 Hi everyone, George Kau here, wanted to let you know that I'm making a big life transition actually just in next week and less than a week from now. I am moving to a new country. So I have lived in the United States since I was seven came from Taiwan originally. Most of my extended family is still in Taiwan. And I've lived here in California basically for all my life since then so for about 40 40 years I've lived here in San Francisco I've lived for 20 years. And next week I am moving to Mexico. Why am I moving. I'm moving with my wife and my dog and cat. Yeah, so you know the whole family is moving. We are moving because, well, starting about five years ago, I started researching cheaper places to live in the world. Cheaper and, you know, my life, my, my, my wife likes warmer places so warmer than San Francisco, but not too warm, not too hot. Definitely we don't like humid heat. I've been researching a lot. I just got the pain because someone is coming to get some some furniture. We still have quite a bit of furniture left, not not that much I think it's manageable by this point. But we've been using Facebook marketplace a lot. And if you've never used Facebook marketplace to sell things or buy things. It's definitely worth trying. We have met a lot of nice people. There have also been quite a few scam artists. That's one of the things you'll learn as you start using Facebook marketplace is if anybody seem if you're selling something and anybody seems really eager to get your Venmo information before they've learned much about your product. It's probably a scam or they want to learn about your cell ZEL Z E L E info which is a banking type thing. It's probably a scam. If, if it's a low price item and they want to see your text yourself on pretty quickly. It's probably a scam. I don't know they probably want to send you some, some, you know, unsavory pictures or something like that, or savory pictures. But anyway, I, but when when it's not a scam, people actually are quite, quite nice and it's, it's, it's an interesting experience to, you know, to sell things personally because it's like, you experience, you know, capitalism or commerce firsthand and with strangers, right, like these people, you know, we may never see each other again, but we, we exchange money and then product and, and everyone's nice to each other and it actually is quite a positive experience. Just talk having a nice conversation with a stranger doing business or just selling something exchanging. It's quite a nice experience. I think this is the best of capitalism. You know, there are many, many issues with capitalism. I think this is not one of them and this is, this is how how it's supposed to be right someone saying oh this is worth 20 this is worth 40 this is worth 150 or whatever So, so back to why I'm moving. So I really haven't been thinking about moving to a cheaper place warmer place for for five years. I even have a YouTube video where I analyzed on this I researched different countries put a spreadsheet together and then made a YouTube video sharing my, my insights, and one of the top places, one of the top countries in terms of safety cost internet access good for expats, expats, meaning expatriates people moving from one country of origin to another and living there as a foreigner. Mexico. Other countries that were good were including gosh I don't remember now but you know there are some Southeast Asian countries like Malaysia, Thailand places like that. There was the Ecuador came up highly Columbia, especially the Medellin area so I researched all this back in 2018. And we just never made the move because we were quite comfortable here. But it was really during the pandemic that things started to change. I think our, our view of politics started to change. We got my wife and I got more tired of the, what we consider to be very restrictive policies in California masks and lockdowns and, and you know, things like that. I mean, we looked for a country that where we could be more free, essentially more less government restriction. And I think Mexico does qualify Mexico of course has its own problems that zone bureaucracy and the cartel is embedded with the government and all that stuff but one of the common misconceptions about Mexico is it's it's dangerous. And you know what I, I don't mind about that misconception because if more Americans and Canadians Australians are Europeans moved to Mexico then all of our costs will will rise in Mexico. But it's not it's not dangerous it's it's anyway that's just, it's a great grand myth that it's dangerous and again, you can believe that if you want to just keep the costs, lower in Mexico for for for the first expats. There are obviously places in Mexico just like there are places in the United States that are dangerous to live in. I mean, I don't know if there's any school shootings in Mexico, like there are in the United States or public shootings anyway. And people said what about the cartels. The cartels are embedded with the government it the cartels are like the, it's kind of like the corporate, you know, corruption here. You don't want anything to do with you, unless you're selling stuff that they sell I'm not planning to sell drugs or guns or anything like that. So cartels want cartels want peace in society so they can continue doing their thing. And, you know, we want, you know, most citizens want peace and so the cartels just fight amongst each other of course and that's sad and and. The citizens are kept, you know, they want to keep us peaceful and you know they run business cartels run businesses to and you know it's whatever it's not going to run into them on a on a daily basis, especially in certain certain regions where it's much more expats expats live there and very peaceful. Anyway, so we visited. We've been watching a lot of YouTube videos about expats living in Mexico, when watching for a couple years YouTube wonderful place to go and research places you want to move to and search expats in that country or expats in that state or province. And you'll get a lot of people who are very nice and make videos about what their life is like there what their costs are like and what. So we've been watching lots of YouTube videos and finally got comfortable about hey let's go let's go make a trip so back in February we made a trip to Mexico, and we loved it. We went to two places that we were thinking about one place was called Kedetaro Q U E. And it's like a small mid medium city, and it's got all the, you know, amenities of California San Francisco, essentially the same we've got they've got a Costco, h e b Walmart, you know, all the major chains are there it's it's it's very it wouldn't be any different. Very, very quite similar to living here essentially except at you know at least 33% to 50% off living expenses so it was much much cheaper, whether still very nice year round, not too hot, you know, definitely not too cold. So that's one place and we really enjoyed it we loved the people we met there. And then the other place we went to is the Lake Chapala region. So I have a lake behind this is not the real like this is the AI generated lake but Lake Chapala region is Lake Chapala is the largest lake in Mexico. And it's next to its 45 minutes from the half hour 45 minutes from Guadalajara, which is the second largest city in Mexico so also second largest city means it has all the amenities of any modern first world city. You know, amazing shopping malls and fashion centers and universities and cultural things and all the kinds of food in the world and of course the Walmart's the Costco's the H E B's all of them are there as well. So there's, you know, so we decided to move to the Lake Chapala air we visited both places because I was wonderful as well but I just felt like my heart was captured by the Lake Chapala region and so we're moving there it's it's high elevation which means it's it's not as hot as most places many places in Mexico so year round it's somewhere around you know, 45 Fahrenheit at the lowest to you know 85 Fahrenheit at the highest so it's pretty, pretty mild year round very good weather. And we loved the people of Mexico that's one of the things we I grew up in Southern California in Los Angeles Orange County area where there's a tremendous amount of racism towards Mexicans at least when I was growing up there there was. So, I didn't know any better growing up that's I was surrounded by racism with about Mexicans and that's all I knew. Of course, and I haven't met that many Mexicans in my life so it's not like I'm trying to be racist or whatever or it just, I try not to be obviously but that's just always been my upbringing so went to Mexico. The hardest working people, you know the most civil compassionate family oriented hardworking people some of the some of the best people I've ever met, you know. And yeah, so it was a wonderful surprising. We've already got a temporary residency visa. And that just took some application and they needed to see that we had enough money so we weren't going to be a drain on Mexican society and it was nice to for them to know that we were going to work virtually work from home. So we're not going to take Mexican jobs. I run ironic again I grew up in Southern California we were afraid of Mexican take Mexicans taking American jobs right now Mexicans are also afraid of Americans taking Mexican jobs and we moved there. So, it was, you know, embassy experience Mexican embassy in the US was was pleasant. It was not too hard to get a residency visa and so we're going to be able to live there. Long term, and then eventually after a couple years we can get become permanent permanent residents there. And the hardest part of all this has been decluttering our life. We've lived here for 20 years accumulate a lot of stuff. And, but not just that but we have only moved the United States all our lives, my wife and I. So we had a lot of stuff moved from earlier parts of our life here. So it's like our garage was storing a lot of, you know, photos and mementos from when we were kids. And so just like decluttering all that you know scanning thousands of photos. It's helpful to have a good scanner. Not expensive 50 bucks or whatever but it's so useful it scans thousands of photos all are my wife's client files all scanned in like everything scanned into the cloud now so we can recycle, you know, get rid of. And so it's really been the hardest part has been detachment from stuff detachment from old photos family photos, you know, trusting that the cloud version of the photos will be good enough. And, you know, not too distant future, you know, photo photo apps like Google photos will have AI upscaling of, you know, grainy old photos into, you know, really good life size photos I mean really good realistic photos. So, yeah, that's been the hardest thing and our relationship has grown has had to grow a lot because of that and one thing we wish we did earlier was to start selling our furniture and things months and months early in advance instead of in the final month. We've had to frantically try to, you know, fire sale of our furniture for $20 for this amazing thing that cost us $800. It's $20 now you know that kind of thing happening a lot now and or, or donating a lot of things giving trying to give it away we should have started that process months ago. I should have taken a month off from work but instead I was only taking one week off from work which is next week. I try to carve out a couple days off from work this week, but we're moving next Wednesday and so next week is my week off of work one week to move right to a new country so just a couple lessons and other things like there are professional organizers in your town. I wish we had gotten started and you've been willing to pay the $3,000 $5,000 I mean, my wife is very frugal so we weren't we didn't go through with it. I wanted to do it. I kind of wish we did 3000 5000 whatever it's it's worth it to save some relationships, a lot of relationship stress and a lot of your personal emotional stress and things like that. So, one second here. Sorry, my wife is calling so I better I better get going now anyway I hope this is interesting. If any questions you can comment below. I'll obviously still be running my business from from from there and time zone shift that was the other thing I wish I had thought through a bit better. The time zone shift means the year long programs I'm committed to means I have to like work at a different hours and things like that when I'm there. So, anyway, that's the latest update. This has been interesting in some way and inspiring some of you to consider something like this. And I wish you well, and I'll see you when I'm in Mexico, when I make another video in a couple weeks. See you soon.