It’s Cheaper in Mexico
By : Barbie | In : Cost of Living
4
Cheaper
Wages,
U.S. vs Mexico
Every once in a while I receive email from people who just don’t believe it’s that much cheaper to live in Mexico than it is to live in America.
Of course, it all depends on how you spend your peso or dollar… just how well you’ve learned to make that dollar stretch…but, beyond that, the simple facts are these:
The 2010 minimum DAILY wage in Mexico is set according to three different zones in Mexico. They are:
Zone A:
The states of Baja California, Baja California Sur, Mexico City and some municipalities of the states of Mexico, Sonora, Tamaulipas Veracruz and Chihuahua at 57.46 pesos a day.
Zone B:
Includes Monterrey and Guadalajara, plus the states of Jalisco, Nuevo León and some municipalities (not covered by A above) of the States of Sonora, Tamaulipas y Veracruz. at 55.84 pesos a day.
Zone C:
Is scheduled for the smaller cities, plus the states of Aguascalientes, Guerrero, Quintana Roo, Nayarit, Oaxaca, Puebla, Querétaro, San Luis Potosí, Sinaloa, Tabasco, Tlaxcala, Yucatán, Zacatecas, Morelos, Michoacán, Hidalgo, Guanajuato, Durango, Chiapas, Coahuila, Campeche, and some municipalities of Veracruz, Nuevo León, Sonora, Tamaulipas, Jalisco, and Chihuahua (not covered by A and B above), rose to 54.47 pesos a day.
beautiful plantings and the sailfish
Remember, an approximation for converting pesos to dollars is ten to one – but it does vary daily. Actually, I just checked for today, 8-29-10, it’s at 12.99 to one. But, for quick changing, using 10 to 1, the highest daily rate of 57.46 pesos equals 4.50558U.S.D.
Yes, that’s right, $4.50 a day.
Now, I defy any of you to live in America on that…doubled, or even tripled.
And yet, Mexicans do live on that amount, and they are not starving. They are buying their veggies at native stands – their meat at native stands, etc., and they are raising food themselves.
They may not have high speed internet, but that’s okay too – they may be too busy carefully watching their children to bother with such stuff.
Oh, by the way, the minimum wage, HOURLY in America is $7.45 (States may individually set a minimum, in which case the higher of the two is the controlling minimum wage for that state.)
Mexico’s minimum daily wage is based on an 8-hour work day. 8 hours of work = about $4.50 U.S.
Mexico’s work week is 6 days.
America’s daily minimum wage, based on an 8-hour day. 8 hours of work = about $60.00 U.S. That is approximately 13 times Mexico’s minimum wage.
I’ve been reading your blog for years and have found very little information on the northern part of the gulf coast: San Fernando, Cuidad Victoria and Tampico, for examples. My wife and I are planning a trip there this coming winter (February). It would be great to be able to meet up with others in that area.
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It’s definitely cheaper in Mexico, but it depends on if you stay at a touristy place in a touristy city or if you live in less visited areas.
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Barbie Reply:
September 12th, 2010 at 6:59 pm
Exactly John! I say that over and over again – it’s not how much you have – it’s how you spend it! Barbie
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And yet, Mexicans do live on that amount, and they are not starving. They are buying their veggies at native stands – their meat at native stands, etc., and they are raising food themselves.
No, they aren’t starving because everyone in the family works, and sometimes two jobs or even more! Also, they probably built the house by hand, little by little–no zoning laws, you know. Etc. It’s really awful how glib Americans can be!
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