the Riviera Maya, and it had really been a gas.

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Right off the bat, in our internet search we found an “Eco-Resort” in Xlak, which is about as far south on the Riviera Maya coastline as you can get without being in Belize. We discovered that this entrepreneur, a retired engineer, had built this remote little resort and it looked really cool on the website. It had 5 rental units, owner’s quarters, a wind generator w/battery back-up (which really appealed to my alternative energy roots) and it was right on the beach. I checked it out and it was, as expected, way too expensive. In fact, I discovered that that was the case all the way from Xlak north to Cancun with the Cancun area being the Manhattan of the Riviera Maya coastline. This area was very nice but we decided it was out of our price range. We explored the Pacific side and focused in near Manzanillo. We loved our trips to Puerto Vallarta and Acapulco and this was right in between. The prices were right and we were getting pretty close to contacting a realtor.

But then, in my surfing I accidently came across a realtor based out of Mérida, the capital of Yucatan. The website was very well done and drew me in. There were a number of small hotels and other commercial properties in our price range. I emailed, asking for particulars on a couple of properties. I got some general answers but to get more I needed to fill out their form, which was essentially a qualifier. I complied and my conversations with Rick began. In our initial phone call we talked for about 45 minutes. He gave me snapshot of his 30 years of real estate experience in Canada and Florida. Rick was a licensed broker in Canada which has, he said, more stringent requirements than the US, as contrasted with México where there are no licensing requirements at all. Rick described the Mexican real estate scene as the “Wild West’. He illustrated this point with the telling of several nightmare scenarios that regularly occur, and good luck getting redress in a Mexican court, he said. I found myself very impressed with Rick and told him so. At this point he explained his process. He asks his prospects to come down for an intense 3 day junket. For a refundable $300US fee, he introduces you to the local infrastructure, ie: banks, immigration lawyers, government officials. And of course he shows you the properties that are appropriate to your needs and desires. Then the idea is, you go home, sleep on all the properties you’ve looked at, call him up, tell him which one to move on and then plan your trip down to close on it. Then he told me of a couple of properties designed to get me excited. There was a B& B in Progreso, right on the coast that was a little pricey but the gringo who owned it offered financing. He told of a little joint, again in Progreso, that was built by some Tennessean sheriff that was only $50,000US. I must admit my mouth was practically drooling over these prospects and I liked his sales process, it was designed for a serious buyer only, and I absolutely considered myself such. Then he went for the close. “I have a slot open for you the third week of next month!” Whoa! I explained to him that I was a serious buyer but I did have to sell my house first. This deflated him but he was a pro and he vowed to keep in touch.

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All for now gentle reader. Wondering if this anchor of a house will sell? If not, what then? Stay tuned and do know that your comments are welcome. All will be acknowledged and any questions about this true story thus far will be answered. See you soon.

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In the last post, Prelude to a Mexican Dream, the circumstances that inspired the creation of Bruce and Mary’s  escape plan to México were detailed. In that post is the story of Bruce quitting his high stress job, starting a personal training business, and putting the Alexandria house on the market.

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I’m not sure why I took the job the second time. I mean it gave me a heart attack the first time around but phase II of our plan to escape to México wasn’t quite going according to Hoyle. Parts of the plan had gone well. We’d sold the Alexandria house, moved to a much bigger personal training market in St. Cloud, MN and made what we thought was a great buy on a spec house in a nice part of town. The plan was to finish it off, like I had the last two houses and parlay our equity in it for the final push to México. However there was one fatal flaw in the plan. Although my market research had been correct in allowing me to double my personal training fees, I hadn’t allowed for the significant gym cuts in St. Cloud. The best arrangement I could find was at an Anytime Fitness gym run by a couple of wonderful guys, Mark and Jeremy. They gave me the best deal of any gym in town by letting me keep a little over half of what I brought in. I built up a pretty good client base and after six months I renegotiated our deal and got to keep 2/3s of fees. But even when I’d built my billable hours to the point just shy of burn-out (burnt-out personal trainers are not a pretty thing) I did my calculations and I still was making only about 60% of my previous income. I actually was pretty happy, but as my better and smarter half, Mary pointed out, this was hardly advancing our escape plan. This became an ongoing discordant discourse.

One day my buddy Ron called, “Bruce, did you hear the latest on CL!?” I hadn’t. “Man, they fired KJ, just walked him out the door and Chan bought the company!” Ron had left the company just a few months ago for another sales job here in St. Cloud and still had contacts there. Ron goes on, “They made John the VP of sales and marketing! You should look into it!” Ron knew that John, my former sales manager and I had always got along great. John really is one of those bosses where the old cliché is true. I really would go to war with this guy. I did my due diligence and everything Ron told me was true and after meeting with John over cocktails (John has always said, “Never trust a man who doesn’t drink!”) it seemed with the change in ownership and management and with my good friend installed as the new VP of sales and marketing, that things would be a lot different and I signed on again, on the spot.

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Mary was thrilled with my report and the next week I started my 86 mile commute (it’s amazing what you can get used to) to CL’s new sales offices in Minneapolis.

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In retrospect I could blame things on the fact that they never let John have the control that he was promised and that the new owner’s Texas corporate office was not only extremely incompetent but also dazzlingly complacent. I could do that, but the fact of the matter is, in the space of only the one year I was away, I had forgotten the incredibly high stress levels that exist even in the best of times in this industry, but the really astonishing thing is the simple fact that somehow I forgot that I. Really. Hate. Body-shop Equipment. Sales!

But at least I was making decent money and socking some away in preparation for our México escape plan. Mary had caught on at a large print supplies company, and she was helping with the financial cause, as well. But our lives were falling into a rut, working at jobs we hated, with the only highlight of our week being the crazy Friday night happy hours at my brother Neil’s place. This continued for a year and a half while I finished off the lower level of the house, did the landscaping and generally made the house market-ready. Also, at this point in time the youngest of our three kids had just graduated from college and all three were in good jobs, solving that part of the equation. That had been the only thing holding us back, so we put the house on the market. With the anticipated proceeds from the house we started dreaming of buying a small Mexican B&B, but little did we know how soft the real estate market had become.

Thank you for visiting, gentle reader. The next post will continue the story of how Bruce and Mary set ourselves free in México.  All manner of comments are welcome and will be acknowledged. Any questions about this story thus far, will be answered. Saw VI trailer

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I know I’m not the only man or woman out there who discovered that they were pretty good at making a living doing something that they really didn’t like. For me it was selling cars. I did it for 20 years. Now don’t get me wrong, it’s not that I don’t enjoy the art of selling, but it’s the product that counts. Before cars I sold alternative energy equipment; solar, wind, and the bread and butter of our little company, wood burning stoves. I enjoyed offering those

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products to folks and I felt like I made a difference. But when the tax credits expired in the late 70’s our little company went down. I had a wife and a new baby; I had to do something and there was an opening at a GM car store in our little town, Alexandria, MN.

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Flash forward 20 yrs. I had to make a change or make the papers in a bad way. I looked and applied, looked and applied and I finally got lucky, I thought. I escaped to a big paying job! Well the money wasn’t as big as I’d been led to believe but it was a big improvement and I wasn’t selling cars anymore. I was selling body shop equipment, factory direct, for a company we’ll just call CL. That was in July, 2002. Little did I know then that this job would quite literally, give me a heart attack, in March of 2004. A México escape plan had been in the back of my mind, for years. This “event” caused it to come rushing to my prefrontal lobe. My wife Mary and I started our planning.

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Our planning was two-fold: maximize our financial situation and keep me alive; no more heart attacks. To realize the first we put our house on the market. The market was still strong, Freddie and Fannie had yet to stake out the poor and we had a lot of equity in the house. The second objective was realized by quitting CL which cut the stress in my life by about 90%. While we waited for the house to sell I set up a full time personal training business in our little town, knowing full well I wouldn’t be able to crack the nut, but I could develop my business model before we went to phase II of our plan to start new lives in México. But wait a second you say. How does a personal trainer have a heart attack? It was in the genes, I must say, but because I practice what I preach, the damage was much mitigated. Get thee to the gym.

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It occurs to me that you may be wondering what we find so special about México. We had been vacationing in México every winter the last ten years, which in and of itself, is not unusual for a Minnesotan. However, Mary first came down in 1970 (she’ll not be happy with this dating action) with her Spanish club. The club took two station-wagons, neither with air conditioning, from Minnesota to Acapulco. The rule was no English allowed past the border. By the time they reached Acapulco Mary had realized fluency and fallen in love with Mexican culture. When she introduced it to me on our first family vacation in México, to Mazatlan to be exact, my experience was the same, minus the fluency. I fell for México, too, plus I immediately made note of the low prices, thinking, “Hmm, some day…”

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Thank you, gentle reader, for visiting this site. In the next post you will learn of phase II of Bruce and Mary’s plan to take their jobs and shove them and actually move to México well before retirement age. Your comments are welcome, all will be acknowledged, and any questions thus far about this true story will be answered. Also please note that code is not “poetry” to this writer, it is Sanskrit. Please be patient with any technical oddities.