July 21st, 2010
We Want It All!
View of Captive Lake from the Cabin
Bruce and Mary are putting together a strategy for a lifestyle adjustment, and no they are not leaving paradise but they are looking to maximize all the good things in their lives. Please press on loyal reader and see how this strategy goes. For you email subscribers that would like to go to Bruce’s site to read this post, please click here.
Just as I was getting ready to log off from work, while munching on a tuna fish sandwich, I mentioned to Mary how our lives, today, would have been impossible to predict 3 years ago when this escape to Mexico was still just a dream. Here we are house-sitting a small mansion of a Spanish Colonial casa in the heart of Merida, Cultural capital of the Americas for the year 2000, only 36 kilometers from the beach and we both are working jobs that we love (moderating comments for a Canadian News Website) from our computers, poolside. And another cool thing about our jobs is that our fellow moderators are, for the most part, our Merida and Minnesota friends. With our incredibly low cost of living and our moderating jobs we are, believe it or not, enjoying a higher standard of living than at any time in our old lives.
But, we want more! Yes we are feeling a little bit greedy but to completely sate ourselves we would have to spend the summers in Minnesota, where we would be closer to family and old friends and able to breathe the clean and fresh north-woods air. There is not a thing about MN in the winter time that I miss but we do miss the summers, in particular, the summers at the cabin.
Here are the hurdles we need to overcome:
- Where do we live? Our St. Cloud house is leased out on a two year contract and hopefully in perpetuity.
- Our house-sitting agreement, here, doesn’t allow for lengthy absences.
- We face IRS issues working back in the States, again.
- Transportation: We have not owned a car for two years.
- Conventional health insurance in the States is not even close to affordable for us.
The health care issue is a thorny one but we think we have it worked out. Since we escaped back in February of 2008, we have been
Lipid Profile Performed by Clinica Merida
essentially “self insured” that is to say, without. But down here you can do that, with some luck thrown in. We’re reasonably healthy and the few meds we need are extraordinarily cheap down here. Our BP meds cost us each about $4/mo and my statin (for high cholesterol) runs about the same. With Mary’s diabetes, her test strips are actually cheaper on ebay than anywhere but insulin is about a third of the cost northwards and here you don’t need to spend a 100 bucks or so for a Doc visit to get that prescription. About the only drugs down here that require prescriptions are the class 3s. In fact for a medically self-directed person, Mexico is really cheap in that you can get virtually any lab work done without any Doc intervention. If you want a lipid profile, liver function, and CPK test done like I just recently did, all you gotta do is know how to ask for it. And talk about cheap, I got all the above tests done for about $60US which I paid by credit card. I got in and out of Clinica de Merida, without an appointment, in about 15 minutes and they had the results that afternoon.
And it’s not just lab work that is incredibly inexpensive but sophisticated tests are as well. I discovered this in the process of getting Mary off my back about checking on my health. You see I had an MCI (I hate the phrase heart attack) 6 years ago and the last time I really followed up on my heart health was over two years ago so I went to the cardiologist husband of Mary’s dermatologist (she had worried about a couple spots – benign) and had an EEG done during the checkup (total cost of the visit was $44US) and he suggested I line up an Echo Cardiogram. Now, ok gang, here is where I must come clean. We have a leg up on most folks down here in the fact that I have a sis-in-law, Lynn, an MD back in MN, who has generously agreed to be my virtual doc and she thought that the echo would be a good idea as part of the whole check-up strategy. So Mary called and made an appointment for me at Star Medica, Merida’s state of the art medical facility. The next day we taxied out there and after a little waiting I got in and had the echo done. The cardiologist on duty immediately did the written doctor talk interpretation (I scanned the translated report to Lynn for her opinion and… I’m going to live!) and I was presented with the test results complete with cool color pix. Down here, you own and keep track of all your records. The charge for this was $141US. Now that seems pretty cheap but when I did a little bit of Googling just now I am really
Echocardiogram Results
impressed as it seems an echo at Abbott NW in the Twin Cities would run about $2250. Whoa! Well anyhow the above is just to illustrate how we have been able to self insure down here, but with the new lifestyle we’re trying to work out, what do we do to accommodate both worlds? This is what we came up with. This fall we are both signing up for the IMSS Mexican health care program which will cost us each about $150 for a year of coverage. This coverage includes all doc visits, hospitalization, and all meds, except for those events and meds relating to pre-existing conditions – coronary artery disease for me and Type I diabetes for Mary. But after one year on the plan even pre-existing is covered. So the strategy is to doctor up like crazy before we stay in MN for the summers and then either toss the dice and go without or we’ll contact the lovely Julieta Morales (my dentista Ana’s sis) and do as many of our friends have done and buy an international catastrophic health plan with a high deductible and no wellness care for about $170/mo for the both of us. We can afford that. So…we have cleared that hurdle.
Transportation. Hmmm, still working on that. I would love to buy a $1000 motorcycle (my motorcycle endorsement is still valid) but Mary has made it very clear that that is not an option. I will probably look into a rent-a-wreck car rental thing, if available, for the 3 months we’re back as I really don’t want to buy a car for 3 months a year. Any ideas, loyal readers?
The IRS. For those of you who read my post about filing taxes this spring you’ll remember that if you can satisfy the residency requirements of living abroad you have a $91,400 exemption from income taxes (not self employment taxes, the only relief from that for an American, no matter where in the world he lives, is no self employment or death, I am going to hold off on the second option). The residency requirement fits us to a tee, 270 days in said foreign country. And of course our jobs are completely portable, we can set up shop anywhere there is internet.
The house-sitting gig. We’ll we’re just going to have to give it up. To be frank, although this place is quite impressive it is kind of a pain
Our Good Friend Jaromey
to live in and keep up. And we have always loved the beach. So when the time gets a little closer we will put our favorite Francophone Ottowan, Jaromey, the Progreso property manager extraordinaire and close friend, on it. She tells us we can get a 1 or 2 bedroom house near the beach in the Progreso area for about 2-3000P about $160-$240/mo. We had contemplated paying 5000-6000P for a 3-4 bdrm so we could easily accommodate all three kids and spouses for X-mas 2011 and beyond but as Jaromey points out, why pay every month for all that capacity when we could rent a place like Casa Sol Mar, a beautiful property she manages (we stayed there with the Dyers in 2008) for the week or so the kids are down. Good point. When we get closer we will pin that down.
Where do we live in MN? Well, Mary’s mother, Harriet has just completed, with brother Bob’s immeasurable help a major renovation of the the family log cabin (where Helen and Caleb were just married) on semi-private Captive Lake, near Lake Mille Lacs, a famous MN walleye lake. This renovation has changed the cabin from a rustic summer abode to a modern, super comfortable lake home, without losing any of the charm. So we are hoping to make arrangements to spend summers there. A hang up is, this is a family cabin available to all of Harriet’s kids and their kids, who are all grown now. What we hope to do is much like what we do here, maintain the place and handle it like a hotel when others want to use it. In other words, we would have the place turnkey ready for the stay and then vacate. Upon our return we would do complete cleanup and laundry for our departed guests/family. And of course we’d pay utilities through the summers. We’re hoping this arrangement will pass the family council. We have already been putting bribes in place so we’re quite optimistic.
So this is our new definition of paradise – autumn, winter, and spring on the Mexican Gulf Coast, summers at a MN lake cabin. Really does it get any better than that?
Thanks for visiting gentle reader. Bruce appreciates any fine tuning to his big ideas that you may have so please share. To make a comment, or view existing comments double click on the post title and scroll down. Hasta la vista, baby!
