#1133 – The Expat Files: Unhappy Expats, Realities of Life in Latin America, and Plan B Strategies

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 work play 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 start out the show today talking about expats and gringos who are not happy Gringos and expats who've made the plan be transition and for whatever reason or reasons. It's not working out for hey You can't please everyone right? Well, let's start out with this email from Estuardo. I think you'll find this really enlightening

[00:51] He says dear Johnny a few shows ago you outlined the reality that there will always be a certain number of unhappy expats and gringos people who are never happier satisfied even after they've gotten out of dodge a place they disliked even hated and they've settled into a new place which they soon start to dislike or even hate as Ernie Hemingway once said one man's tropical paradise is another man's sweaty bug infested gulag He ought to know he lived in Cuba pre Castro So Johnny, I'd like to double down on that theme with my personal story and all the unhappy expats I've come across in Panama That's where I've lived all my life except for my college years up in the States as for me Johnny I'm one of those Latinos. You make fun of once in a while. I'm an educated bilingual Latino real estate broker

[01:41] You're probably wondering why my English is so good Well, I'm one of those entitled kids of the rich as you might say the ones you like to pick on Hey, you can't choose your parents, right? Then he says so I had the opportunity of attending so-called helicopter schools all my life anyway, my real estate office is located in a little colonial town that abuts Panama City and During my 10 years in business. I've sold or rented to at least a hundred and twenty foreigners mostly gringos I even married one, but we'll save that story for another time as You might expect all these people brought their hopes and dreams to my country They came excited to make a new life for themselves and the vast majority have flourished They built businesses started families made friends and in some cases made a fortune They've engineered a special lifestyle for themselves

[02:28] They could never have had back in their home countries and they freely admit that and most of them might say 80% of them will Never return to their home countries except for a visit. They're now what I call hyphenated Panamanians But what about that never satisfied 20% the ones that regretted their decision to move? Obviously Panama or their dream of Panama did not live up to their expectations Funny thing though every foreigner who ends up here is subject to the same conditions as everyone else So why do some foreigners thrive while others become frustrated burnt out and eventually leave as for me? I have both personal and professional reasons for wanting to figure out or be better able to predict who would transition successfully and who would fail Boy, if there was a simple quiz for a would-be expat to take that could predict all that now

[03:16] There's a million dollar idea Obviously predicting that would alleviate lots of grief from me Unhappy clients are bad for business and bad for referrals and part of our realiters role like mine is to help clients make the right Decisions for themselves and get on with their lives and take it from there. But in my case, it's even more personal than that Living in a small historic district like ours Clients are your neighbors and your neighbors are your friends or they're supposed to be you want everyone to be happy, right? It's said you feel bad to see someone slowly burn out and become frustrated knowing at some level They relied on you to make that decision a huge decision in our life is a heavy burden when expats fail I feel a little bit of that failure myself So over the years I've been meditating on the question and analyzing case by case the happy and the unhappy

[04:03] Expats I have dealt with then he says as I did I began to see some certain patterns emerging It's nothing scientific and probably wouldn't be since you can't never really know a hundred percent what's going on in someone's mind But it's given me some insights to help me better counsel future clients even spot early on the ones I think will or won't make it The question does arise are all unhappy expats alike in certain ways Well, one thing I know for sure happy families Anyway have their own special little chemistry that keeps them together despite the ups and downs and traumas of life And when I look back on my list of the hundreds of expats I've known it's much easier now Years later to see the patterns amongst the ones who left in other words It's easier to figure out the failures than the successes

[04:50] Not that there aren't lots of lessons to learn from the happy expats. I've known It's just that there are fewer things that I would consider predictors that is predictors of growing unhappiness in certain expats Now it may be a cliche to say that the cause of unhappiness Amongths expats is that they were simply unhappy people to begin with who somehow Convinced themselves that getting away from it all getting a plan be getting out of dodge and starting over in a new place Would bring them to happiness Seems to me these types have never known true happiness before a lot of them were chronically miserable unhappy and negative people before they Even came down like the guy who placed a lottery every week thinking winning a million will finally make you happy while history Proves it almost never does So now I become very attuned to expats

[05:37] I first meet sometimes in the very first minutes of the conversation who quickly dive into stories of how Unfair life has been to them. That's a red flag When you start conversing with people and they give you a list of complaints and the broken relationships They've had etc etc how they insist that a brand new start in a new move will make them happy That just doesn't wash because some people are happy just sitting in prison Why is it that the majority of deaf or blind people deformed people poor people even Eskimos? Who've never seen a flower or a blade of grass? They're happy of course a certain amount of money can make you less stressed or more content But once a person makes about seventy five thousand dollars the effect levels off and down here in Panama and the rest of Latin America

[06:22] All you need is about a quarter of that to get the same effect My advice though when I first meet a person and I hear them start to complain about all the tragedy in their life back home I mostly think they don't need to come to Panama. I think they need counseling or a shrink the other thing is if you're on the verge of a nervous breakdown because you hate everything about where you live right now or Hate everything about your situation Moving to a developing country like Panama is probably the worst thing you can do if you're really on the edge and is sort of falling Apart you need a predictable stable environment where you can focus on yourself and work through your issues and repair Your relationships you don't need to come down to a place where you really don't know anyone and have no network or relationships whatsoever Then he says in my experience fresh newbie gringos have an idealized conception of the tropics as more laid-back less

[07:10] Regulated less stressful, etc. Etc. It's all that for sure and mostly true But it can take a long while before you settle in and realize the benefits of all that Just imagine the first time you go to a gas station and you don't speak any Spanish. That's just pumping gas What if it's something complicated like you need a brake job? How smooth is that gonna go? If you don't have a good network in the early days your first couple of years will be tough You'll get knocked around maybe even ripped off a few times Dealing with Latin Americans on a day-to-day basis will challenge your assumptions of what's logical fair and right certain things are done differently in Latin America There will be things that aggravate you manana time standing in lines Plumbers and electricians not showing up showing up at your dentist appointment only to find out the doctor took the day off as a result

[07:59] If you're not very comfortable in your own skin and don't have a good coping mechanism Or if you're just a little neurotic and anal to begin with certain irritating day-to-day events here will make you more nuts than you are already Next Johnny, I find the second most common reason for unhappy expats in my experience is that they get themselves into financial trouble This goes right back to a few things you discussed on your show before Namely you have to have some months working capital set aside once you open your business Because it's rarely Grand Central Station the moment you open your doors as one gringle who failed in business put it He says the best way to become a millionaire in Latin America is to bring two million down with you Of course, that's extreme hyperbole But it is well known that most new businesses fail within the first two years and almost always due to lack of reserve capital

[08:49] It's therefore astounding to me how many people move to Panama and put their life savings at risk starting a business in an industry They don't know much about but always had that as a dream like for example a restaurant or a hotel Still they have that dream and they try to do it in a place They don't speak the language don't know the customs or have personal networks as you've said before Johnny So many would-be expats have the dream of starting a business in Latin America though They've never really been down before and got real boots on the ground One of the riskiest things you could do is make your entire business plan for that bar restaurant or a mom-and-pop hotel While sitting up there in your home office in Chicago or New York almost all of the successful expat businesses I know were generated from good solid ideas that came from boots on the ground experiences

[09:35] I know plenty of new gringo expats who convinced themselves that opening a bar a restaurant in a tropical paradise like Panama would allow them to have the enviable picture-perfect life no matter if they never actually owned a bar a restaurant before and Ladies just because everybody complements your Thanksgiving turkey or your Christmas lasagna That does not necessarily translate to success in the restaurant business here in Panama Anyway, very few expats find success in a business They conjured up or had their hearts set on before they ever moved down it rarely works that way You have to get boots on the ground do your homework and have a cushion of time and capital Otherwise, you're very likely to find yourself and on the happy expat for a good reason. You'll be broke

[10:21] However, I must point out of the 30 or so expats I've seen who've opened businesses only a few have failed and I think it boils down to the fact like you said Johnny That expats often come in with insights ideas and improvements that the local businessmen just don't recognize For example, their ability to size up and beat the competition being able to gauge where the markets heading For example, the intangible business concepts and ideas expats seem to bring with them can often more than make up for any local unknowns If expats have a decent idea and enough capital to stick it out long enough. They normally do fine some even get rich It's my advice. He says if you want to dabble in a side business to see how it goes great Don't go all in on one big roll of the dice

[11:09] Funny thing though and that happens and it sometimes does those disappointed expats don't blame themselves They blame the country and when they get home, they write a nasty blog about it Then he says although the two previous reasons account for almost all of the unhappy expats I've seen there is yet another small group of expats that remain unhappy. Those are expats with unrealistic expectations Those are people who want Panama or any other place in Latin America to be something that it just is And when they realize they can't change it They refuse to adjust and adapt and become unhappy just because they feel they've been betrayed somehow Why not if naivety and gullibility are legitimate excuses Then that feeling is often justified because there's an unlimited amount of propaganda floating around on the internet selling Panama as a species of tropical

[11:57] Paradise that's without equal in the world International living pumped up Panama for years as the world's number one foreign retirement destination Only to get replaced by Ecuador then Colombia. It's good for international living clickbait numbers But it can't be right something's wrong with that picture If you're expecting an international living style paradise pretty much anything that really exists in this world is going to disappoint you Then he says in the end I've learned to listen to two words when speaking with expats Words should and ought if someone recently arrives in Panama and frequently mentions that Panama should or ought to do this I'll bet money that that person will soon be an unhappy expat and Whether or not they are correct on their observations Which they very well may be the fact is they are focused on how things should be but not how they actually are

[12:47] Oddly enough they want things to be more like they are up in their own hometown Rather than trying to understand what they're like here and it tells me they probably don't have the necessary coping skills That they'll need to deal with an imperfect tropical paradise though the word paradise sounds awful good No one ever said it equals the word perfect in other words Inflexible complainers need not apply then he says interestingly enough I have found that quite often things that expats think should be done would create exactly the circumstances that they say they didn't like in their home country and one of the reasons why they left a Typical in common cases when expats find out there is no real cause of action for negligence here There's no one to sue You'd trip on a stair you fall down in a parking lot

[13:35] Your car drops in a Volkswagen sized pothole or into an opening where there used to be a manhole cover The first thing an expat thinks is that they ought to be entitled to compensation They need payback or someone to sue when they arrive in Panama. They claim they hate lawyers They despise the litigiousness of the US system almost all expats even ones that were lawyers back where they came from Claim that that is until their car hits that drainage ditch with no markings The key to happiness here in Panama or anywhere in Latin America is Focusing on the positive and the things you can change in your own environment and let the rest go as an expat It's important to have a cultural intuition of how the locals handle things Let them roll with it like they always have if you have a better way of doing things good for you But don't try to force it on the locals try to develop a curiosity that helps you understand

[14:25] Why things are the way they are and why the local people prefer things that way? Though it's true even the locals occasionally complain they get into that should and ought to business most times It's about their government and justifiably so but going there too often is a surefire way to make yourself miserable No matter where you are. That's why I think it's a big mistake when gringos start gathering regularly at those gringo bars those expat bars It's a good way for a new expat to get contaminated or tainted You can always get yourself into a should or ought to discussion there Again, try not to be a regular add an expat bar. It's not good for your health physical or mental Before I forget one last thing about expats. They like to live in gated guarded communities among other English speaking gringos

[15:12] Of course being into real estate. I could speak knowledgeably on that subject firsthand however Guarded gates can turn into walls and walls can turn into your own private prison if you let them Oh and don't get me started on expats and their social media addictions You don't have to be a pimply 16 year old to be addicted to fake book Instagram twaddle or dick talk I know many gray-haired gringos with walkers who stare at their phones all day and speaking of retired expat gringos who are basically shut ins That is shut in to their gated guarded compounds. Sure They occasionally venture out to Walmart or Costco But does that sound like golden retirement tropical paradise living to you? That's my rant Johnny Keep the show is coming. I haven't missed one in a long time and he signs it lic period estuardo a

[16:01] By the way, if you're not in the know about that little prefix lic period or lic a period The lic period is short for less in Seattle and lic a period is short for less and siada Means that person's got a bachelor degree. He's proud and he's letting you know about it Yeah, that's right here in Latin America college degrees are quite rare even bachelor's degrees You know in the states forty percent of adults have a bachelor's degree in Latin America around three percent So getting a bachelor's degree down here is a real big thing In fact, I run into Latin Americans all the time who say I was the very first kid in my family to go to college That reminds me how it was back in the states in the 60s and 70s same thing though There are tons of Latin Americans going to college Especially the public colleges because they're free but only a very small percentage graduate in fact in Guatemala City

[16:51] They have this public university called USAC University of San Carlos It's a huge public campus with over a hundred thousand students enrolled But the fact is less than ten percent of them ever graduate with a bachelor's degree Oh, and by the way, when you think of the name of that gigantic public university University of San Carlos You have to realize there's no separation of church and state San Carlos in English means st. Charles So they've got a public university and many of them named after Saints That also gives you an idea how weak or even non-existent the cancel culture is down here Just imagine up by you if there was a public school named after a saint How long would that last? Well, it would have never gotten off the ground in the first place Anyway, those two prefixes less sincere that and less sincere though masculine and feminine nothing gender fluid about it

[17:40] It's either masculine or feminine. That's the way the Spanish language is come to think of it Where are those woke stirs and cancel culture dickheads when you need them? I mean, where are they when you need to punch someone in the face? Well, you won't find them down here in Latin America. Isn't that a shame? Except and when you figure in gringo tourist areas and in certain gated guided communities on the gringo tourist trail with a Large contingent of expats, but I digress as usual. All right changing gears a second here You know, I never use Google as my search engine. Google is the incarnation of Internet evil Remember a couple of shows back. We mentioned a guy was on Joe Rogan an expert on uncovering the dirt on Google how he totally Unshelled that rotten egg in front of a huge audience of something like 10 million people if you're interested in that show

[18:28] Send me an email the expert files at gmail.com and I'll send you the link I do guarantee after you've heard just 10 minutes of that show you'll never use Google again It'll make you sick just thinking about all the times you use it in the past However, then people say well if I don't use Google, what do I use as a search engine? Well, I've been using for years now start page calm and lots of other people who use duck duck go You've heard that before however now we've just found out during this Ukraine war business duck duck Go has been caught pulling a Google censoring information and inhibiting the natural search process if you plug something in So I guess that puts duck duck go on the Google feces list, too But start page that calm still pure of heart and hanging in there. Let's see for how long By the way, speaking about really screwed up things are up in the first world, especially the United States

[19:18] You know every day I get emails from people telling me another sordid story about some big brother abuse whether it's mandates human rights Whatever every day life's getting crazier and tougher and tougher up there Just wait all your gas is ten bucks again. Now. The funny thing is you're never a hero when you're ahead of the curve I remember back in the 60s when my uncle Bernie said start saving those silver quarters dimes and half dollars in your Pocket change and hide them away. And when you get older, you'll be a rich guy He explained the world's monetary system was being debased falling apart My uncle kept saying runaway inflation will come and your only hope is to save silver Well, that was in the 60s his own family members thought he was nuts till 40 years later when all the silver He saved was now worth millions and suddenly the eccentric alarmist was a clairvoyant genius, but it took 40 years

[20:07] Then came the late 70s my engineering buddies and I used to have discussions about how social security had to go bankrupt There'd be nothing left, but I'll use by the time we got around to collecting So we made a pledge to ourselves never to count on social security always to have another source of retirement income when the time comes meanwhile the non engineering personnel at our company thought That notion was eccentric. We were alarmists a little nuts Uncle Sam would never let that him Social security was a sacred trust He wouldn't leave the old codgers high and dry the ones that have been paying in all those years Then came the 1980s and the book called the grace report a detailed report on all the waste and failures in government It was a shock to see that 30 to 50 million Americans were on some kind of government assistance food stamps, medicaid, medicare, housing allowances

[20:57] More than a hundred different government welfare programs We thought that is my more intelligent buddies and I the government has to crash and burn this can't go on Where's the money coming from? But they managed to keep the snowball rolling and in the 90s we found out just how much it cost to run 150 different embassies worldwide a thousand different military bases plus the cost of a couple of never-ending wars Oh, and let's not forget about that estimated trillion dollars for the black budget Meanwhile my more intelligent buddies and I would say to each other this just can't last it's got to crash and burn Where's the money coming from wrong again? How about all those billions lost in those medicaid medicare scams? You hear all the time about doctors and hospitals scamming medicare and medicaid for tens of millions of dollars And then there's all those personal stories of government waste and fraud

[21:45] Everyone's got a friend or a friend of a friend They'll tell you a story or two about some government waste and fraud on a local or state level I saw plenty of scams like that when I was working for the street department way back when During my college summer breaks You regular listeners should be talking about that illustrious job I had at the chicago street department when I was on the dead dog crew Except for the smell and the maggots. It was a pretty good job. Yep. Those were the days Now as far as government waste scams and fraud We've all read and heard about most of them by now, right? And each time you hear of a new one you say to yourself or at least I do anyway How much longer can this go on? I still can't understand for the life of me Why the u.s government has not degenerated into venezuela though. It is on its way. You've probably figured out by now I'm not very good at predicting time frames So then why am I bringing all this up? What's it got to do with latin america?

[22:33] Well those of you who've been paying attention to my brother and his stem cell journey here in latin america Well after making quite a few visits down here in the past year or so He's decided he's had it with the u.s He wants to get the hell out of dodge two He's starting his plan being moving to latin america Funny thing too even though he's been down here a number of times and he's learned a lot from me He's still said to me just recently too With my pension social security and disability I'll be making over 4000 bucks a month when my social security kicks in he keeps asking me He must have said it five times Do you think that's enough to live okay in latin america? And I keep shaking my head 4000 bucks a month down here puts you in this stratosphere Of income earners and he's single and I can tell he's nervous about it since 50 grand a year up in chicago

[23:21] Or anywhere else up in the states just barely gets you above the poverty level Anyway up by you on 50 grand a year. You'll never be able to get ahead now Remember how just earlier in the show I was talking about The tremendous prevalence of government waste and fraud has been going on for dozens and dozens of years now And now people who look at this stuff critically and do the calculations keep thinking Why hasn't the whole system crashed and burned already? How can this keep going on? Anyway, just when we thought we've heard every government scam in the book, or at least I thought I had My brother our stem cell poster child just informed me of a government scam He was involved in and it continues to go on I thought I got to tell this one on the show and I know when you hear this one You're gonna say damn. How is that possible? Well, it's like this

[24:06] My brother retired after 20 years had a huge meat packing plant just outside of chicago It was a plant that provided all the toxic meat patties for mcdonald's wendy's burger king, etc That's when my brother developed a lot of his physical conditions He had to quit because he was in and out of sub-zero freezers and back into room temperature places 20 or 30 times a day and his many sports injuries and surgeries just couldn't hack it So anyway, he took early retirement got bored and decided to get another job He got a job in maintenance at the county sheriff's department. Of course, he got on the county health insurance plan That's free. You know when you're an employee. It was called humana humana insurance Now this is a huge insurance company. That's partially owned and funded by government

[24:51] And insurance companies know that if you're physically fit, you're not going to put in many claims, right? So the company instituted a physical fitness goal for all the thousands of people on the plane They gave everyone including my brother a pedometer that counted the number of steps you took a day and if you took 5,000 steps that was normal but with 10,000 or more you'd earn points and at the end of the quarter those points would accumulate And you'd be able to go to amazon and buy things with those accumulated points In fact, my brother said the first couple of months he was there He was able to buy a gas grill a computer and some other stuff worth way over a thousand bucks By the way, he said you could turn those points into cash money, too Anyway, then I said because I didn't quite believe it How could you possibly get 10,000 steps in a day? You can barely walk two blocks with those two terribly shot knees of yours

[25:42] Well, he said one of his buddies in the maintenance department said you take the pedometer And you strap it on any metal part out of the riding mower You start cutting the grass and it'll spin out of control Then he said this guy told him that the girls and guys in the office who sat all day They'd strap it on their ankle and continuously tap their foot and after a few hours of that They'd have 10,000 steps too. Now if you had restless leg syndrome, you'd really be in luck Me johnny here. You know, I have that By the way, that's been recently designated as a disorder Funny how when I was a kid if you bounced your leg, you were just considered a little restless Now where were we? Oh, yeah How to cheat the pedometer for cash and prizes? So the guy at work told my brother at night at home All you got to do is strap it onto a power drill rev it up and it goes crazy, too

[26:33] So here you have thousands and thousands of people scamming an insurance company Basically the government because they're paying for it each of them getting thousands of dollars worth of awards and prizes from amazon That makes anyone who's got half a brain think once again, how much longer can this last? Why hasn't this system crashed and burned? Oh, and by the way, my brother Tried to get disability for years for his arthritis His bad joints for his vertigo and night terrors and all the other crap that's gone wrong with him But it seemed he just couldn't qualify until a guy at work told him to go apply again But to say the magic words quote I tried to commit suicide Yep, those are the magic words I tried to commit suicide and man almost instantly you get on disability before doing that the guy advised

[27:18] You must call a suicide hotline at least once there has to be a record of it just for a little documented proof Which again begs the question why hasn't the whole system just crashed and burned? Man, am I glad i'm living in latin america 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 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