Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now, while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.

My name is Joshua Sheetz, I am your host and, on today's show, I want to talk about the differences in the cost of living based upon living in a place like Mexico, which of course is a massive place, versus a place like the United States, which is correspondingly massive.

In the most recent episode, I was talking about the importance of filtering advice through your own situation to figure out what is applicable to you.

And I actually can't think of a better proof of that than this particular question, but several listeners did ask me the question.

They said, Joshua, what did you mean? You said the cost of living for this Venezuelan guy living in the United States would be higher in Mexico than it would be in the United States.

And I want to clarify my thoughts on that so that you can think about where your cost of living would actually be higher or lower.

I do actually believe that the cost of living in the United States for many people can and often does wind up being lower than in many places that are perceived to be cheaper, such as Mexico.

But that your specific numbers will vary greatly depending on the budget categories that are important to you.

For context, as I shared in the podcast episode, I was talking with my client, Venezuelan immigrants had lived, had worked and lived both in Mexico and the United States.

And I said, where are you likely to earn more money in Mexico with the United States?

Well, he was working as a salary engineer and the salary plus you had a bonus and commission structure as well because he's working as an engineering sales.

But I said, where you like to make more money? And the answer was obviously the United States far higher income potential in the United States versus Mexico for a guy in his particular field.

Second question, I asked him, I said, where are you going to pay higher tax on your wages? Mexico or the United States?

And the answer is obviously there. Mexico is much more expensive from a tax rate perspective.

Mexico is not generally a tax even there.

Few little loopholes that you can find, but Mexico is pretty high taxes on wages compared to the United States.

Then the third question, I said, where are you going to have a lower cost of living?

And the answer there, both he and I said the United States.

Now, that one is certainly the questionable one, right? It's a harder one that you have to unpack a little bit.

But it is important to identify it.

And I've asked myself these questions. I have experience living in the United States.

I have experience in several Latin American countries. I've run the budget in Mexico.

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