How to Move Abroad – Part II

This is a follow-up post to the article I wrote for Flexjobs.com, How to Move Abroad and Take Your Job With You.

I am writing this post from the patio of the Casita I am renting with my wife in Ajijic Mexico.

Why are we doing this?

The cost of health insurance, the unstable situation in Washington D.C. related to health insurance, and because we can.

My wife and I are over 60 years of age, self-employed and neither of us is eligible for Medicare yet.

I will cover technology, transportation and this time, the community in this post.

This part of an ongoing series. Please check out the How to Move Abroad and Take Your Job With You Series Page.

Technology

Basically, this boils down to 2 types of technologies: mobile phone and Internet connectivity.

Mobile Phone

I am a long-time AT&T wireless customer, and as a former Lucent employee (the first tech startup I worked for was acquired by Lucent), I still have a hefty discount on any AT&T plan. Rather than buy a separate data plan for Mexico, I upgraded to an unlimited data plan which includes all of Mexico. I will revert back to my original data plan after we return in a couple of weeks.

This has allowed me to take calls seamlessly. Calling U.S. telephone numbers, on the other hand, has been … interesting. If I dial from the keypad to the U.S. based number, it will not work. If I take the same number and enter it into my iPhone Contacts app and dial from there – it works. Very odd, but it works.

It has been very convenient to have access to data of all of my favorite apps on my iPhone. This was in sharp contrast to when I was in Cuenca, Ecuador, where I had only 3G access and the carrier changed every few blocks I walked.

Basically, I had all of the services I would want on my trusty iPhone 6s.

Internet

I have had yet another very interesting experience with the Internet in Ajijic.

I admit I am spoiled. I have Google Fiber installed in my condominium in Austin, Texas. Then again how do you define high-speed Internet access?

Ajijic is no different than the previous locations I have traveled to, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico and Cuenca, Ecuador, the Internet connectivity is years behind what we have in the U.S. To be technical it is VDSL which is a technology I worked with about 15 years ago. It allows Internet traffic to travel over old copper wiring that has been in place for years.

When I arrived at the casita we are renting, I tested the upload and download speeds and what I found was the download speeds of about 4Mb/sec was acceptable but the upload speeds of .2 Mb/sec was abysmal.  This will not support a video Skype call and barely a Skype audio call.  I am testing to see if it will support a Zoom.us call.

These types of speeds are acceptable for most of your basic Internet functions but they are unacceptable when you want to have a high-quality video call.

My next option to explore is run the video calls over my cell phone connection. AT&T does not let me create a hotspot and share my Internet connection with other devices. Skype will not connect my iPhone – Zoom will – but I have not completely tested that yet.

The concept of working virtual when you move abroad only works if you have a high-speed Internet connection.

Transportation

Ajijic is very easy to get to from the U.S. compared to the other cities that we are exploring.

Ajijic is a 25-minute taxi ride from the Guadalajara airport. There are many flights from all over the U.S. We had a lot of choices of direct flights from the Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) airport to Guadalajara that were all quite reasonably priced.

Ajijic is very walkable if you do not mind walking on cobblestone streets. Taxis and buses are quite accessible and affordable. We have found many expats who live here do own automobiles. However, we have also met many who quite happily live automobile-free which is something we are looking for.

This is one feature that draws many to this community. Expats either want easy ways to travel home to visit family or to return to the U.S. for healthcare.

When you move abroad, transportation back to your home country is absolutely critical.

Community

Ajijic is a much smaller city, than San Miguel de Allende and Cuenca. Only about 15,000 people live here. According to Wikipedia, there are about 1,000 full-time residents and 700 snowbirds who come for the winter months. It is not an international tourist destination and, therefore, most of the tourists are local or are people exploring the area for retirement. The “feel” of the city is very different than San Miguel de Allende or Cuenca. It feels like a community (including the locals) seem to have embraced the expats and what they bring to the community.

The region supports a healthy expat community which varies from 10,000 to 25,000 but many are snowbirds and only live in the region during the winter. Depending on who you listen to there are anywhere between 500,000 to 1 million expats living in Mexico.

Expats in Ajijic and the surrounding towns make up a larger portion of the population than the other locations we visited and, therefore, they have created a community within a community. Plus, best I can tell, the expats coming here in large part cannot afford to build million dollar villas but rather have much more modest abodes. These homes are still quite opulent when compared to the locals abodes but nothing like I experienced in places like San Miguel de Allende where multimillion-dollar compounds were not unusual.

What’s Next

We will be traveling to Boquete Panama early in 2018.

I also want to do a column on finances when you move abroad but continuing to do work back in the U.S.

I would really appreciate any comments on whether you find this useful.

To read the rest check out How to Move Abroad and Take Your Job With You Series Page.

Marc Miller  

Be sure to check out the Career Pivot Client Testimonials Page

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How to Move Abroad and Take Your Job With You

Like many of us over 60 years of age, my wife and I are considering a move abroad. We are considering this because neither of us is yet eligible for Medicare and we are both self-employed. The current health care debate in Washington puts us in a very vulnerable place.

I run a virtual business called Career Pivot where I help those in the 2nd half of life make career transitions. My wife is a massage therapist and would likely retire if we move abroad.

This article originally appeared on FlexJobs.com in August of 2017

This is the first in an ongoing series called  How to Move Abroad and Take Your Job With You Series

I am writing this article to chronicle some of the decision points in what it would take to move my business outside of the United States. If you have a remote job, many of the same issues will apply to your situation.

We are looking at Mexico, Ecuador, and Panama as likely destinations. The common theme is they are in roughly the same time zones as the United States.

I want to address two areas in this post: technology, and transportation.

Technology

I have always said if I have a good Internet connection and a cell phone, I can work from anywhere. The first question is what defines a “good” Internet connection. For me it comes down to three factors:

• Can I receive and make phones call?
• Is there sufficient bandwidth for reasonable quality video calls?
• Is it reliable?

Next is the cell phone service. What is the service provided locally, 2G, 3G, 4G, LTE or … Would I be able to function with a U.S. carrier like AT&T, T-Mobile or Verizon? Would I need to get a local phone and phone plan from a local carrier?

At the time of the publishing of this article, we have explored San Miguel de Allende, Mexico and Cuenca, Ecuador.

Internet

In both locations, we stayed at an Airbnb apartment with Wifi provided. I have a U.S. Skype phone number and was able to receive phone calls when I was connected to the Wifi with excellent quality. There are lots of ways to make calls back to the U.S. over the Internet but while traveling I required that all of my U.S. based clients call me.

I was also able to take advantage of DropBox and Google Drive to transfer files to the various vendors I deal with on a regular basis. This includes audio files for my podcasting vendor and various text files for my virtual assistant.

So far, I have not tried to make any video calls. I suspect I would have had sufficient bandwidth sometimes in Mexico but I doubt I would have been able to have a video call while in Ecuador.

As a recovering engineer and a former telecom employee, it was pretty obvious that the technology was 10-15 years behind what we see in the U.S. For those geeks in the audience, it was largely DSL.

Cell Phone

Many of the U.S. carriers extend their service to Mexico. It is the data plan that you need to pay extra and it can get expensive. When traveling to Ecuador my AT&T plan was extended to Ecuador for $10/day which for a short trip is okay but for anything longer it gets expensive.

When I was in Mexico, I purchased a one-month 200MB data plan for about $40. I discovered all kinds of tricks to reduce the amount of data I used such that I easily made it through the 7-day trip and did not exceed the limit.

The various expat books I have read say when you are ready to move, get a smartphone in the U.S. and either purchase it unlocked or get the carrier to unlock the phone.

The phone technology and service vary widely. I found in Cuenca, Ecuador I could go block to block and find the technology and carrier could switch.

Today, I can be just about anywhere and conduct my business. If I move abroad I would have to be more careful in scouting out locations with good Internet service and use my smartphone carefully.

Transportation

The more I research transportation issues it becomes a more vital and topical subject. This is both air transportation to and from the U.S. and local transportation, i.e., is an automobile required?

I have taught in 40 different countries but I have only lived abroad for no more than a couple of weeks twice – and that was in the 1980s was it was West Germany. I have thought about a move abroad for many years but have never acted on it.

Air Travel

For both San Miguel de Allende, Mexico and Cuenca, Ecuador your arrival does not end at the airport. Both are UNESCO World Heritage Sites and sport large expat communities. Neither is a short distance from an International airport. It is a 90-120 minute shuttle bus ride from San Miguel to an airport. Both coming and going you really need to arrange ground transportation carefully.

Cuenca has a local airport convenient but all flights to and from the U.S. land in Quito, the capital, and connections between Quito and Cuenca do not synchronize. It is a two-day trip each way because somewhere along the way you have to spend a night either in a hotel or a VIP lounge.

Why is this important? If I needed or wanted to travel to the U.S. for business I would need to add a day on each end of the trip. This can be important if you are pursuing the IRS Foreign Earned Income Exclusion where you pay no income tax if you are out of the U.S. for 330 days in a given year.

I recently had a conversation with an International Living editor about this topic. He had lived in Ecuador for many years but had moved to Ajijic, Mexico because the closest airport had direct flights to San Diego.

Why was this important? His grandchildren lived in San Diego.

Local Travel

Most Americans are addicted to their automobiles. Living in Austin, Texas I have slowly relinquished the need for a car. Last year, I put about 3,500 miles on my car because I work from home and live within 2 miles of most everything I need. I also have Car2Go available most of the time.

Taxis and drivers for hire are plentiful in many of the locations we are exploring. This takes a bit of getting used to but not having to drive in a foreign country is a blessing. Besides not having to pay for car insurance, gasoline, maintenance, tolls, and other things using other forms of transportation can be quite a bit cheaper.

It is the addiction of always having a car that makes it difficult for many Americans.

What Else?

I had planned on covering finances when you move abroad in the article. If all of your work is accomplished with clients and companies back in the U.S. you can keep all of your monies in U.S. banks and only transfer money to a local bank when required. Ecuador uses the US Dollar as it’s official currency. Besides most of these countries will not allow you to work for a local business or clients without making you jump through a lot of bureaucracy.

The more I learn, the more questions I have.

We have a trip planned to Ajijic, Mexico for the fall and Panama in the Winter. The speed of decision making will largely depend on what our friends in Washington, D.C. decide.

All of the locations we are looking at have excellent hhealthcareat affordable prices. Purchasing health insurance that covers you outside of the U.S. is much more affordable than what we can get in the U.S.

We are ready for an adventure to move abroad. Are you?

To learn more check out the How to Move Abroad and Take Your Job With You Series Page

Marc Miller  

Be sure to check out the Career Pivot Client Testimonials Page

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