Job Discussion Forums

[M@tt]

full comida corrida is pretty cheap where i lived--maybe 25 for most of what moonraven mentioned. i do think tortas are real food, though. just not something you would want to base a diet on. but then lots of mexican food is not very healthy, particularly the fried stuff.

the salary question completely depends on your location, your experience, the school, the hours, etc. in other words, it's impossible to give a quote without more specific questions. i would say in the range of 4000-20000 pesos/month, depending on the above factors.

"getting by" in mexico is not difficult at all, in my opinion. you just have to be resourceful. maybe the same goes for saving money? someone else would be better at answering that question.

[Ben Round de Bloc]

I'm one of those who doesn't work at maintaining a balanced diet. I eat to live rather than live to eat, and I'm too codo to pay the prices for "fancy" meals in expensive restaurants. If I have as many as four regular complete meals in a week, it's unusual for me, and those usually are at cocinas econ�micas or brought home from the supermarket deli. I tend to "graze" most of the day instead of eating regular meals. Yet, I manage to maintain good health, and I have a much healthier diet than I ever did in the U.S. One of the things that I think helps a lot is the availability of fresh foods that don't have preservatives in them. It seems to me that the best things to eat and drink here are the cheapest and easiest to get: Fresh fruit and fruit drinks (called aguas in this part of the country,) vegetables, seafood, poultry, eggs, pasta, rice, corn tortillas, and bakery bread available right from the oven several times a day. Bananas, limes, chile max (pronounced mah-sh,) and fresh eggs from my back yard. Oranges, melons, pineapples, grapefruit, tangerines, tomatoes, squash, and onions from a pick-up truck that comes through the neighborhood at least three times a week. I eat junk food, too, and I have a terrible sweet tooth, but the amount I eat of those things compared to healthy food is minimal. When I moved here ten years ago, my waist size was 38+. It's been 33 for the past several years, and I'm over 6' tall. The point is, as others have stated, it's possible to have a healthy diet and do so inexpensively in this country.

[moonraven]

I agree about the lack of preservatives--one of the top reasons I moved to Mexico was because I felt so much better. In the US, for example, preservatives can be avoided--but it isn't easy and cheap to do so.

[billyd]

O.K. Tim;
You are not allowed to talk about food anymore until I'm physically back in Mexico.
Especially "aguas".
billyd
dreaming of mariscos

[geaaronson]

moonraven-
the tortas that went for 3.5 pesos was purchased in December of 2003. The cafe was a very decent little eatery. I was very shocked at the low price as tortas elsewhere are usually twice that.
A meal for me can be two tortas and a beverage. Tortas are quite filling. I was making the point that you can subsist on quite a little in Mexico, which was along the lines of the point another poster was making but I suppose others wanted to emphasize what they thought would be adequate meals.
I apologize to you that I live in Atlanta, GA. I suppose that automatically disqualifies me from writing on this thread. I apologize.

[PlayadelSoul]

[ls650]

Maybe folks could move away from the cost and nutritional value of tortas and return to the topic of the OP..?

[moonraven]

I will do just that.

How do we do it in Mexico?

Keeping in mind that "supermodel" Linda Evangelista once said that she didn't get out of bed for less than 10,000 dollars a day--I will have to say that it's not worth bothering to do that in Mexico for less than a NET salary of 10,000 pesos a month. Anything less will not allow you to have acceptable digs and do any traveling in country.

PlaydelSol lives in Houston, Texas--and his whole rap on this forum is just a crock.

How about them apples?

[Ben Round de Bloc]

[Michael Smith]

$10,000 a month net sounds about right, if you're making less you can probably get by, but if you want to save, travel or have any kind of luxury and a decent place to live you need at least that much.

[moonraven]

I did NOT say that you could save on that. If you are going to save on that, you need to forget either decent digs or travel.

[PlayadelSoul]

It also depends greatly on where you live and work. 10,000 pesos a month would be pushing it here in Playa (or is it Houston?). In Merida, you could live a lot better for that much.

[Ms. Atondo]

Wow. This post is very weird for me to read. Here is why... In the city where I worked I made net 6000 pesos a month. This was way more than I needed to live on. This salary covered a large, three bedroom apartment in a good location, gas, water, lights, transportation, many trips to my local cafe, lots of movies and all my food. I rarely ate out and did most of my cooking at home. I was also able to make a 4-day trip to the beach and pretty much bi-weekly trips out of town. This also bought most of my plane ticket home. Now that I read all of these posts I am glad that I decided to work not in Mexico city or a resort town but in a lesser know but still big city.

Just my two cents worth.

[Ben Round de Bloc]

[Ms. Atondo]

I lived there from November 2003 until January 2005. The only noticable price increase was the price of gas and the coffee at Cafe Europa! In this time I even decided to move to a better apartment as my first one had a bug problem when the rains came.

Who knows, maybe my city is a little "gem" untouched by national inflation. I was actually in the same city a few years ago and my favorite restaurant hadn't even needed to changed the menu to accomodate a change in prices. When I came back in November it was pretty much as I remembered it except for the Walmart and Office Depots.