Trip Reports Life in Buenos Aires with young children

[GallardoYes]

Hello All!

Hoping to get in touch with some expats or mixed couples who live (or have lived) in Buenos Aires with younger children. My wife (Arg) and I (USA) are debating whether or not to move back down for a year or two to be closer to her family for a while. We have a 5.5 year old boy and a 5 month old girl.

Main items of concern:

• School - son will be done with K this year and starting 1st grade in MN next year. The thought is possibly to move down next December and have him restart 1st grade down here in March at a public school (possibly same school/different year as one of his cousins).
• Healthcare - we would most likely just do a hospital prepaga - does this make sense?

Most probably we would live in Belgrano/Nuñez/Coghlan - as this is close to family - not interested in anywhere farther out than Florida/Vicente López.

If you feel you have input would love to hear and would be happy to meet up for a beer or wine at some point in next couple weeks!

 

[earlyretirement]

Good luck on your move to BA. I'd love to do something like what you're doing but unfortunately I have an older daughter in high school and now it would be too brutal trying to make a move. I do have a younger daughter as well in 1st grade but it would be tough now with the older daughter.

Two of my kids were born in Buenos Aires and I lived there until she was 3 years old and my son was 1 year old but I wanted to raise them in the USA where I'm from and grew up.

My biggest reason for wanting to raise them in the USA was I didn't think the environment down there was great to raise kids before (that might have been an overreaction on my part) but at the time we had friends that had some issues with their young kids in school.

School: I'd think you probably would want to go to a private school. Almost all my friends that live in Buenos Aires send their kids to private schools. They are relatively cheap compared to private schools in the USA or abroad. For example, my close friend sends her kids to a really good private school where they speak English part of the time as well and she told me she pays around $500 US/month equivalent for BOTH of her kids. I think she pays around 100,000 pesos a month for each child.

In US dollar terms her tuition used to be much more before but with the strength of the "blue dollar" it's gotten cheaper over the years. While the school HAS raised tuition, there is a limit to how much they can raise it so the result is it's gotten cheaper over the years.

I think once my oldest children are done with high school, we'll plan to move down to Buenos Aires with the youngest to do what you're thinking of doing. She will still be in middle school. But as you noted, we'll be faced with having to repeat with part of the year since Argentina and the USA/Europe are on different schedules due to the opposite seasons. I doubt we'd enroll her in public schools. We'd go the private route as it's a much better education and relatively inexpensive.

Healthcare: I'd think you'd want to enroll into a good healthcare plan like OSDE. https://asociarmeaosde.com.ar/

The healthcare is MUCH better in Argentina vs. the USA. People always say the healthcare in the USA is great but I'd disagree. I lived in Buenos Aires for 9 years and my experience was amazing there. I had 2 kids born there and it was a far superior than in the USA. The USA healthcare is crazy expensive and doesn't work that well even if you have a great PPO plan. In Buenos Aires it was amazing. For example, one time I kept getting massive migraines and they had me doing an MRI within 24 hours of my primary care visit. In the USA they don't want you to do anything and you have to keep getting referral after referral. Co-pays, etc.

I had a lot of employees when I lived there and we paid for the OSDE 410 plan for them and I was always amazed it even included things like the females in the office getting breasts implants, etc. All covered by OSDE! I thought that was truly amazing. I think they could get cosmetic surgery every 3 years or so.