(It’s January 2024 and I’m backdating a post for each month that I have not blogged. Please scroll down to see the new posts starting with the July 2023 highlights)

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October was difficult.

I had some health concerns that sent me a new doctor who sent me for a lot of tests that resulted in my going to a couple of specialists and getting even more tests. I finally got some answers, am in treatment, and may eventually share the journey because Canadian women my age need to be aware of just how lack of access to adequate healthcare has caused us harm. At any rate, despite how worrisome everything seemed in October, it really wasn’t that bad at all and I’m doing great.

But poor Xtiga did not fare so well. She really struggled with her change of circumstance and even 9 months in, she just was not eating well. Her vet diagnosed her with a heart condition that she has probably had all her life. We got her on some meds that helped for a while. But she was an elderly cat who’d had a terrible recent trauma and she just couldn’t hold on. I made the difficult decision to let her go in October.

One of my last photos of her:

Both she and Bonita now watch over me while I work:

Now on to the better parts of October. I started the final Strike book and absolutely devoured it. I really recommend this series. Books 5 and 7 are my favourites. 6 was a disappointment, but I’m glad I stuck through because 7 read itself.

Our heat wave persisted, LOL:

We had an eclipse!

The office of the first doctor I saw is close to my favourite brunch spot, Las Enchiladas, that I order from a lot but had never visited in person:

I ordered my favourite, enchiladas in crema de chile xcatic with their delicious habanero sauce:

October was the first scheduled maintenance of my water system. The filters were barely used. The technician said that the company is growing and they are exploring putting smaller household clients like me on a once-a-year maintenance plan at a lower monthly cost.

I thought I saw a flamingo on my way to Pilates once morning, but turned out it was a giant shrimp 😂:

My girls at the end of October:

If you’ve stuck with me this long, stick with me a bit longer because November’s post is going to, and I say this non sarcastically, be riveting!

(It’s January 2024 and I’m backdating a post for each month that I have not blogged. Please scroll down to see the new posts starting with the July 2023 highlights)

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Oy, there is not much to report for September, but I promise, there is good stuff ahead! I was just staring at the finish line of the original three-year house purchase and doing the final big income-earning push before I could reap the rewards of all my toil!

I did make it out for tacos at least once:

Forget ducks, getting your cats in a row is where it’s at:

Sadly, the English bookstore Between the Lines announced its closure, so I took an afternoon to get a big load of discounted books. I happen to be well into that top book of the pile at the time of writing this post.

Around the corner across from Santa Lucía is a new kinda weird but fabulous restaurant that serves Thai-inspired noodle dishes as well as Swedish meatballs. I’ve eaten there twice now and love it! The food is fresh and full of vegetables. This is their pad Thai:

Spa day at the dentist came with a fabulous new view!

I wasn’t able to resist one of those sketchy ads on Facebook and to my delight, my order came quickly and was just as advertised! Isn’t this cute? I love it for when I have cold coffee.

(It’s January 2024 and I’m backdating a post for each month that I have not blogged. Please scroll down to see the new posts starting with the July 2023 highlights)

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August was the month of Barbenheimer! I’m mad I wore this dress to see Barbie rather than my pink gingham similar to the one she wears in the movie. 😆 I saw the movies on back-to-back days, so that was a fun weekend!

I don’t usually get popcorn, but I did to see Barbie. This is cheese-flavoured popcorn with cheese Ruffles mixed in. Mexican junk food is amazing!

I usually get my movie ribs at Chili’s, where I always get a giant margarita!

Those of you who follow me on Instagram probably remember how my front door lock broke in August. I just love how everything here runs on Whatsapp so efficiently. I found a local locksmith through Google, Whatsapped him my photo, promptly received a diagnostic that I needed to replace the mechanism along with a very reasonable quote, and not even 30 minutes later, he was leaving my house, the job done!

Another service I love is Uber Flash, for getting packages across town without you. I’ve done shopping on days where my cleaning fairy is here and sent the shopping home in its own Uber for her to put in the fridge while I went on to another store. In August, I wanted to buy this dish from an online seller across town. Since the value was so low, he was comfortable calling it an Uber and I was comfortable transferring him the money from my bank account. We would not have made the transaction if I had to pick up or he had to deliver.

My girls in August:

My big virtual challenge for 2024 was to walk from the southern to northern tip of mainland Great Britain, Lands End in Cornwall to John O’ Groats in Scotland (where I was last in July of 1998!). In August, I was halfway there, in Yorkshire, where I spent the early months of 2016. At time of writing, early January, I’m 96% of the way there with only 56KM to go! I started in March and am therefore going to complete the journey two months ahead of schedule.

I’m afraid September won’t be much more exciting as house closing plans began to ramp up in August and I was extra focussed on making as much money as I could to put towards closing fees now that I had a better idea of what those would be.

(It’s January 2024 and I’m backdating a post for each month that I have not blogged.)

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July feels like a lifetime ago. I already shared the biggest highlight, getting my mortgage, but as of the time of writing this post in January 2024, we still have not closed. It’s been a Process, but since I’m already in my house, the delays haven’t been too onerous and I remain patient, waiting for this final chapter, this end of the beginning of the rest of my life, to come to a close.

The summer was infernally hot, so looking at my pictures from the month, I just see lots of cooking, cats, and memes. Really the only exciting things that happened were a Costco run and the day I played hooky to see Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny! I like to go out for ribs on movie days and tried a new restaurant, TGI Friday’s, this day. The food was forgettable but for this fresh habanero salsa, of which I ate the whole thing. I finally have Mexican tastebuds!

Some shots of the girls in July:

I did a lot of Conqueror Virtual Challenges in 2023, as motivation to get exercise beyond just Pilates. For each completed challenge, you get a beautiful medal. Here is one I received in July for the Giza Pyramids challenge:

We have a fledgling new bus service in Mérida that uses a prepaid card that you top up rather than cash. I finally was able to get my card in July even if, spoiler alert, I didn’t get to use it for months.

I’m really pleased by how much I read for pleasure in 2023. I got through all of the CB Strike novels. In July, I got to work on the last one in my pile, with the goal to finish by the time the next one arrived in early October!

I can’t believe the Taco-Bell-style bean burritos were made in July since I finished the last one yesterday. This was some of the best meal planning I’ve ever done as they are fairly nutritious and filling and they freeze well. I was always happy to pull one out for a quick meal over these last five very busy months.

On to August. I hope that month was a bit more riveting…

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If you go to the expat forums here and ask about getting credit in Mexico, especially a mortgage, you’ll hear outdated lies like “Cash is king” and that it’s impossible for a foreigner to get credit here. There really are not a lot of resources for English-speaking immigrants to Mexico as we’re seen as expats who will always have a foot in their home country. Well, returning to Canada is a non-starter for me, so I need to figure out how to make a life here, and figuring that out involves a lot of figuring things out for myself because the resources just aren’t there. So maybe this post will help someone else like me in building their life in Mexico. For those who are new here, note that I do speak Spanish and do everything in Spanish, and that that makes a bigger difference than the non-Spanish speakers realise.

In January 2021, I was given the opportunity to buy the house I’m renting. The way I pulled that off is alien to Americans and Canadians, but my bank account manager said it is absolutely the way things are done here, by building a deep personal relationship with sellers in order to make a deal like they would with a family member. But even if you didn’t have that, I think that my experience in applying for a mortgage will still be valuable.

The deal was that the sellers would act as the bank for three years, at which point they would consider themselves paid and I’d have to make a huge balloon payment to clear the mortgage on the house, whether that be with cash or by obtaining my own loan.

I knew that paying cash was going to be near impossible so I immediately looked into what I would need to build a credit history here to be able to have a chance of qualifying for a mortgage by February 2024. The steps really aren’t that different than those of establishing a credit history in Canada — you just need to find the first bank willing to extend you credit.

I’d had a bank account with HSBC for a few years, so I started with them and asked for a credit card, with the hope being that I could build credit with them and just do a transfer of the existing mortgage they were holding from the sellers’ names to mine. But I was not surprised when I was declined as HSBC treated me like a tourist through our entire relationship, going so far as to freeze my account every time I bought something they didn’t think a tourist should be buying.

I decided to try out BBVA and they were great from the beginning. They did not fuss about my being only a permanent resident and gave me a bank account, a savings plan, and a path towards getting my first Mexican credit card. From that point, my journey to building my credit here was easy.

I got a couple of increases on my card and before I knew it, I had an offer on my phone to take a personal loan. I was advised to take the loan, make payments for a few months, and then pay it off. The loan was stupidly/dangerously easy to get — I literally just had to press “accept” on my phone and I had the funds. The interest rate was sky high, as interest rates usually are here, but it was a means to an end.

The next step was to see if another bank would extend me credit, so I was advised to try out for something like the Costco or Rappi Visa cards. The Rappi card was interesting to me as this is a delivery service I use a lot and I could do the entire application process through my phone (rather than having to travel to Costco). I was immediately approved and the card was delivered to me the next day!

At this point, I was advised to not ask for more credit and to keep my credit card balances low. I do have a balance on my BBVA card for items bought with “months without interest” promotions, but was told that’s not a problem as I’ve been making the monthly payments and the card balance is very low compared to the limit (which is now six times what it was when I opened the account).

So to recap, over two years I’ve obtained credit products and used them responsibly. I’ve also been careful to even out deposits into my bank account to show that while I might be an “autonoma” (freelancer) I have steady, regular, reliable income. Also part of my credit history, although not nearly as important to a computer algorithm as I’d hope, is that I have been paying the existing mortgage myself for over two years without fail.

In late July, I went to to the bank to see if I was ready to apply for the mortgage. I was told that if we did this, we’d have two to three months to close, so I had to make sure the sellers would not mind closing out the contract early. They know I’m at this stage and are standing by, so I’m good to go.

Now, here is where my application process is probably going to wildly differ from someone walking in off the street with a house they are interested in buying and no equity in said house. You’re probably going to need to have up to 60% cash available as a deposit. I, on the other hand, am looking for a loan for less than half the value of the house I’m buying. There is absolutely no way the bank can lose in such a scenario, so spoiler, I was approved for a loan to cover not only the existing mortgage balance, but also all closing costs, with enough leftover to do some renovations if I want.

Here’s the paperwork the bank needed for my mortgage application. By the way, they wanted everything digitally even though I arrived with a stack of paper!

-copy of my Canadian passport photo page
-copy of my permanent resident card
-copy of my birth certificate (which was thankfully accepted despite being in French)
-copy of my CURP (“social security number”) certificate
-copy of my “constancia fiscal” with RFC, which is a document from SAT/Hacienda saying I’m tax-compliant and which provides my tax ID number. I got this back last August, clever me!
-comprobante de domicilio (proof of address, a power bill)
-three most recent bank statements
-three local, preferably Mexican, references (I put a call-out to almost everyone I know and was shocked by how fast the references came in, with some, like my handyguy, having everyone in their family send me their info!)

In addition to this, added to the file were the house purchase contract, the last mortgage statement from HSBC, and a letter I wrote outlining what I was asking for and why. Ultimately, the contract means nothing to this transaction, but my account manager used this extra paperwork to push through with a more senior person after I was denied by the computer algorithm.

Once all of this was reviewed, I was further asked for statements from my Canadian bank and PayPal as the source accounts for my deposits here and an explanation of where the money was actually coming from. I gave a full year of statements and supporting documentation showing steady payments from the same clients and said I could go back a full three years showing these same clients paying me every month, and even further back showing that I’ve been supporting myself for 12 years as a freelancer, which is how I got my initial residency visa.

After all this was reviewed, it was time for a telephone verification. This took a few tries as their phone system connection isn’t great and I couldn’t really understand the callers. They finally found a line with a better connection and then the call was easy to deal with, so it really wasn’t a language barrier issue. I can’t remember everything they asked me but some of the questions were:

-When did you last apply for a credit product, whether approved or not?

-What is the balance on your non-BBVA credit product?

-What is the balance and limit of your BBVA credit card?

-What is the balance on your store credit cards, if any?

-Do you have a car loan?

-Then there were some fairly random questions, like a multiple choice of which city I live (none of them), that I think were for identify verification.

-Finally, some questions about the service I’ve received from BBVA.

I didn’t find anything up to this point particularly onerous and I was able to come up with all paperwork and reports in minutes, so I wasn’t scrambling for anything bizarre.

This morning, I got confirmation that my loan was approved and the terms thereof. Honestly, it feels like I won the lottery.

Next steps are to do the valuation of the house and the fideicomiso (trust), so I need to get a huge pile of documents from the sellers. They travel a lot and are always busy, so I told them we have three months to close and I’m not in a hurry, which I’m really not now that I know everything is in place.

I feel like I’ve reached port after an extremely long voyage that started on September 4, 2008, when a naïve and intrepid girl pointed an RV north into the wilderness of l’Abitibi. I thought my port was going to be Haven, I honestly did, and I would have been happy for the simple future that Haven would have afforded me if I could have made a living there, but it was just a port of call on my way to a life I hadn’t even dared to dream of and so am still having difficulty envisioning.

“Peace and rest at length have come
All the day’s long toil is past,
And each heart is whispering, ‘Home,
Home at last.”