#1057 – The Expat Files: Latin America, Solar, Language, UFOs, and Crypto

Automatically transcribed from the original recording; names and wording may contain errors.

[00:00] South of the border down Mexico way That's where I fell in love when the stars above came up to play and now as I wonder Hello there all you ex-pat wannabes I'm Johnny Mueller and you're listening to the expat files living in Latin America the show that tells you just what it's like to live Workplay and or retire down here in Latin America It's a mix of the good the bad the ugly and the great and it's all right here, so let's get started all right Let's see how many people we can irritate today You know isn't it funny how the supply of idiots and morons always far outstrips to demand by the way with this recent hack of gas And oil pipelines up by you That's just a start of it and of course that means higher gas prices

[00:47] They're gonna go way higher and that's not even considering inflation which we know when we go to the supermarket It's just crazy by the way. You know I keep close tabs on construction and construction materials I mean hey I built 13 houses over the years and have done a number of remodeling jobs, too And I still have the use of all ten fingers how about that for luck? But I can tell you this if you're coming down to Latin America thinking you're gonna buy some land and do a construction Project or a remodeling job you better buy your materials now and maybe put them into storage or something because it's been Estimated by people in the know in that business that prices within a year or two will be a hundred percent higher We're talking about the basic materials. You need to build a house cement steel lumber glass, etc Now the price of labor will remain the same

[01:34] Unbelievably low compared to labor costs up in the states speaking of labor costs up in the states You know with that $15 an hour minimum wage thing being pushed by that slimy swamp creature Biden as a federal minimum wage all that talk is rocket fuel for illegal immigration. It's simple math You have to realize that the average grunt worker down here in Latin America makes about 15 bucks a day A lot of them make 20, but 15 bucks is pretty normal I'm talking about the guys You know who do the dirty work the roofers the trench diggers the guys who haul blocks Mates cleaning ladies maintenance guys even Walmart workers and bank tellers the thing is you know idiot government Bureaucrats are not thinking about the secondary effects Latinos down here are now hearing about that $15 minimum wage

[02:21] Well, you can't imagine how fast news travels Especially since almost every Latin American family has a relative up north somewhere sending home remisses and with the advent of what's up and $50 Smartphones every family down here in Latin America is an intimate daily contact with their friends and family members up in the states Because it's free to talk on what's up So when some idiot bureaucrat or swamp creature like Biden does a press conference and announces a $15 federal minimum wage It only takes a week or two for that information to filter throughout Latin America And let me tell you when the minimum wage was back at seven bucks an hour that in itself was a huge Incentive for the poor and uneducated masses to try to sneak into the states But now that there's a federal mandate of 15 bucks an hour to go into effect less than a year from now March of 2022

[03:09] Down here in Latin America Latinos who've been on the fence thinking it's not worth the risk to sneak into the states Well that 15 bucks is gearing them up for a massive caravan push. Yep in a year's time They'll be coming through in numbers. No one's prepared for so when it really hits the fan You could thank the usual suspects people like shit for brains Biden occasional cortex, etc. Etc. The thing is you see I've talked to many middle and lower middle class Latinos including my cleaning lady maintenance guy, etc Now you heard me mention this a couple of shows ago, but it's worth repeating when I asked them What would be their ideal wage one that would alleviate their day-to-day monetary stresses and allow them actually to save a few bucks Which none of them can do now. They live day to day meal to meal I'm talking about the average guy or gal on the street making two to four hundred bucks a month

[03:58] Well, the answer I seem to get most often is a thousand bucks a month. I've asked dozens of average working Latinos that question I'm talking about your average Latino who doesn't have more than a high school diploma. That'd be about 90% of Latinos They all say if they could make a thousand bucks a month, which is generally three times what they're making now They wouldn't think of abandoning their country and sneaking into the US. There'd be no need to now Of course when you ask some Latinos, what would be the ideal minimum wage? They say something crazy something outlandish, but they're joking and when you ask them to get serious They say again around a thousand bucks a month. If you do the math, it comes out to six dollars and twenty five cents an hour So if a straw poll indicates that lower and middle class Latinos would be perfectly satisfied with six dollars and twenty five cents an hour

[04:46] You can imagine what goes through their heads when they find out federal minimum wage is over twice that now more like 2,500 bucks a month which puts you square in upper middle-class territory here in Latin America Of course, they have no idea what it really costs to live up in the States and they've never lived in a cold climate So they've got no idea of the necessary wardrobe You have to buy it for the season nor the fact that every house has essential heating And that costs two to five thousand bucks to install in every basic new home And then there's the monthly gas and electric bill and I can tell you the average working class latino down here has an electric bill Of around 15 bucks a month and a gas bill and it's only used for cooking of about five bucks or less a month So the point is the more u.s Pusbrained politicians push up the minimum wage the greater the number of illegal aliens who'll just chuck it back home and try to sneak in

[05:34] But then again, what better way is there to gain votes for a politician than to raise the minimum wage? It's no skin off their backs. It's paid with other people's money Did you ever hear a politician say he's not for raising the minimum wage? That would be the kiss of death If so, they'd be kissing the blue collar vote and the service industry vote. Goodbye Oh and talk about gas and energy prices spiking when I get emails from people saying johnny You might be all for going solar and getting off the grid. It is a very good idea But payback is terrible you're better off waiting because year over year solar prices are always coming down It might take you 10 15 20 years to get payback to break even and by then your equipment will be all worn out Well, you know what I say to those folks. It's about having independence and freedom, too And remember in a past life. I was an actual electrical engineer

[06:20] So I know how to crunch those numbers, too And though it might seem the case that it'll take 10 or 20 years to get a payback for one I'm not terribly interested in calculating the payback I just want to be free from the whims and iron grip of the utility companies Don't you and remember if you're completely off the grid? There's no smart meter attached and secondly when people say the payback's going to be 10 or 20 years They're doing the calculations based on today's numbers today's energy costs What they never seem to consider is that electric utility companies will charge higher prices as more and more people get off the grid And therefore they have less revenue And what about wars and conflicts and energy producing regions like the middle east and then there's price inflation That's insidious and as far as people going solar Do you really think energy companies like that scenario? That is more people go solar the revenue will

[07:10] Automatically keep falling and falling and falling they're in business to make money. What do you think they're gonna do? They're just gonna raise prices for people and companies who remain hooked up to the grid So if you do the payback calculations on a solar system at let's say to make the numbers easy 10 cents a kilowatt hour and let's say it works out to a 10-year payback It's a guarantee that as people use solar and wind and drop off the grid in no time It'll cost 20 cents a kilowatt hour then 30 cents Electric utility companies are in bed with the government and they'll just petition for higher rates and get them After all they have to please their shareholders keep the stock prices high and produce dividends And there's really only three ways to accomplish that and none are in our favor They can one raise prices which they will or number two slack off on the maintenance and repair

[07:55] Which they won't do because if there are more blackouts and service problems That'll be even more incentive for their customers to go solar and number three which is happening already They'll demand subsidies from the government. That means taxpayers will pick up the slack Your taxes will go up to subsidize people who are still on the grid But let's get back to how much time it takes to get a payback on your solar system Again, suppose at 10 cents a kilowatt hour your payback is 10 years Well as folks go solar and drop off the grid and as more inflation kicks in as it's doing right now Electric companies will soon raise their energy prices to 20 cents a kilowatt hour and suddenly It's not a 10-year payback anymore It's a five-year payback and if the prices hit 30 cents a kilowatt hour By the way, that's what many people pay today when they live in island countries

[08:42] Where all energy is imported like the virgin islands bahamas caimans aruba curaçao Actually most all caribbean islands Anyway, if your payback on your solar system is 10 years at 10 cents a kilowatt hour five years at 20 cents a kilowatt hour Well, if it's 30 cents a kilowatt hour your paybacks closer to three and a half years That's of course calculating the average power use of a family of four up in the states But you knew that already, right? Maybe you didn't bottom line don't get sucked in by people who say about the paybacks 10 or 20 years Whatever because that's based on a snapshot of today's energy prices And as you know, this covidia thing is sent prices spiraling though. The puss heads at the fed deny it We all know the truth. In fact, it's getting to the point that governments lie so much

[09:29] The best course of action for the common man is to listen to the drivel they spout and do just the opposite All right moving on, you know, sometimes we talk about things that are lost in translation between The english and the spanish version on that note. Well sort of it I had a kind of a strange experience the other day Had some people over the house for a little party and I noticed that one of the lady guests brought her own bottled water with her And I pulled my girlfriend aside and said why'd she bring her own water? We've got the best purified water system probably in the country here And she brings her own contaminated water, which is barely fit for a dog or a politician I didn't say that in front of the lady myself because that would have been pretty rude But a couple hours later my girlfriend pulled me aside and said you know Why she brought her own water because you know

[10:15] She's been here before and she doesn't like the way our water tastes now I'm rarely at a loss for words But in that moment you could have knocked me over with a pussy willow I had to think about that one for a while So I did a test I poured some of her bottled water into a glass and some of my Ultra purified water into another glass and my water had no taste or smell at all and hers Had a slight tinge of chlorine and plastic I'm sure it's happened to you You turn on the faucet somewhere and it smells like chlorine and of course We all know what plastic bottles smell like so that whole experience Introduced me to a new kind of conundrum that being if you're used to something even if it's not good for you Humans have a hell of a hard time switching to something else even when a much better alternative is staring them right in the face It's like that old saying humans often select the devil

[11:03] They know over the one they don't with some people logic just doesn't work at all It reminds me of people who say one particular beer is better than another though It drove home a point just when you think you've got the world pretty much figured out it throws you another curveball Oh, but there's a corollary to that story She put a couple of liters of her bottled water in my refrigerator and a couple hours later One of my friends said johnny. I was in your referee. You know, that's what they call refrigerators down here referees refri the first couple of letters in the word refrigerator He said johnny. I can't believe you're drinking bottled water something wrong with your water I told him with a straight face. I was trying to fortify my immune system with a dose of microplastics and carcinogens He laughed. He didn't buy it

[11:49] Though he thought i'd gone over to the dark side. So I explained it all to him He left and he said you don't have to tell me I know how hard it is to get latinos to change their habits Then he told me he bought his cleaning lady a vacuum cleaner because she just didn't get the dust spider webs and grunge In the corners and the cubby holes, but you're gonna have to he gave her a nice demonstration She never took it out of the closet again. It's an example of how one man's convenience is another man's Inconvenience All right. Speaking of lost in translation the other day I was at a latino's house and with a couple of kids sitting around ages maybe 12 to 16 and they were looking at some photos of kids on some Anti-social media sites and I heard one of them say oh ho is the chucky and the other kids looked at the picture and said

[12:35] See oh ho is the chucky now my spanish is supposed to be halfway decent But I just didn't get what they were saying at all. And when that happens to me, I realized once again I'm a language dunce and it might be my alzheimer's kicking in too Now I know the word I was in that statement because oh hoes are eyes but eyes of chucky Oh hoes did chucky so I was curious and I asked the kids what are you looking at? So they showed me it was a kid with real satanic funky looking eyes and I said yeah His eyes are strange. All right, but what's chucky and they laughed and said in spanish. You don't know chucky Are you serious? Are you been hiding under a rock or something? They said it in spanish, of course then the kid pulled up another photo and here's the real lost in translation part It was a picture of that diabolical doll that has a series of movies, you know chucky

[13:25] That was my language dunce moment of stupidity Chucky is chucky just like texas is tejas and tucson is ducson and chicago is chicago So what's that got to do with anything that could mean quite possibly that next time you're in latin america If you're out for pizza and have a kid with you, you just might be going to chucky cheese They have them down here, you know, then again last I heard the whole chain is bankrupt So again, it took me 30 years to catch on to the way they pronounce chucky oddly enough over the years I've had many latina moms explain to me how they name their kids most of all They love to give their kids americanized names That's why there are so many elvises down here But almost no one in the past generation or two has ever named their kid chucky Because practically every latino alive has seen those movies and it's such a religious culture

[14:13] No latino parent would ever name their kid after a diabolic and satanic thing like chucky though The other day I did meet a latina named milady You know milady As in those old formal british costume dramas when someone addresses a female with some royal blood in her they call her milady M-i-l-a-d-y and then naturally if the guy's a gentleman he kisses her hand though I guess these days that wouldn't be a very good idea with all that anti-covidiot booger like slime people slather on their hands Anyway, her name was milady. Now when I come across latinos and latinas with odd sounding names I sometimes like to ask how they got tagged with that name. So I asked milady without kissing her hand She said I don't know. She just picked it I can only imagine her mother must have seen one of those british costume dramas and picked up that milady thing from there

[15:02] Because certainly you could live your entire life and never hear that word except in movies and theatrical productions And when I mentioned that british royal connection thing She was surprised because no one ever explained that to her before and when I asked her how many times a guy would bow And kiss her hand. She just laughed. You know how people have kind of a nervous laugh when they're put on the spot Yep, she giggled for a while enough said about that. By the way, have you heard there's supposed to be a gigantic UFO disclosure by the government in july Apparently was ordered by trump way back when and it took him a couple of years to put it together I hear the defense department went through something like seventy thousand pages of ufo documents and of course Government agencies had to black out and redact all the parts that would compromise national security So hopefully some of those seventy thousand pages won't be completely blacked out. We shall see we shall see now

[15:52] Here's the million dollar question. How come in the 1940s 50s and 60s even up to the new millennia There were reports all over the place of flying saucers, right? They called them that because they really did look like saucers My question is why from the new millennium 2000 to now 2021? It seems all the ufo reports are now triangles and tic-tac shaped elongated tubes and not Saucer looking things anymore at all. I don't know. Could it be the aliens are flying newer models That they change body styles for different model years like ford and chevy You think maybe those earlier much smaller saucers were just basic budget models with warp drive sort of alien Volkswagen beetles high end days or kiyas and those newer triangle and tic-tac jobs

[16:37] They're equivalent of range rovers, Ferraris and beamers Wouldn't you just love to check out one of their dealer showrooms which begs another question Do aliens have to buy their spaceships outright or perhaps they're so expensive they have to lease or rent one Could be their government issue. And what about the used ufo market? There's got to be a lot of secondhand saucers around from the roswell days and another thing Do they become obsolete? How old is too old? Do they have an antique or classic market? In other words, can a young gray and his buddies chip in buy a junk or a wreck and still get parts? Hmm. I wonder by the way Every latino I know has seen a ufo or has a friend or family member who has But you really have to take all that with a grain of salt because this is the land of superstitions Though a lot of gringos and expats who live on the tourist trail or are in gated guarded communities full of gringos

[17:28] Never get to see that superstitious end. They don't see it up front and personal though I can tell you this once you get close enough to the real people down here and you get invited to their houses for parties And such you will be struck by the fact that they have at least one room or a corner in one room Dedicated to some particular saint or religious icon Oddly enough though if you go to a latino's house and there's no ladies live in there There won't be such a room. No altar. No pictures. No candles burning as sexist as that sounds It's a girl thing. Oh and everybody's got a candle drawer. Just chock full of candles They're in huge demand because they're always burning candles and not just because the power goes out once in a while It's for that little table and altar and that saint or saints they happen to be praying to In some houses the candles are burning all the time

[18:14] They never let them go out and you know if you come down to latin america as a single person And you end up hooking up with a latina or latino You'll see it for yourself that special sometimes creepy room when you first get invited for dinner at the folks house Now, where were we? Oh, yeah talking about the prevalence of ufo sightings here in latin america In fact, my own girlfriend had the ufo experience when I was sitting right with her at top of a balcony It all happened right behind my back. She as it turns out was looking right at it and I had my back to it So I never saw a thing She just stared right over my head and stopped talking for about 10 seconds And by the time she told me to turn around it was gone. Just my luck. I was right there and missed it Now was it a real ufo or natural phenomena? I'll never know but she said it did one of those 90 degree angle moves

[19:01] Impossible for a bird or anything we've come up with in fact My own brother had a very stark ufo experience some years back I'll tell you about it sometime or maybe I did can't remember this is expat file show 1057 so it's hard to remember if i've told those stories or not And though I personally have not had a ufo experience or anything like that myself I have some engineering and nerdy friends that have so i'm really not a doubter though I think 99 out of 100 are explainable. It's that 1 percent. That's all you need, you know By the way, do you guys and gals out there have any good ufo stories? You know these days if you mention something like that in mixed company If your story is not too far out there national inquirer style You're not likely to be treated as a nutcase Like in the past when most career people would just keep their mouths shut

[19:47] All right enough said about that except to say if you've got any good ufo stories that personally happen to you shoot me the details All right. Now. Here's an email from darrell who entitles this things. I don't tell my wife Dear johnny. I finally made my cryptocurrency moves back in 2018 When my wife finally capitulated and let me buy 10,000 bucks worth of bitcoin and ethereum what she doesn't know is I actually put in 20k I doubled down and even with the insanity of the crypto market in the last week or so Where bitcoin dropped down to almost 30k and then pumped back up to 40 i'm still sitting on a 597 Percent gain though. My gain is down from a mere 979 percent johnny i've been in and out of the commodities to stop

[20:34] Market retirement funding and 401k stuff for the last 25 years all my working life I'm 50 years old now and I never ever saw traditional markets make those kind of gains in even 25 years Much less three years like i've been in crypto Though I did have my chance to get into crypto in 2014 when you first started talking about it when bitcoin was around 500 but my wife wouldn't let me instead we took our excess available money and took an alaskan cruise Boring meanwhile, I bit my lip and kicked myself a thousand times as I watched bitcoin and ethereum go to crazy heights And I understand how newbies who just got in and let's say the last six months get scared out of their wits It's rough on you at first to see how those cryptos can just whip up and down

[21:20] One day you're floating on a cloud like you won the lottery and the next day you're biting your nails and tearing your hair out But that's for newbies. I've been in it long enough now three years So i'm pretty used to large corrections up and down though that big drop a couple of days ago Was hard to swallow still i've been in a couple of those before so I just sit back and watch the show While the newbies in panic can sell and the wales the old guys the banks and financial institutions Take advantage of the newbies who get scared and the weak hands panic and get shaken out If you zoom out and look at the big picture, it's really obvious It's the newbies that got in in the last couple of months who panic and sell when the market drops The trick is just sit back and watch the show again when in doubt zoom out and see the whole picture

[22:06] Since day one don't just look at the hourly daily and monthly charts They'll scare you look at the zoom out of the entire history of your crypto You'll see those big ups and downs happen all the time But also notice the lows are higher and the highs are higher The long trend is always up and it turns out only the new fresh hands in are the ones that lose money They panic because they've never seen such swings before They sell and then the institutions the old guys and the whales buy the dip like they're doing now Then darryl says by the way johnny the other day when bitcoin was at 35 000 I bought another 5 000 worth don't tell my wife and as I write this bitcoins at 40 and change now So i'm up again What new fresh people and cryptos don't understand is that the best most profitable strategy is to buy the dip

[22:55] That's what institutions and banksters do Say for example bitcoin's at 41 000 now the big hands the institution banksters and whales They put in a buy order at a few thousand dollars below What bitcoin's been roughly trading at for the last couple of weeks and they wait and they wait and it will pop down It always does then they automatically buy it up and then after some panic in the market it pops right back up again It's the little guys in the so-called light hands like you and me who panic sell when it drops The golden rule with crypto is patience and man does patience pay off I know this is a long email johnny, but just want to say thanks for getting me into crypto Not only has it given me a great retirement nest egg But also being that the crypto market is a brand new cutting edge technology of finance

[23:44] It gives me a great excitement and a big adrenaline boost just to be in it Now I could be like many almost retirees. I could just sail into the sunset Collect my pension and social security and watch it get beaten down by inflation Thank god for the invention of cryptos in this age of covid It's we're all in need of something worthwhile and positive to occupy our minds and give us hope for the future And cryptos definitely do that It gives us hope and our own tools to defend ourselves against government idiots who are like drunken sailors Inflating debasing and destroying the dollar day by day The question I get all the time from my friends and relatives who know I got into crypto a couple of years ago They're always asking questions and they're quick on the attack when the market drops too, even though they're not in it themselves

[24:29] It's that schadenfreude thing, you know taking pleasure and other people's misfortune So people ask when do you take your profits and cash out of cryptocurrencies? Yes, i've got a method and it works pretty well I sell a few percent of my bitcoin and ethereum when there's a nice solid spike up Then I put those gains into stable coins and let them sit Then when there's a dip and there's always a dip I rebuy bitcoin and ethereum again Obviously at a lower price than I sold that's made me a lot of money dozens of times Problem is when people ask you when you should take your profits, etc And you talk about the concept of buying the dip then you're in for more explaining because people don't understand they have concept Buying the dip is all about buying digital assets when their prices are down

[25:15] And that includes selling a few percent of your assets when the price rises after it's been stuck in a down market for a while Though holding your cryptos and just walking away and leaving them and not even looking at them is great You almost can't fail to make money there, too But the simple act of buying the dip is far more profitable though. You will make money either way So anyway johnny, I want to thank you again for giving me a crypto life Not just because I made a lot of money on a tiny investment But also because crypto is such a fun thing to do and it gives you such good shots of adrenaline for me It's turned into a great productive hobby though. My wife will disagree. She says i'm obsessed Thanks again signed darryl. Okay darryl just a couple things here You know wives and girlfriends of guys who are into crypto sometimes just don't get it. In fact, I just saw a big study

[26:03] I think it was coinbase that said the crypto industry is basically sexist 80% are guys 18% ladies and two or three percent trans and gender fluid people in the market though I have to say some of the best crypto youtubers out there are very smart nerdy women A few of them are very attractive too Though it's funny when you read their youtube comment sections below nerdy guys are forever falling in love with those few Good-looking lady crypto youtubers, you know how people will post things that they'll never say in person That's one of the fatal flaws with insta crap twaddle and fake book And though you'll often see nerdy guys falling in love in the comment section with those crypto girls You never see the reverse that would be handsome crypto podcast guys getting love messages from ladies in their comment sections You never see that so I guess the wokesters will be going after testosterone next after all it is the hormone behind everything

[26:56] Wokesters hate that men do oh, by the way for all you people who might be reading in a lame stream press that bitcoin is dead Just send me an email the expat files at gmail.com and i'll send you an article entitled bitcoin obituaries A history of the 414 times bitcoin has been proclaimed dead by those clueless talking heads in the media It's a great read that said let's end the show with a little wisdom from Sigmund Freud he said quote i'd much rather have a rich patient than a poor one Because the rich patient already knows money won't solve his problems You've been listening to the expat files living in latin america If you need some help with your own plan b we can schedule a one-on-one phone or skype consult Just send me an email the expat files at gmail.com

[27:44] And if you want to get on the waiting list for my next week-long expat insider seminar in central america Where you're guaranteed to get a two to five year head start on your plan b Send me an email the expat files at gmail.com