#1421 – The Expat Files: Secure Communication, Debt, and Government Inefficiencies

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 wander Hello there all you expat 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 Here's something you probably didn't know, maybe you don't even care about it But listener Mike has given us a heads up, he says hello Johnny Did you know that on May 5th, 2025, Skype will be cancelled forever? Well Mike you know I don't care about Skype, I never did

[00:48] Used it a long long time ago when it was the only thing around Even way before it wets up And then you know it wasn't perfect at all, lots of dropouts Plus in the end they were gathering all your data and selling it to the highest bidder Which reminds me I have to change my little exit bit at the end of every show it says I do one on one consults by phone or Skype Well the truth is I probably haven't done a consult on Skype in five, maybe seven years I hate Zoom too because they're just a data collection service as well That's why 99% of the time I just use Signal Anyway as Mike points out on May 5th, 2025, Skype will no longer be in service It will be cancelled completely Kind of wonder if anyone uses Skype anymore So he asks then, Johnny if I buy a local pay as you go burner phone in Antigua Guatemala

[01:38] So apparently Mike lives there in Antigua Guatemala Anyway he asks if a burner phone wets up on it Can someone in the USA, in the hospital let's say, with a landline phone, call me With he says that person only paying the cost of a local call I ask this he says again because on May 5th, 2025 Skype will be cancelled completely So I'm wondering if the hospital up in the states would know that the call was actually being made to another country For example the USA to Guatemala Furthermore I'm hoping on your show you will discuss a low cost Skype alternative Well again I repeat the Signal app, use the Signal app, it's just like WhatsApp It's free, encrypted, except they do not collect your data at all Unlike WhatsApp

[02:24] Oh and besides that you can program the thing so that using Signal Your messages and the person you're talking to can be eliminated in 1 minute, 5 minutes, 1 week, 1 month or never Your messages can automatically be eliminated permanently, no record So in other words let's say you get nabbed at the airport for something Let's say you've got one too many coffee bags or Mayan artifacts in your carry-on luggage Believe me you don't want to be transporting real Mayan artifacts out of Central America There's a lot of them around, just don't try it because you can get in big trouble for that As you might well know if you get selected for a spot search they'll take your phone, your computer, ask for your passwords Make you unlock your phone and often copy all the contents Well guess what? If you've been using the Signal app and are smart about it

[03:12] Anyone who's got your phone and your password or has unlocked it will see your contacts but will see no conversations, photos or texts at all That is if you've been smart and programmed in that disappearing text and information feature Look you hear a lot of people say I don't worry, I've got nothing to hide but think about it Imagine if every one of your personal conversations was available online to anyone Could be a lot of innocent but embarrassing shit in there, right? So anyway as far as a low-cost Skype alternative, I do not recommend Zoom I know I know a lot of people are addicted to Zoom or were addicted to Zoom Especially during and since the Covidiat lockdowns I'll tell you the truth, I think I only used Zoom twice in my life And once it was to tune in to a very long distance funeral that I couldn't attend in person

[04:00] Can you imagine that? They recorded the funeral on a Zoom call Kind of creepy actually However Mike, the question about can someone in the USA in a hospital for example with a landline phone call you in Guatemala Well sure you can make a personal call with long distance fees They still aren't that much maybe 10 cents a minute But as far as I know landlines don't connect to WhatsApp But if that person up in the hospital in the States has a regular cell phone they can hook up with WhatsApp I don't recommend WhatsApp, I recommend Signal Anyway you can have that person in the hospital download Signal Or WhatsApp if you prefer And you can talk all day and night without paying a single fee That's of course the most inexpensive way to communicate with anyone anywhere on earth

[04:46] And you know there are millions of legal and illegal aliens in the United States using WhatsApp as we speak right now That is their number one means of communication with the folks back home in wherever they came from in Latin America But you know what really burns my ass even lawyers down here do stupid things with sensitive documents Suppose you're using a lawyer to buy a property or get residency, whatever All of them are on WhatsApp and they'll ask you to send your personal documents Photos of your passport, your birth certificate, etc etc To them or to you or back and forth on WhatsApp And WhatsApp has been completely breached, completely hacked They have no idea it's a wide open platform, it's been hacked a million times And you know I run into lots of lawyers and other professionals down here, doctors etc

[05:31] They'll send your lab results etc on WhatsApp too And insurance company, car and health insurance company They'll send you your contracts and policies on WhatsApp And I'm forever bitching at these idiots and saying what's wrong with you Why in the hell are you using WhatsApp for all that personal confidential stuff you dickheads And of course they look shocked and surprised when I tell them that it's wide open It's been hacked, every clandestine and non clandestine agency in the world Has access to everything you post on it There's another problem too, recently I was doing a real estate deal And the lawyers for the sellers sent me a copy of the title on WhatsApp I said don't do that And I tried to give them the short version of why they should use Signal Better yet you just use StartMail or ProtonMail

[06:16] Email services whose servers are outside of the US Well the thing is attorneys down here are so used to using WhatsApp They don't want to download another program as simple as it is to download Signal Well here's the thing, you can convince them easily to use email to move documents back and forth But guess what, even if you're using StartMail or ProtonMail Very secure mail services that no one can hack Guess what, they've all got a Gmail account Every last one of them has got a Gmail account, oh man So if you send for example from ProtonMail A copy of your passport, your birth certificate, your bank statements, whatever As soon as they get it in their Gmail account Because they haven't got any other That too, I'm talking about Gmail, it's been hacked a million times

[07:03] Everyone's got access to it They're in the business of buying and selling your data to the highest bidder That's what Gmail is and including everything you Google They're data collection services selling you to the highest bidder So although you might be very careful and only use Those encrypted services you know won't leak your data Like ProtonMail, StartMail, or Signal As soon as you send it to an idiot, doctor, government agency, lawyer, whatever It then becomes available to any halfway decent hacker Yes, it's really unfortunate that everyone down here Doctors, lawyers, government agencies have a Gmail account The f***ing fools Anyway, I just thought I'd get that rant off my check Because it does come up That universal problem down here in Latin America as I see it Everyone has Gmail

[07:49] So as cautious as you might be when you send stuff from ProtonMail or StartMail Your encrypted service Especially when lawyers and doctors and insurance companies and bureaucrats are involved You have to realize that sooner or later it's going to end up in someone's Gmail account Then all bets as far as anonymity and security are off It's pretty much a given Your stuff will get passed back and forth and eventually end up in a Gmail account And the biggest offenders are, as mentioned, real estate brokers, doctors, lawyers, bureaucrats, insurance companies So in the end, if you're using the internet, sending sensitive docs, nothing is really confidential Yet when you talk to people on the street, almost no one is aware of that Were you? Well, you are now Alright, moving on, you know in a previous show we were talking about Doge And the terrible amounts of corruption they're finding within the US government

[08:37] In fact, it turns out almost all bureaucracies are corrupt The bigger they are, the more entrenched, the more corrupt And since I mentioned Elon Musk and Doge And how I absolutely salute his efforts in last week's show Quite a few emails have rolled in on this subject Though none more impactful than this one that comes from Miss C Who has a career in the US military, she says, Johnny And I'll condense and paraphrase this a little bit, it's a long email She says, I've been thinking a lot about the Doge rollout From this perspective of someone who actually works in the federal government She says, I'm a US army officer, a career military person She says, I'm in it for the benefits, not for the patriotism

[09:22] She says, all my experience with federal civilian workers stems from my positions in the army She says, I've worked with Department of Defense civilians from coast to coast She says, I personally am responsible for or rate Which means, I suppose, in military speak, she's the boss Over seven or more US government civilian workers at a time She says, of those seven civilians I'm responsible for, only one is worth her salt Only one is moldable, and that's a pretty bad record And the others, totally useless That means you could fire six out of seven of them with no effect She says, if you're a soldier, you can complain to high heaven But you'll still do your work, you'll do your task

[10:09] But not so if you're a civilian government employee In that case, you could flub your job and get away with it forever She says, a US soldier will call you names behind your back, etc But you'll still get that report you asked for Not so for civilians working in army programs She says, personally, I'm thrilled about the entire so-called five things you did last week You may recall that explosive edict from Elon Musk and Doge Alright, me, John, here You heard that in the news last couple of weeks, right? Turns out, every week, every federal employee is supposed to list five things he did that week Remember? What a terrible request, huh? Actually make a federal worker account for what he's been doing?

[10:54] Well, as it turns out, tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of government employees are having trouble Finding five things they did in one week Anyway, Miss C goes on to say, I'm actually thrilled about that entire five things you did last week thing But the fact is, most of these Department of Defense civilians can barely put together ten hours of work a week Me, Johnny, here You know, working barely ten hours a week when you're supposed to work forty I'm thinking, no wonder everyone wants a government job It's the same thing down here in Latin America Everyone complains and hates the government But most would take a government job in a second Hmm, sign up for forty hours a week and only work ten? Where do I sign?

[11:41] Alright, then Miss C goes on to say One of the civilians that works for me She's my responsibility and I'm supposed to persuade her to do some work But you see, there's been some trouble When confronted with the task of completing the five things that you did last week It was too much for her and she began to cry Turns out, at the end of the day last week, when she was supposed to submit those five things I felt sorry for her, even tried to give her some ideas That's when she accused me of making her cry As if it was my fault she couldn't come up with those five things Then she went over my head to my boss, crying that I was overworking her When all I'm doing is going down a list of things she agreed to do

[12:29] When she applied for the job in the first place Thing is, in the five years she's been working here She has yet to complete the tasks she's supposed to do Because she's so lazy and borderline incompetent at her job In fact, the man I replaced, the military guy I replaced Used to do her work for her, cover up for her However, when I got there, I refused By the way, this lady is rated GS11 She makes six figures This incompetent boob makes six figures Then she says, Johnny, I know that some people who are listening to this right now That I must be a hard or difficult taskmaster Seeing that the civilians under me can't produce five things they do in one week

[13:19] But let me tell you how it works with civilians who work in the Department of Defense Number one, they are immune to any and all criticism Number two, if you give them a task and they don't want to do it, they just don't do it With no consequences Number three, they claim they'll do exactly what their job description says But they often do much, much less Then she says, in my estimation, a soldier, a military person, is worth five to ten civilian hires Soldiers are expected to work We are expected to do overtime and we are expected to perform Civilians do their 40 hours, of which they only work ten, and then they bounce In fact, she says, one of the civilian women in my office that I do not rate I'm not in charge of, just work alongside Requested overtime so she could get to the emails that she had not done

[14:09] And was supposed to do during the week This blew my mind I know how it works I know how she works She refuses to learn our new systems and pawns it off on one of the soldiers in the office Even though she's supposed to be doing that work And she's supposed to be the expert on that subject matter Problem is, she says, it takes an act of God to remove a civilian worker from a DOD job She says, I don't know how other government departments work But here, at the Department of Defense, once a person is over his probationary period They are locked in for life Unless they literally murder someone on the job She says, I know someone out there will say, you know what, I fired a civilian once

[14:55] But believe me, Johnny, that is not at all the norm Believe me, if you try to go after a civilian worker for poor job performance Your life can be turned completely upside down because you caused the ruckus In another example, she says, one of my old military bosses was basically forced to retire Because he tried to change the culture of civilian workers to get them to actually do What they're supposed to do in the first place In the end, he was investigated and found to be a toxic leader This man was not toxic, but the house always wins She says, did you know in the Army, we have something called the QMP Qualitative Management Program It's for Army personnel though, not for civilians

[15:40] Turns out, if your superior decides to cut you If you had a bad evaluation or something, or gotten some kind of trouble You can get booted with a 90 day warning You can have 17 years in the Army and that would still be the case You screw up, you get booted with a 90 day warning You can also get booted or get a removal date if you do not get promoted to a certain rank by a certain time If you're slow to be promoted, you can get booted too Again, I'm talking about Army soldiers, Army personnel now Not DOD civilian workers What I'm saying is we, Army personnel, can get booted for poor performance It happens all the time, but civilian contractors, nope For them, it takes an act of God By the way, if you're wondering what servicemen, military people think about Trump

[16:29] It's pretty shocking actually, not what you'd expect I talk to officers in other branches like the Navy and the Air Force And when they ask how I'm coping with Trump I actually like Trump and quietly voted for him I say, I serve at the pleasure of the President Which they say in return, that's what the Nazis said She said, Johnny, you wouldn't believe this has happened to me more than once These are commissioned officers in the government calling Trump a Nazi It boggles the mind I've asked many servicemen if they wanted Trump to fail and they said, yes That's a mind blower too Believe it or not, some of them still think Trump is under Russian control They don't seem to remember when Clinton admitted She was behind the Russian collusion hoax

[17:17] The other mind blower is that there are many officers who believe that The Ukraine is the bastion of hope and democracy And when I mentioned how corrupt Ukraine was, just a month before the war I'm basically told it doesn't matter We're all in for Zelensky Problem is, now people have a constant stream of news And they select what they want to believe By the way, Johnny, most people don't know that under Clinton In the 1990s, there was a thing called the National Partnership for Reinventing Government Which cut 400,000 federal jobs in eight years Did the liberals make a fuss back then? I don't know I was eight years old when that happened But whether federal jobs were cut under Clinton or Doge, what's the difference? The difference is the liberals are up in arms when Doge does it

[18:06] Then she says there is also a level of government-sponsored welfare that people do not want to talk about The fact that 65% of black women in the U.S. with a college degree work for the government in one shape or another 65% And guess what, Johnny? They weaponized this when you try to provide legitimate feedback to these black women There's a fear of correcting a black woman in the service Because you don't want to be seen as a racist Don't get me wrong, though, I'm not loving everything that Doge is doing or cutting Or believe everything they are doing is correct For example, I do love the post office, and I will die on that hill Though I am anti-Department of Education I'm a no-child left-behind graduate And that was certainly a failure

[18:51] Oh, and Johnny, I want to tell you, I'm an officer working in military human resources, HR You wouldn't believe how antiquated our systems are We just lost our beloved COBOL design system for a sleek new system That is half as powerful but cost over a billion dollars And the Army didn't make the system, we just cobbled together some existing software and slapped a star on it COBOL is an antiquely old system Think of the 1980s hacking movies without any mouse, just a keyboard And a black TV screen background and blue letters That's what our systems and the social security systems have been running on 1980s software Anyway, Johnny, they're rolling out our new computer system in phases

[19:38] One of the phases we've been told is bound to fail And that you should have a rainy day fun because it will certainly screw up And the checks won't come She says, Johnny, I'm saying all this to say that we have this COBOL ancient system And the amount of people in patches in the old system makes it very hard to transfer to a new system She says, I know for a fact that some of the people in our system, in our COBOL system, go back to 1885 Which explains some of the centurions on the social security payroll She says the COBOL software is so old, Elon didn't have anyone on his team who knew how to use it It's like Sumerian language So ancient that everyone who once knew it is dead Overall, though, I'm happy that we have someone trying to restructure our civilian corps

[20:28] Maybe our civilian workers will realize who they work for someday She says the idea was that the civilian corps is supposed to augment the army But that's not how it's turned out Sorry about the long email, Johnny Though I am sending good vibes to you P.S. Johnny, I would love to hear your thoughts on the proposed 10% cap on interest rate for credit cards For your information, Johnny, I'm against this I just want to see what you see from your own foxhole Well, all I can say is thanks a lot for your input, Missy And as for my personal opinion on the proposed 10% cap on interest rate for credit cards Well, as a true libertarian, mostly libertarian anyway, I'm with you on that I'm against the government interfering

[21:14] I believe everyone needs to get stung early in life by those thieving credit card companies Learn that those high credit card rates can hurt It's a lesson I learned early on as soon as I got out of high school My first year in college, I started getting free credit cards in the mail I don't know if that happens anymore, but you automatically qualify At least when you go to engineering school Even though you had no real full-time job or a credit rating at all You'd still get credit cards in the mail that were activated immediately Some with $1,000 credit limit Now these things weren't debit cards, they were credit cards So anyway, all my buddies in engineering school got the same mailings, the same credit cards And a lot of them, after a couple of months, were already maxed out In sweating the fact that the end of the month was coming So that lesson I learned young when I was maybe 20 years old

[22:03] And I think everyone needs to learn that lesson young Before you have a lot of dough and resources, so you get burned just a little Now, at the moment, if you think of the highest credit card interest rate possible Up by where you live, down here in Latin America, it's twice that Same thing with bank mortgages, same thing with anything that's obtained on credit The fact is, down here, when I tell Latin Americans that up in the States You could get a 6% 30-year mortgage They just look at me in disbelief because down here, it's at least double that, 12% Now, I don't know how many of you remember what it was like to get your first home loan I remember it well, I was something like 22 years old And I borrowed 5,000 bucks from my grandma just to put into my bank account To show that I had some dough there

[22:48] I left it there a couple of months, withdrew it and gave it back to her, of course I do remember how nerve-wracking it was, sitting there at the bank with the loan officer Going over all my stats and dats, nervous as hell, hoping to get approved for that loan And you know what? I wasn't even thinking about the interest rate at all I just thought, whatever interest they give me, it's a gift I'll take it because I want that house They could've doubled the interest rate and I would've said, fine, fine, I'll sign And unfortunately, that's how all of us are when we're young and stupid And down here in Latin America, it's exactly the same People sign on for 12, 15, 18, even 20% mortgages And they're overwhelmingly happy to sign on the dotted line Oh, and man, because of that, the loan-sharking business is super alive and well

[23:35] And it's not even illegal I'll tell you, the average Latin American is in such a deep credit hole I really don't know how they sleep at night I just don't get why they remain so happy Saddled with such huge bank loans and credit card debts It's a cultural thing for sure Because, you know, when the 29th of the month rolls around If it happens to be a weekend, you still see Latin Americans partying their asses off Dancing and hanging out and carrying on Even though Monday morning is D-Day when all those payments are due It's that manana time thing for sure The debts are due manana, and that's not today Today, let's just party and carry on No point to worry about it till tomorrow Now, that's not the way most Americans think I surely remember when I was in my 20s getting a balled up knot of nerves in my stomach

[24:23] Even a week or 10 days before a payment was due Just the thought of having that hanging over me Even if it was a week or 10 days away, sort of spoiled my mood Something you just don't see with the Latin American public down here You just don't see that Yet they all just seem to be one paycheck away from bankruptcy I don't know about you, but I couldn't live that way Man, I must be really old-fashioned I come from a German family, and my mother always pounded it into us That the only thing worth going into debt for is a house Everything else you should pay cash for Then for sure you'll sleep well at night Now, that's not to say you can't use a credit card I mean, if you have an Amazon account, you can't do it any other way The trick is, of course, to pay it off every month Boy, credit card companies hate that If everyone did that, pay their debt off at the end of the month

[25:10] Credit cards would not exist That's how they survive On the interstate gouge and nickel and diming into debt with late fees and such You know, I have three sisters, and two of them are so bad with credit cards Their husbands, very early in their marriage, sat them down one night And cut their credit cards into a million pieces By the way, you gringos and expats out there I'm sure you can relate to this Seems like every American guy who's ever hooked up with Latina down here in Latin America I don't know about up in the States, but down here anyway He's found himself in the position of having a girlfriend With a very large, relatively speaking, monthly credit card payment What's large, you might ask? Well, I've had Latina girlfriends who've had a credit card balance of a thousand bucks Or two thousand Two thousand is massive down here Now, one of my brothers went through a nasty divorce a while back

[25:58] And in that divorce, his ex-wife fled the state She went to California, leaving my brother with a thirty thousand dollar credit card bill That he was responsible for Because, you know, that's what happens when you're married In a divorce, one of the others got to pay the one that's around to pay it So thirty grand, that's a huge credit card debt, right? Down here in Latin America, two grand is a huge credit card debt I mean, look, the average bank teller down here makes three or four hundred bucks a month So when she gets her first credit card, she's only going to get a five hundred dollar limit Then, as years go by, and she pays back on time, hopefully, and they'll raise your limit to around two thousand bucks That's about the maximum credit card ceiling I've seen for Latin Americans who are not professionals, like lawyers or doctors In that case, the credit card limit could go up to ten or even twenty grand

[26:44] Anyway, as mentioned, most Americans, when they hook up with a Latin American girlfriend, they'll find She's pretty heavy in credit card debt, relatively speaking again Now, you might think I'm nuts, you might call me stupid, but I can't stand when my girlfriend or significant other has credit card debt So, over the years, when I've had a long-term girlfriend, I almost always make a deal with her, lay down the law I pay off her credit card debt, but she can never, ever carry a monthly balance again She has to pay it all off That's a pretty good deal, don't you think? Pay off someone's credit card as long as they never jack it up again Anyway, that's sort of a new concept for Latin Americans, paying off your credit card at the end of the month Isn't that funny, though? I'm the one who gets nervous if she doesn't pay it Yup, and I can blame all that on my tough old German mom

[27:34] 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, theexpatfiles.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 2-5 year head start on your plan B Send me an email, theexpatfiles.gmail.com