We couldn’t find time in our busy schedule for a couple months to schedule our trip mostly because the end of the school year is a crazy time for kids activities.  Summer activities are gearing up and school year activities are wrapping up but there is inevitably some overlap.

We did start conversations with the condo developer in San Crisanto.  Dealing with him was great!  He was knowledgable, responsive and able to answer all our questions.  He also was able to provide us some referrals to others who had purchased condos in his new development.  Feeling pretty comfortable with things, we reserved the last penthouse in the development and were pretty excited to get there to check it out!  I know you got pretty excited when I said “penthouse” right?  This simply means we would have the rooftop above us as a private outside area with a small dipping pool and room for an outdoor kitchen.  The condo itself is the same as all the rest.  But it sounds fancy…right?

Then the real discussions started with the #1 point of conversation being, “How much time can we actually spend in Mexico now and in the future?” Remember when I said sometimes my husband and my “stars don’t align”?  Remember when I said I am a dreamer?  Needless to say, we were pretty far apart on what is possible and we needed to find a way to meet in the middle.  To be fair, he would wasn’t opposed to the idea of spending as much time as possible at the condo and I know in my heart of hearts that he wants to be able to do this for our family,  he just didn’t think we could afford to retire this early and have enough money to make it through retirement.  So I need to go easy on him.  It really can’t be easy to tell me “no” every time I come up with a crazy idea!

His belief is that we need to work 8 more years before he can retire.  By this time, our daughter will be leaving for college and we can start the next phase of our life.  He is 52 so that sounds reasonable right?  Totally.

But, if we were able to go now, our daughter could experience this journey with us and the ways in which her world view would grow would be immeasurable.  That we were in agreement with.

Timing…we were right back where we started on timing.

The real question we needed an answer to was: How much does it really cost to live in the Yucatan?

Do a Google Search and you will find many blogs and websites which show the cost of living difference between the US and the Yucatan. The overwhelming conclusion being, “With a few exceptions, it’s cheaper.  A lot cheaper.”

So that’s good to know, but I needed to develop a realistic budget for our family, keeping in mind that we have 2 in college and one more to send.  Three of our 4 kids are also girls, so there will be weddings to contend with and we want to be able to help our kids with a downpayment on their first houses.  I needed data.  Real data.

I decided that I needed to talk to some people that have actually made the move and learn as much as I can about life in the Yucatan today. So I did what any normal person would do.  I joined a few Expat groups on Facebook.

What I learned was that people are people are people…

(Curious about my experience?  Read my next blog post)