Tainari88 wrote:It means you need to make about $6300 a month before taxes to rent a $2300 a month apartment.
A lot of people don't make that gross a month. It would require two people working full time.
Forget about having children and child care living in some small apartment.
Denver, Colorado in the 1980s was cheap! Some $260 dollars a month for rent in a nice hood. Now? No.
I would say If I were to rent again here? It would be max about $1800 a month hopefully a 2 bedroom. But the security deposit would make it a move in cost of about $6000 cash. A lot of people don't have that.
Yeah, I don't know if Denver passed some restrictive zoning laws in the 1980s. Unfortunately many large cities did, not just in California.
For $2300 you probably need to make something closer to $7500 a month. IIRC the affordability rule of thumb is that rent should take 30% of your income at most.
Of course, this is clearly not the case in many markets. I think Miami is currently the worst, with the average household paying up to 50% of its income in rent.
Tainari88 wrote:I am so happy, I got rid of all mortgages and fees. Living mortgage free and got income that will come in for years steady. Pension kicking in and social security and taxes in Mexico are very very inexpensive for a property you own outright.
The beauty of remote and work from home is that you can have clients from all over the world. They pay you in dollars, or euros and x or y currencies. You process them through paypal or some bank account from either the states or Mexico. You get a professional international accountant to straighten it all out for you tax wise? And you are set. You work part time and make excellent money and contribute to both Mexican government taxes and US based taxes. It is ideal for me Wat0n.
Mexico has a great standard of living for people allowed to work other markets. For the ones here in Mexico only? Super low salaries. Never get out of the hole. But? The future is changing. Mexican professionals can start charging in other currencies and get hired by US based employers. It will change the standard of living for the Mexicans with degrees, English skills, and computer literacy skills.
The key is going to be the Mexican government investing in their young people and giving them excellent educations. I plan on helping out with that too.
Indeed, remote work will make this type of arrangement feasible. It should also show in terms of apartment prices at some point, at the more crazy expensive areas first.
In fact, I recall reading some tech workers in SF were willing to take pay cuts to be allowed to work remotely from a cheaper state, and would move out of California pretty much immediately. Going from, say, San Francisco to Tampa shouldn't represent such a big loss in terms of quality of life (and that's assuming it's even a loss) yet still save you money in terms of rent/mortgage and taxes to make it worthwhile even if you take a pay cut.
By the way, did you have to downsize when you moved there? I'm asking because apartments are pretty large here, a lot larger than in Chile. The standard of how "decent" housing looks like is far more demanding in the US. This type of thing is not easily considered when comparing rents, etc.
I do think Americans are too pampered and could perfectly downsize in the long run, at least in large cities. Not to Soviet levels, that's just way too much, but maybe to e.g. British levels.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/105 ... worldwide/