Moving to Mexico: Who We Are & Why We Took the Leap | This Might Be a Bad Idea

Okay, my name is Jeff. I'm from the galaxy far, far away. We're here to share all the chaos that came with it. Super burnout from kissing people's asses for the last 20 years. Mexico or like prison cells. We definitely live on the outskirts. Suburbia. I wouldn't even say suburbia. I'd say like maybe farm country in the middle of nowhere. Welcome to This Might Be a Bad Idea, the show where love, life, and questionable decisions collide. I'm Erica. And I'm Jeff. We moved to Mexico and we're here to share all the chaos that came with it. So this is our very first episode, episode number one. So we thought we'd tell you a little bit about who we are, how we ended up here, and why we ended up moving to Mexico. And well, was it a bad idea? So I just want to talk about us, right? I guess Jeff, if you want to start about who you are. Okay. My name is Jeff. I'm from a galaxy far, far away. I'm kidding. I'm from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I grew up there. Spent the last 20 years working in sales. Super burnt out from kissing people's asses for the last 20 years. And I decided to move to Mexico with my beautiful wife, Erica. Yes. Right now we're married. I do have a child. He's 24 years old. Definitely older than me. Oh, I love sports. Love the Philadelphia, the 2025 Philadelphia Super Bowl champion, Philadelphia Eagles. Like I said, I have a child. He's 24 years old. I knew I was a great dad when my son was more mature than me at age eight. And there's a story that goes with that. Ended up going to Great Adventure with him with a map in hand. Of course, I got lost. At eight years old, he picked up the map. I started following him. And of course, we got to the exact spot that we wanted to get to, his favorite part. And that's a little bit about me. So I'll tell you a little bit about me. I am Erica. I was born and raised in Philly as well. 10-year age gap, so we're not in the same circles. But I went to school in Philly, ended up going to grad school in Miami, got a great opportunity to go overseas and open up some offices overseas as well. And then I came back to the States. My brother and my mom are both diagnosed with cancer around the same time. My mom with breast cancer, my brother with pancreatic cancer. My mom is in remission. My brother, unfortunately, did pass, which spared me to create my nonprofit that I now have, which is called Students Wings, which is an organization which helps underdeserved kids in the Philadelphia and greater Philadelphia area to travel. And we actually have our first kids traveling this summer in July. It's not the... quantity, but it's more of the quality of kids being able to have that opportunity to travel. And that has opened my experiences to new things that I'd never thought I would have, because now I'm working in real estate and operations company, now working remotely in Mexico. And it's never been on my vision board, but here I am now living in Mexico, running an organization, running a brokerage, running a nonprofit, running a real estate fund. And that's all just because of my experience through travel and what we love to travel. And One of the things about our relationship is we both live in Philly and we both hate the cold and we're like, we didn't want to stay here. My plan was never to, when I came back to the States for my family, it was never to stay in America. I always knew I was moving back out of the States because I, as soon as I was 17, I left Philly to Miami for warmer temperatures. And then I came back for my family. So when I met Jeff, he had always wanted to go back to California. And I mean, you can say how much you love California. We talk about it all the time. I was like, we can never retire there. The cost is just way too high. And I didn't want to spend all my time working if I'm going to enjoy that later in life. So we threw around some places. We talked about Italy because Jeff's family is from Italy. We talked about Costa Rica because Jeff loves to surf. And then Mexico came up too because it's just inexpensive. And then what happened is we were in Jamaica in July of 2024. You know, we've met with our cousins who it was a whole 50th wedding anniversary. And my cousins had talked about they did the same exact thing. They were looking at Costa Rica, looking at Mexico. And I was just intrigued about this place that I've never heard in Mexico. You know, they're like, oh, we live in Merida. I'm like, Merida, what's that? So I did a deep dive and did a lot of research on Merida and where it is. And then oddly enough, coincidental, I had a work trip where I had to go to Mexico in October to Cancun. and to be there for a week. So I decided to make it a whole exploration trip. So I came down to Mexico in October of 2024. At that same time, I actually applied for my residency to become a Mexican temporary resident while I was here because if we're going to do it, I'm going to go all the way. That's how I do things. So I came down to Mexico. I was here for about two weeks, spent some time in Cancun, spent some time in Merida and fell in love with the culture, fell in love with the people. And I was like, oh, Jeff, I'm looking at houses while I'm here. And then I said, oh, Jeff, I signed up for a house. I don't know if you want to talk about how you were feeling when I told you that news, because it just kind of came up. You know, he was like, well, I think you're we're looking at houses when we weren't ready to sign anything. So I don't know how you want to talk about how you felt about that. I mean, you know, when I first found out, of course, I felt that I think that's a great idea. I mean, everything inside me said that it's a good idea. And I was happy that you took a mission of you. Yeah, I mean, it was a little difficult because I was looking at houses and I think we looked at 30 homes between my cousin and myself and me and our realtor at the time. Let's just say real estate is different in the states than it is in Mexico. And craftsmanship is just different altogether. So I looked at a lot of homes. I gave my realtor a set of rules and what we were looking for. For one thing, I have aging parents. So when I want them to visit, I wanted a first floor master. So that way when they come over, they don't have to climb the stairs. But then I still wanted stairs because I wanted separation because I do work from home. So I do like the two stairs, even though eventually maybe one day we'll probably get a one story by the beach. You know, that was one of the rules. And then the second one was we wanted a pool that was big enough for Jim to Jeff to float. No, Jim. But yes, that is correct. I needed a pool so I can flip. And then we wanted enough space in the backyard where we could enjoy the backyard because we love being outdoors. And the thing about being in the States and in Philly, the Northeast, we can only be in there in the summer or spring time. We can't really be there year round. So a lot of the things that we looked at in Mexico were like prison cells. You go outside and you're crammed into a four by four. And I was like, Alexis, where are you taking me? I was like, I told you it's Like these are priorities. Everything else is kind of, you know, second to none, but you know, I wanted the first floor master and I wanted the space outside. And, oh, we did want two sinks in the bathroom. Yeah. That was, that was a big thing that was so hard to find. Like they had these huge master suites and they would have these big, long vanities, but the vanities would have one sink. And I was just like, dude, like why is this one sink lonely by itself with this long vanity anyway? So I don't like to share. So, So we did, you know, after I look at 30 homes, we signed a contract for one and it didn't end well. The salesman was pretty shady to be to say the least. We'll go into that into another story. But I'm on the plane flying home and our realtor is sending me a video of the place that we ended up buying. And I was like, this looks great. And it's cheaper than everything else I've looked at. And it looks bigger than everything else. And I looked at, I told my cousin to go look at it the next day and she took a video. She gave me her two thumbs up and I ended up signing papers without ever looking at the house in person. So that, you know, whether that was a good idea or not, here we are, we're in Mexico and we have our new home. So, I mean, this is us in Mexico. I mean, you want to talk about your first thoughts about your first time in here? Cause we came in February, right? Yes. I think it just being really warm. I think it's feels like the hottest place on earth, but I'm getting used to it. I'd rather be hot and freezing cold. You know, there is a huge difference between that. Uh, but you know, so far the first 30 days have been going pretty smooth. You know, it's definitely an eye opening that you're not in the States anymore, that you're in Mexico, that everyone around me speaks a language that I don't understand. because everything's written in Spanish. But I think it's just moving forward and adjusting and adapting. And I think, you know, it'll just be better every day. Yeah. I mean, we came in February, we stayed in Centro. So we were downtown, the downtown area. So how would you compare the downtown area to where we live now? I mean, we definitely live on the outskirts. Suburbia. You know, you definitely, I wouldn't even say suburbia. I'd say like maybe farm country in the middle of nowhere. I think you definitely sort of need a car here because it's definitely not really walkable, even though there are some stores walkable. But, you know, I kind of question some of those stores because they're definitely out of people's garages. So I'd have to give it a little bit more time to kind of see if, you know, I can trust them and what they sell and the food that they make and cook. I think... you're definitely in the middle of nowhere and you realize it. So you definitely have to enjoy your house because you probably will be there 95% of the time. Well, I think too, we still haven't explored more of the culture and we know we don't have a car. So that kind of does limit us. We do have the luxury to be able to enjoy our house so we can spend 95, 98% of our time in our home because we have a nice pool. We have a nice backyard and we have the space in our house to be comfortable. So we do, luckily have that luxury and are blessed to have that. And then, so, I mean, we came here in February, the temperature was what? 75, between 75 and 80. Yeah. Wintertime. Wintertime here. And then now we're here in, it's July going on August. Yeah. So the temperature is. 94 to 97 degrees. Plus humidity. Plus Florida humidity mixed in. Yeah. That's. So most people stay indoors during the day and it's highly recommended not to work or do your errands during the midday. People usually do them in the morning or in the evenings. I mean, everywhere you go usually has AC anyway. We have many splits in our homes. So there's no central air. That's not a thing in Mexico. We did learn that quickly. From Mario, our HVAC guy. Mario, yes. He's pretty good. We didn't tie until three or four days later. Oh, yeah. That's a great thing about Mexico. The first thing when I first landed in Mexico, this was before Jeff came in October. I was going through immigration as soon as I landed the plane in Merida. I had to go to the bathroom. I went to the bathroom and then I leave my phone in the stall. And I don't realize that until I'm through immigration. And basically that's their border. So, you know, you can't go back in. I'm like, fuck, what am I going to do? I don't have my phone. I can't contact my cousin. I can't reach anyone. My phone's now in a toilet somewhere. In the States, it'd probably be gone as soon as I put it down. I go over to one of the workers in the airport, one of the ladies that was cleaning. I was like, am I broken Spanish? Can you help me? I left my phone in the toilet. She's so sweet. She grabs my phone, brings it over to me, and No big deal. And I'm like, these people are crazy. And you know, my phone will be going in a second. That's only the first time I had like kindness and Merida. I was in the airport, dropped a dollar, a coin, and someone ran me, ran me down. It was like, oh, you dropped this. And I'm like, okay, it's a coin, whatever. You know, then I left my wallet with all my cards, all my cash, all my identity in an Uber and got it back. there's been plenty of times where you think you're going to get frauded here in Mexico. And I can say people have been kind. So, you know, that's one thing that I loved about people. They're just here. They're so kind. They're just so giving. Jeff talked about, we, we didn't have money. We don't have, we don't carry cash a lot in America, but everything in Mexico is cash. So we didn't have cash to pay our HVAC guy. And then he was like, Oh, it was, this was on a Wednesday. And he was like, Oh, don't worry about it. Come I'll come on Saturday. And, I'm like, what? I was like, I want to pay you now. And he's like, don't worry about it. I can't get to you. I'll come on Saturday. And then I had to call him on Saturday to remind him. He just wasn't even thinking about it. So, I mean, there's a whole different level of people and, you know, their personalities. I mean, you've walked into the town. So you want to talk about your experiences with that? Yeah. I mean, there's a town next to us. Very, very small town. Actually kind of reminds me of an old Mexican Western town. I have walked through it many times. People have been very nice. I don't feel at all threatened. I think when I explain this to people, people will feel that I should be threatened or people would feel that I should be walking on eggshells, walking in a strange village of people that I've never met and of course that I don't even understand. But everyone's been really nice. Everyone's been saying hello to me and, you know, very kind. And so I think it's, pretty safe area to walk and get exercise and kind of meet your surroundings. Yeah. I mean, we can say that, you know, we've lucked out on our community. We have great neighbors, you know, it's been pretty awesome living here so far, but we'll dive more into our crazy stories and the things that have happened and shout out to Dorian. And I'm not talking about the smelly fruit. Dorian is our neighbor who has been very helpful, but, We will tell you more stories of our crazy adventures, especially about how I lost $8,000 buying this house. And on the next episode, we'll actually tell you why we call Jeff a racist. And it's not what you think. But tune in next week on this might be a bad idea. Thanks for tuning in. And if you got any stories about why things might be a bad idea, pop over to our website and it'll be down in the links. Thanks for stopping by.