#1523 – Solar Power Basics, Retirement Costs & Renting in Latin America

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 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 Let's clear something up for all you guys and gals out there interested in solar power You wouldn't believe how many questions I get from people trying to get the hell off the grid Questions not just from people living or planning to move to Latin America either first. Let me explain. There's a weird situation out there

[00:50] Regarding certain fundamental definitions a general lack of understanding between two very related things talking about Kilowatts and kilowatt hours, you know, if you look at your bill your electric bill, you'll see it's always in kilowatt hours not kilowatts Now here's the confusion Kilowatts not kilowatt hours measure power the rate at which electricity flows In other words, if you have a solar power system and an inverter You always have an inverter That's the thing that changes the DC voltage from your solar panels to AC house current So as for that inverter and let's say it's rated at 10 kilowatts That means when it's operating at full, it'll push 10 kilowatts

[01:38] Into a battery or into your household appliances, whatever you've got plugged in at home again Kilowatts is the measure of power the rate at which electricity flows in or out Whereas kilowatt hours like you see on your electric bill measures the energy Amount that you've generated or consumed each month because well your bill is by the month, right? Related to your electric bill again If you're living in the states you use about 600 to 900 kilowatt hours per month Not kilowatts kilowatt hours And of course a kilowatt is a thousand watts kilo a thousand Put another way look at the back of your refrigerator or microwave or TV or laptop it'll have a rating like 300 watts or 200 watts or 600 watts or if it's a

[02:26] Big energy hogging a plants like an electric dryer or air conditioner unit. It'll be in kilowatts thousands of watts Again, we're talking watts or kilowatts not watt hours or kilowatt hours So for example with your laptop rated at 125 watts That's the rate at which electricity flows in it from your power grid now back to solar power once again Suppose you have a 10 kilowatt inverter and you're pushing all that power into a big battery. Let's say for three hours That's 10 kilowatts times three hours. That's 30 kilowatt hours into that battery now mixing up or confusing kilowatts and kilowatt hours is like Confusing the amount of water flowing into your toilet tank per minute with the actual size of the tank or the volume it holds

[03:17] Two completely different things now this should be a simple thing, but it confuses people over and over again For example a listener in Panama who got a solar system installed a couple years back Just recently he sent me an email and laid out this problem for me. He said Johnny. I've got a five kilowatt hour inverter and What I thought was a pretty big battery 40 kilowatts. He says he's got three room air conditioners in the house AC mini splits He says he's got a lot of solar panels, so they run fine during the day But at night if he runs all three air conditioning units his inverter unit ends up switching over to the grid And he has to pay for grid power He doesn't get free electricity like he does all day And he's asking me how he can most efficiently upgrade that system so that he doesn't have to buy energy from the grid

[04:03] He's completely self-sufficient while running all three of those air conditioners now if you read that email again slowly You'll find there's a lot of errors first of all his inverter isn't five kilowatt hours. It's five kilowatts He got the nomenclature wrong because remember kilowatt hours are energy you've stored or consumed Secondly his battery can't be 40 kilowatts It's 40 kilowatt hours because it's stored energy, or I should say that's what the label says it can store by the way That's a hell of a big battery a 40 kilowatt hour battery man one that big should be adequate for any house So his problem is not with the battery. It's elsewhere Obviously if he's got plenty of solar panels the problem is with the inverter so basically in his email

[04:51] He got his units ass backwards and to be fair. He's just an average guy He says he had someone else install the system, so he didn't pick out the components himself He just trusted a solar installer. He heard good things about so you can't fault him for using incorrect terminology At least he's made the effort to get off the grid have you now what bugs me It is not the fact that a homeowner has these things mixed up But that solar installers and retailers don't do anything to educate their clients about the basics of their systems Because if you start off on the wrong foot like that you make some bad Assumptions along the way, and you'll never be able to completely read your system's monitoring tools Or know what's going on with your own electric bill not to mention your electrical appliances by the way the fastest way to sort out

[05:38] A good solid solar system salesperson is to ask them up front To explain the difference between kilowatts and kilowatt hours Exactly what we've been talking about if the salesperson gets it wrong, or they're stumped that tells you everything you need to know I'd take a walk now of course the sales guy is usually a completely different person than the installer But still by the way the correct answer to that guy who wrote from Panama That he can't run three air conditioning units at night without tapping from the grid and paying for it Well the fact is he's got an underpowered inverter Remember he said it was a five kilowatt hour inverter which is wrong It's a five kilowatt inverter to cure that problem He could just double up and get another five kilowatt inverter and wire it in parallel with the other that would double his power

[06:27] output or just retire the existing five kilowatt job and get a ten kilowatt unit Chances are the way prices have dropped dramatically. He'd be cheaper in the long run so his problem again It's not the battery. He's got a lot more battery power and reserve than most people He's got to look at the other two components the inverter and the panels He says his panel are high powered so quite adequate It's his inverter that just can't handle that load by the way if you've got a pretty decent size house and even have central air conditioning if you have a 12 kilowatt inverter That's maximum output for your solar system that should be able to handle your whole house off the grid with no problem Even with a whole house central air conditioning unit by the way a central air conditioning unit could be rated at from three to five tons

[07:13] But don't let that throw you with air conditioners. They use the more confusing British thermal unit system One ton is 12,000 BTUs British thermal units and those air conditioners rated in tons or BTUs Do translate to watts or kilowatts in fact a one ton AC unit Translates to about 800 to a thousand watts Or one kilowatt of power draw that is as long as your air conditioning unit is fairly new no more than five years old Since air conditioning units have doubled in efficiency in the last five or so years by the way when you're buying any air conditioner look for the rating SEER SEER SEER and make sure it's more than 20 to give you an idea I've seen some older air conditioner models that have a SEER number of 10 or 11

[08:03] That means if you buy a new one with a 21 or 22 SEER number you've got double the efficiency in other words It uses half the electricity, but the same output as the older models alright moving on to some unrelated But disturbing stuff did you know that in Brazil that famous socialist president Lula who spent some time in jail by the way a Year and seven months for corruption money laundering and taking bribes in a beachfront property scheme Anyway while in office. He created a most famous welfare program called Brazil's Bosa Familia a cash transfer program Which pays families a monthly stipend if they vaccinate their children and send them to school now I'm all for a deal like that when you send them to school, but to pay him for getting their children vaccinated

[08:53] they should line him and his family and his cabinet and all the senators up and Jab even double jab all them Before they give a single vaccine to the public by the way that program was going great guns during that covid it craze Which is why Brazil is so heavily vaccinated wonder how that ticking time bomb is gonna turn out Speaking of covid it here's something that should really piss you off I hope it does this comes from a Colombian wire service. It says Mexican citizen Brian Gardena was detained at Jose Maria Córdova International Airport in Rio Negro, Colombia after arriving on a flight from Miami on July 15th Garda a Mexican national living in the US was the subject of an Interpol red notice requested by the US authorities turns out

[09:43] Colombian and US authorities have discovered that he led a scheme to fraudulently obtain more than one million dollars from US economic assistance programs created during the covid it pandemic according to case reports the scheme involved creation of fictitious companies falsified documentation and fraudulent financial statements to the US government where Covid it funds and support were available to the public Turns out the funds were diverted to personal accounts and used for private expenditures and real estate purchases with US authorities now Some five years after the fact they're finally seeking his extradition on charges including wire fraud bank fraud and money laundering US agencies international affairs authorities report. There are thousands of such cases

[10:32] Hmm, then here they threw Elon under the bus for doge, huh? Come on guys. How much more this crap? Do you have to hear before you finally decide to get yourself out of Dodge? Think about it a Mexican national living in the States collects more than a million dollars in covid a how in the Is that possible? Speaking of getting the hell out of Dodge and most people who do are close near to or in retirement Yes, that's right. Most gringos and expects who live in Latin America are at or very near retirement age If you're looking to retire yourself in Latin America or elsewhere pay attention to this just published is a new survey chart and graph Estimating the cost for Americans to retire comfortably in various countries around the world with the data coming from net credit and the visual capital

[11:20] It's based on what a person needs as a nest egg to move to a particular country and retire Comfortably that is for a middle-class American to retire and not downgrade his style of living now This should be of some interest for everyone thinking of getting the hell out of Dodge For financial reasons because you deem it's just way too expensive to retire in the States It's pointed out in this study that a single middle-class person in the US needs a nest egg of $138,000 to retire comfortably in the United States By the way, the most expensive country to retire in is Singapore. You need a 1.1 million dollar nest egg By the way, the rest of the top 15 most expensive retirement destinations are northern European countries

[12:08] Iceland Switzerland Luxembourg Ireland Netherlands UK Denmark, etc, etc Now the first time a Latin American country pops up on this list is at number 16 Costa Rica the most expensive Latin American country for an American to retire comfortably with a person needing a nest egg of 556,000 bucks the second most expensive Latin American country for an American to retire in is Uruguay where one would need $451,000 to retire comfortably. Oh, and by the way, I forgot to mention these estimates reflect a retirement of 14 years and 8.4 months based on the average US retirement age and life expectancy Did you know that that the average American retiree lives about 14 point seven years past his first day of retirement?

[13:01] Oh, and there's a big asterisk here too in this report. It says these numbers and projections do not include health care costs Hmm. I wonder why could it be because it could easily add 50% to that US figure of 738 thousand dollars But not if you retire in most all the other countries whose health care costs are a fraction of what they are in the states Anyway, Uruguay comes in at 29 on the retirement cost list The second highest retirement cost for gringos and expats anywhere in Latin America, then you've got Mexico at number three Coming in about half of the cost of retiring in the US followed by most of the rest of the Latin American countries All of them except again, Costa Rica and Uruguay Estimated that costing less than half of what one would need as a nest egg to retire in the states

[13:52] Now you're wondering who's on the bottom of the list the bottom of the hundred ninety countries listed here Turns out the cheapest places to retire in the world are Pakistan where you'd need a hundred eighty seven thousand dollar nest egg followed by India hundred eighty nine thousand and Bangladesh 190,000 less than a quarter of what it takes to retire comfortably up in the states So then do any of those bottom tier countries appeal to you? They're cheap All right, but I say thanks, but no, thanks enough said about that. Here's a good time to talk about my upcoming November Exped insider seminar It's a week-long boots on the ground look at Latin America. Most tourists never see you'll be drinking from the fire hose on such Topics as health care real estate legal strategies business banking

[14:40] You'll meet local contacts and here's some amazing stories. I just can't talk about on this podcast So mark your calendar for Friday November 13th through Friday November 20th and the price of the seminar includes eight hotel nights Oh and we'll be shuttling between Guatemala and El Salvador on this trip for full details and sign up info Go to expat plan b.com and click on the seminar link. It's in the center of the page Oh and as usual repeat offenders get a thousand dollars off the early bird price and the early bird discounts are in effect right now But don't wait when those prices expire next month the cost goes up a thousand dollars Oh and as usual repeat offenders. We always have repeat offenders get a thousand dollars off the price

[15:27] So just go to expat plan b.com and click on the seminar for all the info Alright, let's change the subject. Take a quick detour. It'll serve you well to listen to the following very closely This just came in from mr. V. The title says it all It's about gringos and expats renting houses and apartments in Latin America and how you could get tripped up along the way The subject line on this screed is sort of a warning goes like this when your Latino landlord Says one thing and the contract says another keep your fingers crossed or there will be trouble in paradise He says right think an apartment in Latin America can seem quite simple. No credit checks No letters of recommendation. No bank statements needed You just find a place you like agree on the rent hand over a deposit sign the contract and move in

[16:16] Sounds easy, right? Not so fast problem is if something breaks and it always breaks if you're there for an extended period of time That's when you discover that your previous pleasant relationship with your landlord Can sort of fall apart because you see the landlord tenant relationship in Latin America is very different from what you're used to you see Landlords and their agents are very obliging when they're showing you at the apartment They'll say things like don't worry if anything ever goes wrong. Just call me and I'll fix it Yes, they'll fix it. All right, but more often than not you will get the bill For example, if you're stove or your AC or your hot water heater takes a crap in most all of Latin America. It's the tenants responsibility even though every renter up in the States knows the heater and AC etc Belonged with the apartment and had been there when they moved in therefore the owners responsibility

[17:06] But that's not how it works in Latin America. The problem is the vast majority of foreign tenants Renting in Latin America never read or can't read the contract because it's in Spanish all Legal documents in Latin America are in Spanish if it's in English and you sign that one. It's not binding Oh and Latino landlords will verbalize all kinds of things and make all kinds of promises as you're negotiating the deal Same thing goes for Latino car dealers If it's not in writing it doesn't matter what the landlord or the car dealer says Then there's that security deposit problem one generally pays a two-month deposit and you assume you're gonna get it all back Most of the time that's wishful thinking All right me Johnny here. Let's stop for a second here. You know over the years

[17:54] I must have rented five or six places myself and I never once got the whole deposit back now I can fix a lot of things in a house or apartment and make things look a lot nicer Than they originally were and I always try to leave an apartment in better shape than the first day that I entered it Which really hasn't helped me much not in Latin America now get this I once rented a really nice apartment in Guatemala and the landlord a lady was a nasty old thing I found out why when I was making the deal with it turns out she owned a nice apartment complex Maybe 16 units with one unit on the top a penthouse Which she'd completely remodeled to luxury standards For her daughter who was engaged to be married and it was supposed to be the couple's wedding present

[18:40] Guess what the young lady the daughter caught her fiance cheating on her right before the wedding the wedding was cancelled and therefore She lost out on the apartment a nasty situation and the mother Was noticeably bitter when she showed the place to me and told the story now I'll tell you that apartment was a little too nice Upscale and expensive for what the market could bear in that area So she dropped the rent under market value rather than leaving it vacant and when I left about a year or so later Of course, I took my pictures and wall hangings with me some decent artwork and I thought to myself I'm gonna fill the little nail holes. You know where the pictures were hung make it look nice You know how oftentimes those holes after you pull the pictures off the wall look so ratty Anyway, I did a really nice spackle job

[19:27] You couldn't even tell the holes were there except of course spackles white and the walls a bit of a different color So on the day I moved out and handed her the keys. She did an inspection She told me she'd give me my deposit back in about a week. It was only a one month deposit 500 bucks Anyway, I went to get my deposit was a check for 250 half I said what's this all about turns out she had the whole apartment repainted That's what she said and I couldn't believe it and the walls were perfect except for a couple of little white spackle spots That I decided to fix myself. So once again, no good deed goes unpunished Anyway in all five or six places that I rented over the years. I never got my full deposit back So no matter how clean hygienic or even anal you are expect that yourself. Oh and get this

[20:16] I had another problem with that lady almost every day behind the curtains of one of the windows I'd find two or three dead bees You know honey bees and there was some nice recessed strip lighting Around the perimeter of the room right along the top of the ceiling and I thought those bees have to be coming in somewhere up there So I took a step letter went up there one day and I could hear when I got up in the corner Bees buzzing so I called the landlord told her there were bees living up in the attic She sent a fumigator over they found a big hive of bees Eliminated it. I think it costs something like 80 bucks But in the end when she was settling up with the guy, she said to me Hope you don't mind if we split it. I said, yes, I do mind It's not my doing that there were bees in the attic. I'm just a renter

[21:05] Well, she didn't like that and she was a pissy old thing Anyway, so I guess I kind of knew early on she was going to try to screw me on the deposit Now here's the thing when she said she had to have the apartment repainted I never had a chance to get into the apartment and see it. I had already given up the keys Remember, it was a week later. So I kind of doubt she painted it She just told me she did and don't think it didn't cross my mind, you know to ask to see the paint job But I thought now that would just cause more hard feelings and stress Anyway, mr. V goes out to say he learned his lesson, too There must always be a prepared written inventory of the furniture and knickknacks, etc And you should take photographs and videos of the property in case there's a dispute about Scratches in the dining room tables or stains on the sofas or cracks in the bathroom tiles stains on the rugs and carpets

[21:56] Etc. Etc. On top of that he says utility bills can create confusion for tenants in Latin America as well with electric and water accounts Connected usually to the property owner or the property itself So the tenant just pays an account number or payment code at the bank each month Which works out just fine generally until there's a dispute for example a tenant might discover an old unpaid balance or as what has happened recently in many Latin countries an Electric bill that might have been very constant over many months will suddenly double coming out of nowhere Now there are ways to dispute that But it involves a lot of wasted time and trips to two or three government buildings line standing frustration Etc. Etc. And the question is who goes through that process the tenant or the landlord?

[22:46] Most times when that happens the first world or gringle tenant just pays the overcharge and grits his teeth By the way, if you don't know Spanish, you'll never successfully jump those bureaucratic hoops another question that comes up all the time is what is normal wear and tear on an apartment a stove a Refrigerator or other appliance what's wear and tear to the landlord and what it is to you and me can often be quite different Oftentimes when you rent a furnished apartment the appliances are old and quite used But when the landlord shows you through the apartment they work fine However after signing a year-long lease, you know in the back of your mind that washing machine is probably not gonna make it That long well, sorry in Latin America. The repairs are up to you. So again take lots of pictures Oh, and by the way, you have to have that rental contract notarized by an attorney. Otherwise, it's not legal or binding

[23:37] another lesson I've learned he said is to keep all your communications with your landlord in writing and Recordable the best way to do that is to use what's up for all your communications with your landlord No exception because you can download all your what's up chats Videos and audios and print them out and record them on your computer for proof Hmm. Remember what I told you about what's up and how everyone uses it I know some of you guys and gals are anti AI, you know artificial intelligence But I highly recommend if you move to any Latin American country and decide to sign a rental agreement go on chat GPT better yet grok and ask it how a rental contract in that country differs from a rental contract up in the states and It'll point out all the fine little details and discrepancies

[24:24] And be sure you download that contract to grok or chat GPT before you sign it and ask for an analysis You won't be sorry. You should do that with any contract down here Contracts to rent lease by land or property or when purchasing a business You just run that Spanish version of a contract through grok or chat GPT or entropic, whatever you'll get the translation of course, but it'll point out all the little details and fine points too and Suggest a few things. You might want to add speaking of details and fine points You'll find another good example of Latino and Latina politeness when you get a mistaken phone call someone styled the wrong number They call it a kibokalo your phone rings pick it up And they say is Julio there and you say maybe even kind of annoyingly say sorry

[25:10] Wrong number is soon a kibokalo. You'll find nine times out of ten maybe 99 times out of a hundred that person will apologize to you Sincerely to oh, I'm so sorry to bother you Los siento por molestia It's so different from up in the states people will just say wrong number and hang up whereas down here in Latin America You'll get a heartfelt apology. Oh and related to that. Sometimes you'll get a cold call from a bank insurance company Whatever and the person on the other end that's bothering you is so nice Sure, they're bothering you and you want to hang up But man, sometimes I feel a little tinge of regret when I do that because I know that's a shit job and you get a thousand rejections a day and Mostly they're making the minimum wage Latin American minimum wage, you know three or four hundred bucks a month

[25:58] Yeah, I know a cold calls a bothersome thing But somehow you just can't help but feel sorry for the guy or gal on the other end What a thankless job, huh? Though soon enough those jobs won't even exist anymore because AI is coming after him at warp speed You know earlier in the show we were talking about retiring here in Latin America And of course retirements a game for older folks and just the other day at a little coffee clutch Sitting with a bunch of gringo expats all of them basically retired here in Latin America We've got to talk about the point in life when you First realize you have the first clues that you're getting old Of course We all can name some of the more obvious symptoms eyes getting a little worse a little harder to get out of bed In the morning aches and pains start showing up that you'd never had before

[26:45] Taking more prescription medicines more and more dental problems though one guy in the group one expat said there's one thing He said that when it happens to you It absolutely signals that you're getting old because it just doesn't happen with people under 50 And he said once it happens to you you cannot reverse it No matter how many drugs you take how long you exercise or how long you meditate how much yoga you do How well you eat keto diet Mediterranean diet doesn't matter it shows up and only gets worse with time Can you guess what it is? Well, none of us guys sitting around could but he was right and here it is You irrevocably turn the corner on old age when those nose and ear hairs start showing up So don't wait till someone gifts you a nose and ear hair trimmer for Christmas by then chances are you've grossed out a few people

[27:33] 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. No spamos