Episode Summary
In this episode, Johnny Mueller dives into the real-world costs of living in Latin, discussing consumer prices, propane gas deception, the differences in lumber, and the challenges expats face with crime and law enforcement. He provides practical insights and real-life examples to help expats navigate daily life in the region.
Johnny begins by emphasizing the importance of real-world examples over government figures when discussing consumer prices in Latin America. He explains that while imported goods from the first world are more expensive, locally produced items are generally cheaper and often have equivalents in the region. He highlights the availability of local alternatives to first-world products and the tendency of expats to adapt to local goods over time. He provides specific pricing examples for food items, newspapers, and propane gas, noting that prices can be significantly lower at local outdoor markets.
He then discusses the high cost and deceptive practices of propane gas in Latin America, including how companies shortchange customers and the resulting push for solar energy. He also touches on the affordability of food and drinks, the local production of international brands, and the use of cane sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup in local products. He highlights the environmental impact of deforestation due to the reliance on firewood and the economic implications of low labor costs.
In the next segment, Johnny explores the differences between lumber in the First World and Latin America, focusing on the size, weight, and cost of two by four pieces of lumber. He explains that in Latin America, two by fours are actually two by fours, unlike in the First World where they are often smaller due to shrinkage. He also touches on the density and quality of wood from old-growth trees in Latin America, which is much heavier and more valuable than the younger, less dense wood found in the First World. He highlights the environmental and economic implications of deforestation and the challenges of replanting, as well as the potential of teak farming as an investment, despite the risks of poaching.
He then discusses the challenges of buying and using lumber in Latin America, emphasizing the lack of proper drying processes and the risks of moisture-related issues. He highlights the importance of drying wood at home, the differences in wood types and their costs, and the benefits of using hardwoods like teak and mahogany. He also touches on the broader topic of bank robberies in the region, explaining the low chances of being caught due to slow police response times and porous borders.
Finally, Johnny addresses the challenges expats face in Latin America, particularly with regard to crime and law enforcement inefficiencies. He highlights the lack of communication between law enforcement agencies, which allows car theft and other crimes to flourish. He also explains how bank robberies, especially 'express robberies,' are common due to chaotic traffic and corrupt officials. Johnny provides practical advice for expats to avoid becoming victims, such as varying their routines, building relationships with bank tellers, and being vigilant for suspicious behavior.
Topics
Consumer prices in Latin America, Comparison of first-world and local goods, Cost of living and daily expenses, Pricing of food and household items, Propane gas as an energy source, Propane gas pricing and deception, Solar energy as an alternative, Food and drink affordability, Local production of international brands, Deforestation and environmental impact, Health implications of sugar types, Lumber Differences in Latin America and the First World
Chapters
00:00:00 Opening 00:00:20 Weekly Prices on Consumer Items in Latin America 00:00:44 Government Figures vs. Real-World Examples 00:01:49 Locally Produced Goods in Latin America 00:05:42 Propane Gas Pricing and Deception 00:06:14 Expats' Experiences with Propane Companies 00:06:41 Switching to Solar Energy 00:06:55 Cost of Cooking with Electricity 00:07:07 High Kilowatt-Hour Rates for Expats 00:07:20 Poverty and Reliance on Firewood 00:07:55 Propane and Oil Price Correlation 00:08:47 Affordability of Food and Drinks 00:11:58 Introduction to Lumber Differences 00:12:04 Two by Four Lumber in Latin America 00:12:08 Common Building Material in the First World 00:12:13 Standard Framing Lumber 00:12:15 Buying Lumber in Latin America 00:12:21 Metric System Conversion 00:12:23 Conversion to Centimeters and Meters 00:12:29 Wood Dimensions in Latin America 00:17:15 Lumber Drying Challenges in Latin America 00:18:09 Expat Experiences with Moisture Issues 00:19:55 Recommendations for Wood Selection and Drying 00:21:21 Bank Robberies and Law Enforcement Issues 00:23:07 Law Enforcement Inefficiencies and Car Theft in Latin America 00:23:20 The Role of Corruption in Facilitating Car Theft 00:23:39 Bank Robberies and the Use of Violence 00:24:56 Targeting Expats in Bank Robberies 00:26:07 Safety Tips for Expats in Latin America
Transcript
Automatically transcribed from the original recording; names and wording may contain errors.
[00:01] South of the border Down Mexico Hi everybody I'm Johnny Miller and you're listening to the expat files Living in Latin America the one-of-a-kind show that tells you what it's like to live work play and or retire in Latin America So let's get started Well by popular demand I've been asked to give some weekly prices on consumer items bought down here like for example food That way you can compare the prices of things down here with the things you commonly use and consume up in the first world And then you can get a really good idea of what it costs down here to live It's a lot better to give you concrete examples like this then for you to google government figures and consumer price indexes Because we all know governments lie
[00:46] So I'll give you some actual grocery store prices converted to dollars and it stands to reason that the products I'll be talking about will be nationally or locally produced And I'm not going to mention imports from the first world because down here They're always more expensive so it doesn't make a lot of sense to talk about that stuff But if you're talking about imports from a neighboring Latin country Let's say you live in Argentina, and you're buying an imported product from Brazil. Let's say a sofa well in a case like that The tariffs are usually so low that you could treat the product as if it was made in the country You bought it in because you see a lot of Latin American countries with common borders have made trade agreements with each other So products can flow freely from country to country that way they don't have Tarifors or big country to country disparities on similar items
[01:32] Because they found out from past experience that high tariffs always foster local black markets And they have enough black markets as it is without the government's creating new ones Oh and just one more thing about consumer goods down here now just about everything you'll ever need to live the good life down Here is produced right here in Latin America That is except for maybe some of the real high-tech stuff like computers and cell phones and video games and specialty electronic items You know what I mean and like I've been saying anything that's produced locally is always much cheaper than it's counterpart up in the first world So if you have a burning desire for a specialty product made up in the first world You can always buy it down here or order it off the internet. That's no problem Take for example if you like buying things from Marshall Fields or the sharper image catalog well
[02:19] You can get all that stuff, but you're gonna pay a premium for it But basically for every specialty item that you might want from up in the first world there's usually an equivalent item made down here and for much cheaper and I've noticed that the longer expats live down here the more they cut their ties with the first world and the first thing that usually Goes is an irrational connection to certain first world items that they just couldn't seem to live without or make a break with When they first came down now, I'm not suggesting that expats go native far from it I'm talking about replacing your favorite first world item with a similar local one Let's say you just love Samuel Adams beer or famous Amos cookies, but not at the same time wouldn't that be horrible? Well, let's just say you've been addicted for a long while and you just have to have them in the house at all times
[03:07] Well after a while most expats I know eventually end up switching to the much cheaper local brands you get the idea Just remember if there's a first world specialty item. You just have to have you just might pay double for it or even triple Okay, I'll start by pricing some basic food items a dozen eggs a dollar and a half Avocados a dollar a pound in season a dollar fifty a pound out of season a pound of coffee Well down here coffee comes more or less in three grades The cheapest consumer grade is about a dollar fifty a pound the medium grade which is really very good coffee It's about two dollars and fifty cents a pound and the very top-notch premium grade coffee Goes for about three dollars to three dollars and fifty cents a pound now the prices
[03:54] I'm giving you are from a regular supermarket chain The mom-and-pop stores down here will be slightly more and then there's the big outdoor farmers markets where everything is cheaper Now that's where the lower classes in the indigenous people shop So, you know, it's gotta be cheap because those people live on a couple bucks a day And I noticed that people like that rarely shop in the big air-conditioned supermarkets They'd rather save a few cent avos than to have fancy floor displays and air conditioning Anyway fruits and vegetables and fresh produce are almost always cheaper in an outdoor market So that's a thumbs up for expats For example a pound of fresh strawberries in a local supermarket is about a dollar seventy five now in the local farmers market Which is only about five blocks away
[04:41] I can get a pound of beautiful strawberries for a dollar which is about forty percent less than what you'd pay at the nearby Supermarket that's a big savings so you can take all the fresh produce prices that I give you from the supermarket and Cut twenty to forty percent off of them if you shop at the local outdoor markets or farmers markets Now hitting on some other items a local daily newspaper from practically anywhere down here goes for about forty cents And a year's subscription to a big daily newspaper is anywhere from fifty to seventy five dollars Okay, let's switch gears and talk about the cost of energy and cooking for a minute now down here People don't have piped in natural gas like they do up in the first world instead about half the people down here about 250 million have a twenty five or one hundred pound tank of propane gas
[05:32] Delivered to their houses periodically and normally you own your own tank And you just trade every time you have a refill and a hundred pound tank today is going for about Sixty to seventy dollars, and I should warn you here that even though there are about four or five gas propane companies every one of them will cheat and short you at least ten to twenty percent on the weight of a hundred or twenty five pound tank and You can prove this yourself by just taking a regular bathroom scale and weighing a full tank subtracting the empty weight number that's stamped on every tank and Since no one ever does that except for the occasional expat as of yet No, one's really up in arms about it And if you do complain to an individual distributor not only won't they fix the problem?
[06:19] But they more than likely won't accept you as a customer anymore now that exact thing has happened to me and a few expats I know I guess we're just natural trouble makers so in order to get gas propane delivered We had to change companies and get ripped off by them, too Naturally and as for me you think I'd be mad about that, but actually it's a wake-up call in fact It's pushing me to go solar just as fast as I can and get off the grid I'm investigating all kinds of solar panels right now, and I'm gearing up to make the switch So I'll keep you posted on that and speaking of cooking with propane gas down here Which even at the high price of propane gas cooking with electricity is much more expensive And that's because for expats anyway. We're always in the highest usage kilowatt hour category
[07:07] We pay around 25 cents a kilowatt which is even more than any place in the United States But I talked about that on last week's show and you can check that out in the shows archives Now this might come as a shock to you But there is that 40 to 50 percent of the population down here about 250 million that can't afford gas propane at any price So they just burn wood So if you really want to take a step back in time Just take a drive into some of the poorer neighborhoods and you'll see little guys carrying bundles of sticks on their backs Selling wood from door to door and in some sections of Latin towns 24 hours a day there's a faint campfire smell going down and it makes you wonder where all that firewood is coming from and Now that oil prices are over a hundred dollars a barrel again
[07:55] And of course everybody knows that natural gas and propane gas are directly proportional to the cost of oil That just means that every day down here Thousands more people stop buying gas propane altogether because it's just too expensive and the reverting back to buying and chopping Firewood again, which is causing a huge deforestation problems In fact, it's one of the biggest unprosecuted crimes down here And it's going on with a vengeance in every Latin American country and it's become a huge gray market business It's a sad fact that many thousands of people are involved in stripping public and private wooded properties And if you bother to check you can see the sad results on Google Earth But the subject of deforestation is another story and we'll talk about that on a future show
[08:43] Okay, enough of that time to get back to those commodity and food prices You could buy a two liter bottle of coca-cola down here for about a dollar and a half and a six pack of one Of the local beers for about four bucks And if you buy an import beer like Bex or Heineken at a local grocery store You'll find it's usually around a dollar a bottle or can which really isn't much more expensive than the local brand That's because Bex and Heineken have local bottling plants down here So they're not actually imported from overseas at all like you might think and you'll find that's true for a lot of first-world brand names For example Frito-Lay, Nestle's, Kellogg's, Missola, Scott Tissue and Kleenex Big international companies like that come down to the third world and produce the very same products that they have up north
[09:31] Only all the packaging is in Spanish That way they save on all the import costs the taxes and the tariffs and the bottom line is they always make Their products much cheaper down here because the cost of labor is so low So not only can they compete directly and cheaply with the local brands Sometimes they buy out the competition or kill it outright now just as an aside I mentioned the price of a two liter bottle of coca-cola down here now I'm not recommending you go out and drink that stuff because if you've been listening to the other PRN programs You'll know that any kind of sugared soft drink is pretty much Poison for your system and if you've been paying attention to Gary null You'll know that the main reason for that is the high fructose corn syrup Well, if there's any good news on that front
[10:18] It's this that high fructose corn syrup that pervades the market in the first world has not yet made its mark down here Not with local products anyway, and that's because Latin America is one of the world's biggest cane sugar producers In fact, it's a top export for many countries down here So naturally it's used in great abundance and every sugary product they make and though it's a little more expensive than high fructose corn syrup It's grown and refined in such abundance down here that it would cost more to import the high fructose corn syrup than to use the locally Grown cane sugar as the universal sweetener. So why am I mentioning this? It's just the fact that there's a lot of evidence that high fructose corn syrup is Responsible for so much of the obesity the diabetes and so many other sicknesses up in the first world
[11:07] So what I'm saying is that if you have to make a choice between cane sugar and high fructose corn syrup The cane sugar wins hands down So down here when you buy a bottle of coca-cola or a birthday cake or an ice cream cone or a jar of cookies At least it won't have high fructose corn syrup in it Not if it's a local product or even an international product like coca-cola as long as it's produced down here But you can be sure that if it's imported from the first world, you're out of luck on that score So if you have a sweet tooth down here, it's a case of the best of two evils In other words read the label and take the one that's got the cane sugar. Geez I never thought I'd be endorsing refined sugar like that. Sorry about that Gary I wonder if he'll read me the right act on that and for the record. I'm not actually endorsing sugar products at all
[11:56] You get what I mean Okay, now that we're straight on that I want to talk about one last commodity product that might be of interest to a lot of You expat guys out there. How about a two by four piece of lumber? Now that's one of the most common pieces of building material that you're ever gonna find right up in the first world That's what you'd call standard framing lumber And generally you buy a few hundred of those things every time you build a house or a garage now down here in Latin America they use the metric system So they'll convert that two by four inch by eight foot piece of lumber to centimeters and meters Which breaks down to five centimeters by ten centimeters by three meters, which actually works out to a piece of wood That's two by four by a little over nine feet not eight
[12:41] So every board like that you buy down here you actually get an extra foot or so of length for free and the interesting thing about buying a two by four up in the First world is that they're not actually two by fours at all but generally one and a half by three and a half inches and Lumber companies call it shrinkage because when they put the two by fours in a kill and remove the moisture Well, that's what you get but if you talk to any old-time carpenters they'll tell you that back in the old days in the 40s and 50s and before that a Two by four was a two by four and the proof is in any house built before that If you go up in an unfinished attic in an old house and take a look at the wood up there You'll find nothing but real two by sixes two by eights and real two by fours
[13:29] Well down here in the third world two by fours are actually two by fours Just like they used to be in the first world and if you ask an old-time first world carpenter The real reason why you can't get an actual two by four from any lumber yard or a place like Menards or Home Depot He'll tell you that all the hundred-year-old pine forests have been cut out a long time ago And the wood you get now is from new growth trees that are only five or ten years old and that these trees aren't dense at all they're more like balsa wood and when you dry them out they shrink like crazy and Sometimes they even twist up like pretzels and I'm sure you've seen that at the lumber yard, but down here in Latin America It's a completely different story I mean for all the clear cutting they've done down here and all the deforestation You've heard about they still have millions and millions of acres of old growth trees the kind we used to have up in the first world
[14:20] 50 or 100 years ago and even if you haven't seen those forests firsthand It doesn't take much to prove it to yourself all you have to do is take one of the two by fours down here and try to lift it up with just one hand and I tell you sometimes it's not easy It weighs about three times as much as a pine two by four from up in the first world and that's because these old growth 100 year old trees are very dense the wood fibers you find in the trees down here are very dense for a reason They don't have to support a tiny trunk of one or two feet in diameter They have to support trunks up to three and four times as big so naturally the tree Compensates and makes the wood very dense, which means it's two or three times as heavy, too And I know I got a little bit off the track there
[15:06] But it's kind of important when talking about wood as a limited but renewable resource So don't be fooled when people say it's okay when you clear cut an area as long as you replant Because the fact is when you do replant in the majority of the cases you can't get any real productive wood out of it for at least 20 to 30 years and you have to wait even longer if You want the very high quality stuff Sure people down here who have tree farms say you can harvest a product in 10 or 20 years But it's always inferior to the indigenous crop of wood that came before it And that's why down here a lot of first worlders are falling for the idea of investing in teak farms In fact a few years ago It was all the rage in Honduras and Costa Rica in the papers almost every day
[15:53] They were advertising shares for sale of teak farms But if you know anything at all about teak, which is a hardwood It takes about 25 years to get a tree ready for harvest or so they say But the real experts know that teak comes in many grades and the finest and most valuable of those grades Almost always come from trees that are 50 years or older So suppose you do get involved in a teak farm down here It sounds like a nice environmentally friendly eco business to be in doesn't it? Well, everybody I've ever known that's been in the hardwood business down here Well, as soon as the trees get big enough their crops start getting poached So part of having a tree farm like that is Eventually posting a 24-hour guard because you have to since a mature hardwood tree can go for anywhere from five to twenty thousand dollars
[16:44] So down here poaching is big business, but that's another subject. We'll talk about in a future show So back to my original point What is a two by four by eight piece of structural pine lumber cost down here and up north? We call these things two by four studs and don't ask me why well as for price these things down here go anywhere from 60 cents to a dollar apiece and The dimensions are actually two by four by a little over nine feet And one important thing I have to tell you about buying wood down here They don't kill dry it like they do in the first world So they're not spending any money on fuel and a huge oven which keeps the price way down So you do have to watch out when you buy this lumber because a lot of times the lumber yards Just don't dry it long enough and from my experience for pine
[17:31] It takes about one or two months stacked in a shed with spacers between each board to get a good result and maybe twice as Long if you're talking about hardwoods like mahogany teak or rosewood And if you go to any lumber yard, you will see stacks and stacks of lumber being dried But you'll also see that half of it's not in a shed or protected in any way and you think maybe that's good because the Sun is fierce down there and that'll help the process well, it will for part of the year, but when the rainy season comes all bets are off and what might look completely dry on The outside might have a core of moisture inside and every expat I know has the same sad story to tell when he starts his own construction or woodworking project So many times I've heard an expat complain that as soon as he started cutting into one of those boards
[18:20] The moisture practically dripped right out as soon as he started sawing Then a circular saw blade just overheated installed So what I recommend to all expats who'd like to do a project here and there buy your wood Bring it home and stack it nicely with a lot of airflow and leave it there for at least a month from the get-go You should assume that it hasn't been dried properly So you go ahead and do it and if you smart guys out there think you can tell if a board's not been dried properly By just lifting it in your hand and sensing the weight. Well, you'd be wrong Because if any of that woods been cut from the core of a big hundred-year-old tree It's gonna be very heavy Even if it's completely dried out and I did mention in a past show that it's not a very good idea at all
[19:06] To build with pine down here, even though it's widely available and very cheap You should save pine for your temporary projects And if it's for something more permanent, it should never get near any rain or moisture Though I've seen a lot of nice furniture made out of it down here still it never lasts as long Or it looks near as good as the more expensive hardwoods like teak or cypress or rosewood or mahogany Now these woods could cost three or four times as much as pine Which is still absolutely dirt cheap by first-world standards But the great news about these hardwoods is that they're insect and pest resistant So if you're an expat down here If you have a building project or are just into woodworking as a hobby or are just buying furniture in general The hardwoods look so nice and are so relatively cheap
[19:55] Believe me select a hardwood and you'll never regret it and it only gets better with age Oh, and one last thing about buying wood down here. Everything's in negotiation So when you go into a lumberyard, you can always get a volume and a cash discount because 95% of the lumber yards down here are family owned and operated businesses and though first-world franchise places like Home Depot Are just starting to come down when you walk into your average lumber yard down here I guarantee you it's not at all like walking into Home Depot or Menards. It's a real experience It's like walking 50 years back in time and you'll be shocked at the selection of hardwoods and all the exotic pieces of wood That you've never seen before or even heard of and that stuff will be piled and stacked practically everywhere
[20:41] So I always recommend expats take a walk in some time and have a look now moving on a few shows ago I was talking about how bands of criminals including the Russian Mafia have come down to Latin America and have found ways to rob the ATM machines and Customers that use ATM machines down here now continuing on with that subject. I'd like to talk about bank robberies Now you hear about first-world bank robbers every once in a while in the news and in the papers but the perpetrators almost always get caught or get involved in a shootout with the police and Statistics show that 98% of first-world bank robbers get caught and the only time people get away with it is in the movies The fact is down here bank robbery is a crime that really pays and the statistics are the exact opposite
[21:28] Of what they are in the first world. In other words 95% of the bank robberies down here never get solved and the fact is as rare as bank robberies are in the first world Well down here if you pick up one of the local papers there's a bank robbery at least every week and in the big countries like Mexico and Brazil a bank gets robbed practically every day and Like I said 95% of the time they get away with it And why is that you might ask the banks have heavy doors surveillance cameras and armed guards just like in the first world Well, first of all, the average bank guard makes about three hundred dollars a month and has a sixth grade education So there's a small chance a guy like that is gonna want to risk his life in a shootout with an armed robber But the real reason why these guys almost always get away with it is because the police response time is so slow
[22:18] now in the first world They say if you call the police station a policeman will be at the scene within five to ten minutes guaranteed Well, there have been documented cases in the third world even in the biggest of cities down here where they have large police forces Where the police didn't make it to the scene for four hours now That's a hell of a head start for any crook now another reason bank robbers get away with murder down here is that the borders between Latin countries are so porous an Official information like police reports travel slow and sometimes not at all For example, there could be a bank robbery today in Managua, Nicaragua And the officials at the border station between Nicaragua and Costa Rica might just read about it in the next day's paper But get no official statement or notice of the crime at all from law enforcement channels in Managua
[23:07] It turns out that down here. There's a very serious breakdown between the official channels of law enforcement Not only within the countries themselves But it's even worse when it comes to sharing information between other Latin border countries And that's another reason why car theft is such a huge business and why most stolen cars down here End up being sold in a nearby country where the paperwork and the vehicle Identification numbers have been completely changed almost always with help from corrupt cops and border officials and another reason why bank Robbers get away with it down here is because they like to use their guns at the stick-up in other words Generally shots are fired and everybody is so scared to make a move that the robbers end up getting everything they want and add that To the fact that the traffic in most Latin American cities is so chaotic and out of control
[23:57] That no one even notices or says a thing when a car is double or triple parked in front of a financial institution So in most cases the getaway car or motorcycle can park right up at the bank's front door and nobody says a thing The fact is violating traffic rules is the norm down here now recently What's become even more popular is not your standard bank robbery, but what they call the express robbery now that involves stealing from a bank customer who's just Withdrawn some money from a teller and the teller who's almost always in on it Sends a text message or a signal to an accomplice outside and that accomplice Follows that guy when he leaves the bank and robs him either in his car or on the street now This kind of a crime is so common that they're not even reporting it in the papers anymore
[24:45] Instead what the papers do is occasionally print the general article on a subject and offer some lame advice on how to protect yourself even though it's almost always an inside job and The victims are almost always people on a regular schedule like businessmen who come and deposit and withdraw at the same times every week It's a routine with them and in time most tellers get to know these patterns and now that everybody's got cell phones It's just so easy to pull it off and an even more popular scam that's going down in banks right now He's basically doing the same thing But it's with a victim who just withdrew money Using the drive-up window or the auto driving part of the bank where they use those tubes and canisters and yes down here every bank has a drive-in section just like in the first world and in this case the teller signals an accomplice on a
[25:35] motorcycle and that motorcycle follows that current driver until that driver gets stuck in traffic or At a red light then the thief pulls up sticks a gun in the driver's face and steals the money So so-called express robberies like that are one thing expats really have to worry about Especially female expats because thieves in general Prefer to rob women because not only do they put up less resistance, but they almost never carry a gun Whereas down here in Latin America a lot of businessmen do pack heat So expats remember this when going to the bank always vary your routine and try to do your banking first thing in the morning When there's almost no one in line or on an off day like a Monday or Tuesday when there's not too many people around
[26:21] That way you can get your business done in a hurry and get out of there fast Because the more time you're stuck in that bank and the more time you're in that line waiting the more time the bad guys Have to set you up now the best way I've found is to find a nice old lady teller Get friendly with her get to know her by name and use her Exclusively anytime you make a deposit or withdrawal Don't switch around between tellers if you don't have to because the vast majority of the tellers down here that have been caught in These express robbery schemes have been young men tellers between the ages of 18 and 25 and according to one bank official I know there's never been an old lady involved And if your teller disappears in the back room for a while and the minutes are ticking by
[27:07] It's okay to be a little suspicious and keep your eyes peeled when you walk out that door Stop and look around for a second see if there's any young men just mulling around Look for a car out front that might be double parked with a few young guys in it or a motorcycle It seems out of place or anybody standing around talking on a cell phone who glances at you once too many times Just a few tips there from the expat files You You've been listening to the expat files living in Latin America and don't forget you can email me on anything at all about Latin America the expat files at gmail.com That's the expat files at gmail.com. See you next time. Nos bemos