Costs of living in Mexico - my experience

hi guys hello hello hello i decided to do a video spontaneously because all of you wanted me to do this video about Mexico so here i am doing this video so i'm just loving because i just recorded something really funny first time in my life i recorded a reaction video reading hate comments on my YouTube channel basically on my food blogging so it just kind of made me laugh i did little bit of um creativity there so yeah it was funny anyway let's get back to the point um so in this video a lot of you wanted to know basically what are the costs of living in Mexico what are the costs of moving here and basically what are the benefits what are the negative sides to living in Mexico so i thought i'll do a quick video uh well as quickly as i can and tell you all about it or as much as i can so a lot of you i think the main question was about the cost because some of you are thinking potentially either moving here or maybe living here or just coming here for a few months so i thought i will share all the details now first point is that Mexico is not cheap okay especially in a part where i am so i think if you take Mexico as a whole it's probably cheap somewhere else but in the area that i am which is Yucatan which is like Cancun Tulum Playa all of this region Riviera Maya is an expensive region it is mainly uh it's the safest one of the safest regions i think if you compare it to other parts um there's a lot of tourists here there's a lot of police here so technically it's the safest place to be and it has the biggest amount of stuff okay i haven't really traveled around Mexico so i can't comment on how expensive it is out there but i've heard it's definitely much cheaper and i can't really comment how safe or unsafe it is i can only tell you about the area that i live which is Yucatan and so now i've been here for pretty much a year uh i did have to go like a couple of times back and forth but i've been now here since december so it's gonna be pretty much six months oh my god oh my god six months here wow time really flies um so yeah let's talk about costs accommodation is expensive it's pretty much actually it's more than what i was paying in london in london my rent was around 800 pounds now i am paying for an apartment around 1000 pounds plus the bill so it's about 1100 pounds per month um but of course i'm literally by the ocean so if i compare my standard of living it's much higher here so even though it is more expensive to pay for rent i have a rooftop on my you know on my terrace i have a pool i have a rooftop i have a gym and this is a nice modern apartment um you can get stuff cheaper you can get cheaper apartments for sure um i'm just very close to the ocean i'm very close to the center this is a safe area this is a modern building and it's a one bedroom apartment so these are the prices you'd be looking at if you wanted something within like that something modern clean um new build doesn't fall apart and even here like things keep breaking okay that's like another thing about Mexico things constantly keep breaking which is annoying as hell but i'm getting used to it it's definitely testing my patience and i'm just kind of chilled about it now i'm like well internet doesn't work again whatever as long as i don't have a cooking class because that's really stressful so yeah so you can definitely find something for seven eight hundred pounds for sure or higher so if you ever want to come to live in Mexico the only suggestion i say is go onto the Facebook Marketplace and look for apartment there because if you're gonna look through Airbnb um they take first of all huge commissions and the prices are even higher because they're for Americans a lot of American people come here and i think for them Mexico is very cheap uh because American prices are even higher uh but for us if you're from Europe if you're from London even this is not a cheap place to be now let's talk about food costs food costs are very expensive here it's crazy it's literally two or three times more expensive than what i used to pay in London and in London uh i don't even know whether food quality is better here or there um it's definitely less variety here and definitely a lot um a lot of things are missing especially as i'm a food blogger and i cook a lot and i experiment a lot i need a lot of things and i don't have a lot of stuff here so i don't actually um i can't really make some of my like cakes or something like that so that's kind of a huge drawback for me and one of the negative points about living in mexico um but yeah basically the food is below average in terms of the supermarket quality i don't know i think it's like the the shop that i go to you know it's like walmart it's their local one the big one but I think it's an American chain so again is it American food or is it Mexican I have no idea but it's not very good it's average I'm actually on my carnivore diet as you know so I order like meat from this lady which is like grass-fed meat and it's very expensive but it lasts me quite a long time so um if I was to eat like how I usually eat with lots of vegetables and fruit and everything else I don't know it costs me even more I think um and I need to find some good quality because at the moment yeah and it's very expensive every time i go to shop like let's say i have a cooking class i spend about a hundred dollars which is like 60 to 80 pounds literally to get a few bits that would cost me 20 pounds in london versus 60 to 80 pounds here i honestly don't know why the prices are so high here for food um so that's food and accommodation maybe you'll need to let me know exactly what cost you want to know but i'm just generally talking about stuff um taxis are pretty cheap comparing to london i think unless you get scammed which it happens quite often here they think you're a tourist especially if they don't know you live here they like trying to double or triple charge you or even if you just look non-mexican they're gonna try and charge you more um so i just usually don't ask them how much it is if i'm traveling around the city and just get in like a local they don't ask and then you just pay them at the end whatever is the rate you know 40 60 pesos which is like a couple of pounds um or dollars and uh if you're traveling somewhere further it can be from like 20 quid to 40 quid for like one hour journey which i think is definitely sort of similar maybe cheaper than london or i suppose you know any other country uh i'm not talking about america here because i don't know so yeah so the taxis are pretty cheap and i think they don't have uber they have mafia it's not even a joke guys i'm serious uh there is no uber here like it's literally a mafia taxi and they all argue between themselves they have ranks on where they can park their taxis and so forth so it's a serious messy situation especially if you are you know want to get home and you're somewhere far there's no way you're gonna have to overpay so it's kind of cheap but it can be expensive now things like going on trips like adventures you know okay the good things is you do live in a paradise you literally are in a paradise in the beautiful caribbean all the different islands around you especially where i live you know i can pop to all the different places um just within a couple of hours and you can relatively get there quite cheap you can get a boat or you can get a private taxi or whatever excursion and excursions can be for a whole day just only like 50 40 pounds but that's like a whole day experience you know you just i don't know experiencing cenotes swimming in the ocean i don't know going to some jungle doing some sort of activity or just being on the stunning beach and like literally Caribbean beach so that side i think is pretty cheap especially for what you get and it kind of makes you feel like you're on vacation especially when i live here i work a lot so i stay at home but then if i do plan a trip like i'm going on tomorrow i'm going to Holbox which is a beautiful beautiful island and so yeah that's pretty cheap we're just getting a car and we're driving there so um awesome pretty cheap on that sense um food and restaurants is okay i'm a food snob so i don't know if you should listen to me but for me you know if you want good food you can only get it in a good restaurant and good restaurants are usually owned by americans i think or like very big brands so you have a chain of really good restaurants here where you can get amazing food amazing service amazing everything but it costs a lot it costs you just like so much comparing to you know the local prices any local restaurants I'm sure you can find good ones maybe outside like the central area you know like where the tourists go but again the quality just really lacks and they're very inflexible in the sense that if you don't like something or you're asking them like not to put oil or butter on your dish they just either argue with you or they tell you it's not possible or they tell you like you know or they say yes we will do it and then the food comes and nothing's being done so in that sense like it's really hard for me to adjust with food but I'm getting used to it I'm cooking at home now at the moment but I just decided I'm either cook at home or i go to these nice places and that's it and then my life is easy um but yeah in terms of restaurants again like it's a really hard question i don't think in Yucatan area the food is amazing i've heard if you go to oaxaca or mexico city the food is incredible there so i'm yet to go there and explore and then i guess i will let you know um but let's say you go for dinner to a nice restaurant uh it can be anywhere from 30 to 60 up to 100 pounds per meal probably for two people um for one person it's like from 30 to 40 pounds okay um and it's not it's not that crazy it's not like that expensive uh but then if you go every day or if you have lunch and dinner it can kind of like start to accumulate it can become quite expensive um and that's why i mean in london you can definitely excuse me i'm still getting over my cold oh in london you can definitely find some sort of like meal deals oh my god i can't even pause this video because it's like i'm doing it live and i don't have time to edit getting my voice back i was gonna say in london there's so many like um deals that you can go into like amazing i'm getting hot in here oh i need my aircon oh yeah air conditioning is very expensive by the way as well so you don't leave it on all day you can just turn it on when you're hot it didn't even work it's going on uh yeah so in london you can go for like a really nice three course meal for like 25 quid you know and you can find lots and lots of different alternatives and meals so on this side it's definitely more expensive so yeah but it's like the top restaurant you know with nice view you're like on a rooftop and you know it's kind of cool and romantic and the atmosphere is there so it's worth paying for that um in terms of beach clubs beach clubs is something that i did a lot but i haven't done in a while which i kind of should get back to it so usually costs from 20 to 25 pounds for beach club to go for a whole day and that includes your pool your food your drink so even though you pay 25 quid for a whole day that's towards your food and drink so technically yeah it's pretty good deal and i think beach clubs are awesome um not only you know you get nice sun lounge you get nice food drinks the view the pool basically it's a really cool way to chill and relax i kind of was planning to do it every weekend but then i'm not doing it i don't really know what i'm doing i need to get back to my uh work-life balance um so that's kind of the beach club side um in terms of like spending money on clothes or something like that if you like shopping i don't really like shopping i know it's a shock but a lot of people tell me that they go to Cancun for shopping like here for example where i live um in Playa there isn't really that much shopping i mean there's like Zara and like three other shops and that's it they don't really have many clothes so and the prices for clothes are just kind of the same prices you would get in Europe um not too expensive just standard standard price um but yeah but given even saying it all that you know the food and the accommodation is more expensive than London for example one thing that's definitely uh much cheaper and literally can live like a king is all the services okay so services like massages services like personal trainer personal yoga teacher i don't know personal stretching teacher whatever teacher you want to get you can reasonably get a teacher for very decent amount like any type of services for beauty like your hair your nails your face the whole shebang right if you're a woman you know what i'm talking about um it's definitely much cheaper here so just to give you an example um massages so if you go to really really good masseuse um it's about 20 to 25 pounds now in London you can't get a massage like you can't get a good massage for cheaper than like 60 50 quid and sometimes even if you get like a bulk you know package you get them even cheaper um so i like that um all the beauty treatments are literally half the price so you can get your manicure and pedicure done for like 20 25 pounds for two in London that would be only for one and things like you know oh one thing is actually expensive here's hairdressers which is weird like for example to color my hair and to to get it done like i think i paid over 300 pounds which is crazy but then i think London is even more expensive but then if i compare it to Latvia then it's definitely crazy um so yeah and of course for example having a personal trainer which was my dream for many years because i was like i need to get motivated i want a personal trainer i had the best personal trainer in the best gym that i go to here and it was i believe 15 or 20 pounds per hour uh sort of per hour and a half so like basically an hour and a half training so on average it's like 10 to 12 pounds an hour for personal trainers which yes it's still a lot if you think about it but comparing to London when they start from 50 to 100 pounds an hour this is like amazing you basically get 10 sessions instead of one so I've been able to train with a personal trainer I have a coaching stretching teacher which I think is even cheaper or maybe the same price you can get a yoga teacher basically on that side is pretty awesome and then of course you have all these events going around here which are pretty cheap you know if you want to experience like different things like go to sound meditation do like a yoga on the moon on the roof i don't know do all these crazy things dancing tantra all of that kind of stuff spiritual things there's a lot of spiritual stuff like temazcal the clean cleansing cleaning all these things then you know like it's definitely much much cheaper you can go to like events for like i don't know a couple of pounds and just kind of it's nice to do something different in the evening and do new things and experiences so overall even though the costs are quite expensive comparing to london you still get a hundred times much better quality of life and much higher quality of life and you can live like a king in the sense that you can have a trainer you can even order food here like when i just arrived i was ordering meal preps and i think that was costing me something like 50 or 60 pounds a week for like four home-cooked meals a day so if you are lazy and you don't want to cook at all you could i'm getting cold now ah so you could potentially um just order those as well so overall you know depending on your budget but if you take your you know accommodation your food um and like activities or training and stuff like that you're looking at around two to three thousand pounds a month oh i'm cold now it's not listening to me uh but this is like the top top of the line if you're getting everything if you are getting a cheap accommodation cheaper food you're not going to restaurants you don't have a trainer you can easily live here on a thousand pounds and still be obviously really close to the beach and you know live an amazing life um so yeah these are all the costs and kind of like positives and negatives kind of all in one i hope that answers a lot of questions i just realized the video is very long but hopefully you're enjoying it and i'm in a funky mood today i don't know if you can tell i'm kind of like still i'm trying to uh i'm trying to get better like i'm feeling healthier but i'm still not 100 but my mood is already coming out and it's like okay it's a good time to do the video maybe it's just my hair it's just getting it's just getting so long and beautiful so yeah guys so this is the beauty of mexico i don't know if i can get into the video like what exactly i don't like about mexico what i do like maybe that would have to be a different video but i wanted to do the cost because a lot of you were asking me about the cost so let me know if you have any more questions and i'll do another video about what i like and don't like about Mexico and anything else that comes up anyway enjoy your friday and i'll see you soon bye