#1079 – The Expat Files: Navigating Legal Changes, Freelancing, and Cultural Shifts

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 out 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 just a little announcement the show for Friday August 20th and Sunday August 22nd will be repeat shows from the best of or Maybe the worst of the expat file shows depending how you look at it I'll be off the grid in the jungle and won't be able to do those shows live

[00:46] All right. Now, let's talk about some of the problems and changes with teaching English online You longtime listeners have heard me talk about this before for the last couple years now It's been a very nice way for gringos and expats to supplement their income while down here making money from home being your own boss And setting your own hours, too, but our veteran English teacher man on the scene Mr. B has some sort of upsetting and sad news for us. Let me read this email. He just sent me he starts out by saying Johnny Unfortunately, it looks like it's over the teaching English online thing is kaput last week China announced a new law foreigners can't teach Chinese students online anymore before all this China students in the elementary middle and high school used to have three English exams per year That kept us English teachers pretty busy now

[01:33] The new law in Beijing is that elementary and middle school students will not have English anymore as part of their exams Here's how it will work from now on China will not give licenses to any new online English companies Current students though that are under contract with existing companies can finish their contracts For example, I have a couple of students with a few months left on their contracts with my company So once my students finish that contract, I'm not allowed to teach them anymore So why the drastic change why shut down a whole big industry now the word on the blogs and the forums according to the Chinese Is that English-speaking countries don't produce anything good anymore anything of interest? So the Chinese government is saying there's just no good reason to be teaching English anymore to our kids

[02:21] Now Johnny, mr. B says people can still teach English online to folks from other countries like Indonesia For example, but there's just so much competition amongst the teachers not to mention about 75% of online teaching companies are shutting down now because of the Chinese thing. So Johnny, unfortunately, sorry for the bad news I know a lot of expat gonna bees and wannabes were counting on the fact that could teach English online while down in Latin America As a fallback position. Well, it looks like that ship has sailed Signed mr. B. Well, mr. B Thanks for the update though Some of us knew with this covid it thing big changes were coming because with so many teachers out of work They naturally scrambled to get into online English teaching which made the competition fierce

[03:06] And now that the Chinese government doesn't think English is important to learn anymore Well that kind of caps it though It really doesn't make sense The funny thing is if you look into doctorate and graduate programs in the United States universities They're just flooded with students from India and China There's huge demand for getting into a US University and of course everyone speaks English in the US That makes it difficult to buy the Chinese line that English just isn't important in the curriculum anymore That's BS. Besides that everyone who's in the sciences knows that all Cutting-edge scientific publications come out in English first Everyone knows that take the journal of nature and scientific American the most prestigious of science journals Most of the articles white papers and studies appearing in those journals don't get translated to other languages for sometimes months or years

[03:55] Though I can see why China is trying to claim English is no longer a valid language for their students It turns out to be a very good propaganda measure I'm sure if you asked any Chinese or Asian parent if they thought English was a good and useful language for their kids to learn They'd all be unanimous in supporting it Especially since most of them desire their kids to end up in a US University where only English is spoken But the Chinese communist government has other ideas So then what does that leave gringos and expats were sort of counting on that kind of work or as a fallback position Well, there's always English teaching positions at helicopter schools Though if you're on the gringo tourist trail, those kinds of teaching jobs are hard to come by There's just so much competition But if you're off the gringo tourist trail, man, there are English private school teaching jobs galore problem is it's a 9 to 5

[04:43] And you're not your own boss That's a big drawback if you want to set your own hours and don't want to work for the man You know, I mean So what's a gringo expat who doesn't have a big nest egg to do though? Truthfully, most people who come down with a plan B are 50 or older and they've already got a pretty decent nest egg Or they're getting a pension or Social Security and though they may want to work or start a business wants to get down here It's not really that urgent for the over 50 crowd So whether they've planned it or not the over 50 crowd will often turn their hobby or something They really like in to a money-making business But what about the under 50 expat crowd say people who come down with a small nest egg? 10 20 or 50 grand that kind of dough won't last forever and eventually you'll have to start making money somehow There are lots of ways

[05:29] But one really good way I found is to put yourself up on one of those freelance sites. Have you seen those? Here's what that's all about. You know, all of us are good at something or another we're bad at stuff, too But we're good at things. We have our niches Maybe it has something to do with an actual structured career like accounting or maybe you're a makeup artist or have had a career as a Nutritionist well You just go to one of those many freelance sites on the web you put your mugshot up there and a small buyer and a list of What you have to offer for example suppose you need some kind of custom website design You go to the freelance site as a prospective buyer now you post what you want to have done in the range You're willing to pay though Sometimes you don't have to put a price in there you wait for bids to come in for example a while back I had some internet work to do I posted it and within two days I must I got 50 bids from people anywhere from 50 to 200 bucks from people who could do it

[06:19] From anywhere in the world. That's the point. I got responses from India China Russia even Brazil Though it doesn't have to be for computer services. It could be for anything now. Don't tell me you're not good at anything You've got nothing worthwhile to sell. We're all good at something. You just have to sit down and make a list Here's what I suggest and I mentioned this just this week to a very cool guy a previous seminar attendee Who I just did another phone consult with I said if you can't figure out what you're really good at which I have to offer Your specific niche maybe you have two or three or ten. Well, you just take a piece of paper Maybe two you paste them on your kitchen table or in your bathroom somewhere then over the days even weeks You start jotting down things You're good at or you think you could be good at if only you could watch a few more youtubes on it For example a while back my DJI drone crashed and the camera slumped down

[07:07] I couldn't get it to move on the gimbal anymore and I looked and looked on the youtubes to see how to repair that thing and there were a number of solutions and none of them could claim to be a hundred percent sure that they could diagnose or fix your problem the YouTube videos give you some general ideas, but they couldn't specifically help you out in that situation It was just so many things that have could have gone wrong to cause that problem So then how do you diagnose that problem and do the proper repairs without screwing the thing up even more? Well, guess what on the freelance site? There are guys and probably some girls and gender fluid transvestites to who specialize in drone repair So you post the problem wait for some responses Select the best fit for you and they'll walk you through it step by step on a zoom call. That's their niche You name the problem and there's somebody on those freelance sites that can help you out

[07:55] Oh and I have to tell you about this one a good friend of mine an expat guy wrote a book He thought he'd written the great un-american novel I know quite a few gringo expats who've written books once they've got their plan bead going finally They've got time on their hands and they've always wanted to do it So anyway this expat gringo buddy of mine wrote a book and he asked me to be one of the first readers and man The story was fantastic, but his writing abysmal He kept shifting between first second and third person. You can't do that and maintain any kind of continuity I don't know. I've written four or five books myself, but you didn't know that huh? And I told him look you need to have an editor someone to polish up your prose So where do you find someone that can do that without charging you an arm and a leg? Well, you just go to one of those freelance websites And you explain exactly what you want and in his case

[08:40] He must have gotten a hundred responses and the ones that looked promising asked him to send just one chapter of his book Before they gave him a bit they wanted to see how fatal his writing was anyway I think he ended up paying something like four or five hundred bucks They have the whole book nicely polished up at least put into a state where it wasn't an embarrassment to read Though like I said the story was fantastic man Hollywood could have done a number on it by the way He said almost every single person who put in a bit or answered his query were teachers or English majors So if you think that kind of degree is totally useless unless you're gonna be a teacher Well, not so with just a little bit of creativity You can become your own boss make your own hours and become a book editor So again, just think of the many things you're good at and even if you can't think of anything Just post a piece of paper around the house in your list will start growing you can count on it

[09:27] For example, maybe you're good at gardening or you have a specific nation gardening like orchids mangoes even avocados I can't tell you how many gringos and expats want to come down to Latin America start gardening and growing their own But they're stumped as to how to grow tropical fruits like avocado enter the freelance garden man What some gringos and expats wouldn't give to have one-on-one instructions on how to grow? Avocados the proper way now I've had avocado trees here before I've grown them from scratch, you know from the seed I've had land that had avocado trees on it already and I've also bought Potted starter plants a foot or two high and replanted them on a lot But you know, that's not enough Avocados are temperamental at least in the first couple years and there are different types of avocados, too You want to try to grow the Haas ones if you can that's Haas h-a-s-s

[10:14] They're the best tasting ones of all and the most expensive in the stores, too But it's not like growing lemons just stick a lemon tree in the ground man. It produces forever You don't have to do a thing to it avocados need TLC and I personally have never had any luck with them The other thing is there's not just one or two types of avocados They've got probably ten different kinds and some of them though. They look like big right delicious avocados inside. They're not They're not creamy and buttery like the Haas variety. They're tasteless and watery Same thing with coffee if you're thinking about coming down here to Latin America and starting a coffee plantation. It's Complicated you probably didn't even know this but coffee plants when they're sprouts about six inches high You just don't plant them watch them grow and wait for the harvest those sprouts when they're around six inches tall need to be Grafted onto another coffee plant because you see the best coffee seems for some reason or another to have very shallow roots

[11:06] And they don't stand up to the winds and the heavy rains in the rainy season Whereas the crappy tasting coffee has a very excellent Widespread and deep root structure So if you were to come down here to Latin America and look at a coffee plantation Every single big coffee bush that you see is a grafted combination of two plants one plant with a very good root Structure graft it to a stem or stalk that produces very tasty coffee beans So like I said, you just don't come down and start a coffee plantation. It's Complicated did you ever wonder why people into gardening have every kind of fruit and vegetable you can imagine in their own gardens except Coffee think about it. You get the idea bottom line If there's anything you need help with just go to those freelance sites and find the experts at least people who are more expert

[11:52] Than you at it for whatever you're looking for and while you're at it post yourself as a freelance expert for whatever niche your niches You're good at that's one way to be your own boss and make your own hours Just remember you don't have to make first-world money to live like a first-world person here in Latin America Although we all know inflation is taking off everywhere now Thanks to the covid it thing and the idiot politicians and corrupt US Treasury and Federal Reserve Just flooding the world with fake cheap money Even so whatever it costs you to live like a first-world person up in Cleveland Detroit or New York If you come down here and live off the gringo tourist trail You'll spend half or less than half as much not only that you'll have half the stress or less than half the stress You'll have fresher tastier food and way too much of it There are no shortages and it's coming from local truck farmers, too

[12:40] So there's no supply chain to disrupt plus the weather. Ah the weather You absolutely can't beat it even in the rainy season and it is the rainy season right now That means it'll rain nearly every day maybe for an hour or two and sometimes twice a day But there will be long periods of blue clouds and sunshine, too And now this email from Ludi Ludi now there's a name for you. Is that a girl or a guy? I think it's a girl Ludi She says when I think back to my grandparents who survived World War two I remember people used to dry out tea bags and use them four times There were people who would have thought it was the height of Extravagants to be drying their clothes in a dryer when the wind and the Sun did the job for free Then to have a gas or electric dryer was a real extravagance proof

[13:25] You were moving on up or had a Sears or Montgomery wards charge card But still when my grandparents got their first dryer, they rarely used it It was more or less to prove they could afford one It was a gift from my grandfather to try to save my grandmother somewhere in tear and time She never asked for it, but it was a gift. So she accepted it, but she made it known that she thought it was unnecessary I remember they got up at 5 o'clock in the morning every day and grandpa who worked at Massey Ferguson would come home at 6 at night My grandma would say take your shoes off and don't you dare sit yourself down in the living room go clean up take a shower And change your clothes first sure he knew that drill by heart, but it was kind of a ritual with her she was one of those old ladies who had plastic covers on all her living room furniture and

[14:11] When she died and all the grandkids divvied up the furniture We took off the plastic wrappers and they were absolutely furniture store showroom quality She wore the pants all right, but my grandpa didn't mind you see at my grandma's house There was a regular shower in the bathroom and there was a crude shower Specifically rigged up for my grandfather in the basement and I remember some days He'd come home extra dirty and grimy and my grandma wouldn't have to say a word She just point to the basement door and off he went. Yep I remember when patients hard work resilience and fortitude were required and parents and grandparents helped to develop those skills and their real stresses and concerns were on another level compared to the stresses and concerns of people who whine and fret because they've only got two Bars on their Wi-Fi signal and I remember if I was naughty as a kid

[14:57] I got my bottom smacked and sent to my room and when they grounded me and said no TV They meant no TV It wasn't no TV and if I whined for 20 minutes They'd give in when they grounded you there was no reprieve Oh, and you never put your dirty feet on the table or a chair and you didn't dare slouch either My grandparents aren't alive today, but if they were they could never understand how their grandkids and great grandkids became so fragile having to be protected from everything I Remember when my grandfather told my brother the only way to deal with a bully is to sucker punch him Today if a parent said that to a kid he'd probably end up in court today's children have become babies and today's adults have become children and while no one was looking the state stepped into every corner of our lives the woke

[15:42] Generation emerged and they deemed the complete state and government intervention both necessary and desirable then you've got adolescent kids and even adults Constantly comparing themselves and their lives to others. It's one of the tragic side effects of the internet That's why the young people are so maladjusted these days Facebook is nothing but an internet game of one Uptsmanship you posted dinner. I post a better one you post a selfie at the beach. I post a selfie at a better beach I don't suppose anyone recalls Theodore Roosevelt's quote of more than a hundred years ago when he said Comparison is the thief of joy and Mark Twain said quote comparison is the death of joy But alas today's adolescents and young adults have never heard of Theodore Roosevelt or Mark Twain

[16:29] After all Twain was a white supremacist racist his books have been banned and canceled, right? You know, there is no room for discussion or debate with the hypersensitive Facebook and Instagram and Twitter generation who are incapable of creativity or having an independent opinion unless it's liked by the Consensus of snowflakes you're automatically racist If you even slightly roll your eyes when someone mentions BLM or white privilege, oh, I have my regrets to Johnny I'm a procrastinator I really should have come down to one of your earlier seminars and gotten started on my plan B But you know the procrastinator's favorite word, right? It's tomorrow. Oh, I'll get to it. All right tomorrow Anyway, Johnny keep up the good work signed Ludi from Lubbock, Texas PS at least I have been saving up to come to one of your seminars

[17:19] Hope you have one before the world goes into mandatory VAX mode. In that case, I'll be staying home forever Alright, thanks for that Ludi. Yeah, you know when I read emails like that I can tell frustration up in the states especially is really kicking in you can see why depression Alcoholism obesity and suicides are at the highest levels ever recorded But on a brighter note back to Latin American news now I know a lot of you listeners especially in the big cities up in the states in Europe you take the metro You know the subway lots of people in big cities even people with a lot of dough don't even own cars They would rather take the metro or uber whatever I know in Chicago if you live in the center city You could pay 500 bucks a month just to rent a parking space for one car and New York It could be double that so many people think why should I own a car now?

[18:07] You must have seen those Hollywood movies where someone is getting chased in a subway the underground by a cop assassin bad guy Whatever and they jump the fare gate. It looks so easy, right? Well, you know a lot of subways these days, especially in Europe don't have a fare gate It's an honor system you buy a ticket in the machine You carry that in the subway or the bus and every once in a while Maybe never some uniform guy will walk by and ask you for that receipt You know just to make sure you've got one and it's good for that day or ride Well, have you ever wondered about subway or bus non-payers people who somehow evade the fare? Well an international study just came out and said that for example in Europe an average of six Percent of the people riding the subway are doing so illegally They haven't paid though in Europe the farther east you go into, you know, Poland Latvia the Baltic countries, etc

[18:53] The higher the percentage of fare skippers up to fifteen percent now in the u.s The percentage of fare skippers is around four to five percent Canada around two percent That makes sense, you know kinder general or Canadians and all that and Latin America between 12 and 15 percent Have you ever done that? Are you a fare skipper? I think I did that once in Italy I had to do it because I couldn't figure out the machine. So I took my chances and jumped on anyway No one stopped me. Alright now this email from Lena. She says Johnny I've been an expat in both Peru and Ecuador for around 11 years now long enough to hear over and over again from people First coming down like me nearing retirement. Their number one goal was that they just wanted to be comfortable in Retirement mostly, of course, they were referring to their finances But often they were also talking about creating a sort of secure cocoon for themselves

[19:43] Somewhere where they could hide from their worries pains and problems and a lot of them though They won't admit it have come down to escape from their friends and family members who were negative people or time Vampires as you've called it Johnny people who are just not so fun to be with and who waste your time How do you jettison a person like that? Especially if he grew up next door to you or was your childhood school or neighborhood friend or even your sister or your cousin Do you just tell them after 20 years of friendship that you just don't want to be with him anymore? Because of their pessimism or the cloud of negativity they bring into the room. What can you do? Well, you just get that plan B going and move to Latin America It solves a ton of bad relationship and friendship problems You find life is better and you feel more upbeat and positive when you jettison those negative friends and family members from your life

[20:33] But obviously most of us can never do that unless you become an expat problem is as I've since learned Comfort and happiness aren't the same thing as people get older. They tend to start playing it safe while Sacrificing their true happiness to me There's nothing sadder than to move somewhere and be seduced into a life with plenty of comfort But little happiness it would be much better for expats if they use their retirement abroad as an opportunity to push their comfort zones And find out new things about the world and themselves It's easy to do if you're living as you say Johnny off the gringo tourist trail But when you're on the tourist trail with gringos everywhere There are lots and lots of different cocoons to crawl into but is that happiness? What's your take on it Johnny signed Lena?

[21:19] Well, thanks for that perspective Lena I've always thought that as long as you're in good health and you're not living under conditions of constant trauma and stress You're basically content But to be content is not necessarily being happy and I am suspicious of people who tell me they're pretty much happy all the time I don't believe it happiness is just not a common lasting human condition Sure, we're all happy now and again, even people with terminal diseases and people in prison They still laugh and smile. Occasionally. Are they really happy under those conditions? Then there's those people even expats that look bummed out all the time But they'd be bummed out no matter where they lived and some of us might feel happiness three or four times a day But it's always so fleeting as for the rest of us if we're having a comfortable decent life

[22:05] That's enough We'll take it and those moments of happiness when they come and they will at the oddest times usually are just icing on the cake So we'll going through with your plan B and moving to Latin America make you happy Well, if you're an unhappy person in general, probably not but it will relieve a lot of tension and stress That's a guarantee but the happiness part that's up to you though I will admit when I'm on the gringo tourist trail I see lots and lots of gringos who are stand-up drunks. The beer is so cheap They've got so much time on their hands and the Sun is hot Well, it can be an occupational hazard in fact my one-time best friend and business partner in Costa Rica a Canadian guy who lived next door to me in a condo beachfront neighborhood I remember one time his wife came over and complained that he'd been drinking a case of beer a day now I didn't know about his problems

[22:50] I didn't pry but I did know he was an ex ski instructor up in Canada and he had no warm-weather hobbies He was Canadian. So we like snow skiing and hockey and because there's none of that in the tropics He picked up a new hobby drinking beer though. His wife told me he was never a drinker up in Canada The thing is again I rarely see that with people who live off the gringo tourist trail because just to make that choice Not to live with a bunch of gringos in a tourist area says a lot about a person's character that he or she is more of An inquisitive flexible risk-taking adventurous type and those kinds of people generally have all sorts of hobbies All right moving on, you know If you read a lot you come across all kinds of strange factoids like this one by 1830 in both Europe and the United States People did not drink much water. In fact, it was associated with many illnesses

[23:36] Obviously because there was no water treatment and both sewer water and rainwater ended up in the rivers and streams In fact in 1830 the average American and European drank seven gallons of pure alcohol a year and to be temperate Meaning a non-drinker or an abstainer meant you'd only be completely shit-faced drunk on birthdays and holidays So why bring this up? it's because the other day I was out at a restaurant with a couple of gringos and gringas and the gringa sitting next to Me had a glass full of ice and she started pouring the local bottled water in a plastic bottle of course into that glass of ice And I must have given her a look of disapproval. She said Johnny. What are you looking at? What's wrong and I said well I'll never drink anything out of a glass with ice in it unless I prepared the ice and she said oh, yeah I heard you talk about that on your show, but come on Johnny. How could that be true?

[24:25] She said everyone here at this restaurants having their drinks over ice. You think they're all gonna get sick tonight I said no the Latinos probably won't get sick at all. They're used to the local bacteria their condition But our little group of about six we were the only gringos in there I wouldn't be surprised if someone in our group didn't have a bad night But I knew she was single-minded sort of stubborn type when she said I'm not gonna drink lukewarm water And so she disregarded my advice. I thought okay your choice I'm not gonna push my ideas on anyone But I did say to her next time we go into a restaurant You tell me want a cold bottle right off the bat And if they don't have it nice and cold because sometimes they'll tell you they don't Refrigerate their bottles tell them right away when you first get into the restaurant to throw a couple of bottles in the freezer for you All right now from the it could happen to you department just the other day a newbie gringo

[25:12] Ex-pat signed up for a one-on-one phone consult with me. He said Johnny I can't believe what my bank is doing to me He's talking about his own bank in Minnesota turns out he's trying to buy a plot of land on which he'll build a house Down in Guatemala and his bank was throwing up all kinds of roadblocks when he tried to do a wire transfer Directly down to the seller's bank in Guatemala He had the ABA swift numbers and all that went down to his bank Initiated the wire transfer a few days past and it did not arrive so he went down to his bank Minneapolis and they said oh we didn't complete the transfer because we need more information now. They didn't contact him They just didn't do the wire transfer and he had to find out for himself that they held it up turns out They wanted to know what he was gonna do with that money the bank They were holding out with that question, and he said what do you mean? It's my effing money

[25:58] Not yours, and it's none of your business, and they said sorry. It's bank policy It's for your protection because some people when they send money out of the country are involved in a scam He said oh yeah, so you're worried about me and my money well What if I took it all out in cash and went to Vegas put it all on red and started spinning the roulette wheel Would you worry about me and my money then or wouldn't matter as long as I lost it in the US? Oh, he was so pissed off He said the bank rent a cop mosey down over and told him to calm down Oh, and I forgot to mention the seller of the property in Guatemala Instructed the gringo to send the money to his bank account in his SA corporations name that caused another problem with the buyers bank In Minnesota they said they were sorry They couldn't do the transfer unless they knew the person's name on the account and the gringo pointed out the name on the account

[26:46] Is the corporation it's not a personal account. It's a corporate account But the bank wouldn't budge which begs the question Why would anyone want to keep a cent in a US bank as you've heard they act like it's their money You practically have to get on your knees and beg to get your own money out by the way if you tried to pull out a thousand or more dollars in cash from your bank lately Well be prepared for 50 questions and a one or two day wait while they gather up the fiat paper I can't tell you how many times I've heard that story. You'll get those questions again. What's it for? You're going out of the country. They'll want to know where you're going and why I'm not kidding Meanwhile government and the banks are trying to kill cryptocurrencies They'll never be able to do it But you can understand why they see there's a real threat to their corrupt monopoly on monopoly money

[27:33] You've been listening to the expat files living in Latin America If you need some help with your own plan be we can schedule a one-on-one phone or Skype consult Just send me an email the expat files at gmail.com 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