damn,
where are you guys living that are
big cities with no air pollution, quiet streets, no transients/'homeless' population, no mess, and cheap prices??? i'd really like to move to this Utopia! (fun fact, when Thomas More wrote his book
Utopia it was a play on words, and it has a Greek meaning of "no place" to show it's an impossible place...just like where some of you are claiming is better than BsAs!)
you're obsessed and you aren't going to like traveling. like i said in other threads, you would likely have culture-shock from going to the nearest city of over 1 million people, from wherever you're at now in the USA. i highly recommend traveling in the USA first; you are not going to have a good time abroad...you've got some issues and expectations that are going to make you a sad panda.
this is the case anywhere outside of the USA or select regions where tipping is prevalent. i had the worst service ever in Iceland. Switzerland was bad sometimes, too. but places like Latvia and Ukraine were amazing. and Thailand is great for Expats...super nice and hard-working people.
whaaaaa? have you been to San Francisco? Milwaukee? Chicago? Detroit? NYC? Miami? Phoenix? Los Angeles??? the first and only time i went to New York City for a weekend i realized that they don't have dumpsters, so the trash is just piled-up in the streets....such savages. i disagree BsAs is somehow more dirty than other big cities. it's a place with 13 million people...and it's the communist/peronist capital of the region. of course there are douchebags! but i highly recommend going to Nogales, El Paso, Tijuana, or any border city, and tell me that BsAs is even 10% the dirtiness that they are.
ummmm, have you watched videos of drivers in India? i've driven in Iraq and Afghanistan and 20 other countries and BsAs is less stressful than when i was just driving in California. CA drivers are crazy.
so,
they exist, but there isn't a one-stop shop for them. this is sort of like a half-complaint. if a Wal-Mart opened in BsAs people would be mind-blown that they can get everything from coffeemakers to lawn chairs to organic mushrooms, all under one roof!
did you see the tariff-removal laws might change this??? my buddies from Africa give the same complaint; the gov't gives a 100% charge on imports, so the consumer (us) pays double for a normal item. AirPods are $150 USD on Amazon.com and $330 USD on MercadoLibre. let's check back on this later in the year. i hope Argentines embrace their shrunken government once they see they've been extorted for so long, with no tangible benefits (why are there no public toilets anywhere? this is my main complaint, since i'm a runner. i hate having to find a corner and take a piss because there are no places!)
well, if locals are being xenophobic and assholes, why not embrace meeting like-minded people? aside from it not being 'cool' to hang-out with other
estadounidenses/Europeans when in BsAs, what's the disconnect? this is one thing i disagree with earlyretirement on; i find it a little silly to try to exude the well-traveled and i'm-so-local-i-haven't-spoken-English-in-months vibe that you avoid all other Expats...dude, it's hard to live abroad! if people are being assholes, meet-up with some people from other countries living here; there are Russians, USA folks, Europeans, whatever. i once thought it was edgy to reject USA stuff, but in the end, Argentina could benefit from taking some learning lessons from the States...and it can't hurt for you to network with people who might also be buying a property here, or starting a business, or doing a tour you want to do. i find this attitude really silly and juvenile. am i missing something? the Expats i met at a meet-up were nervous and hoping to find people to share this journey with. sounds cool to me! also, if you've ever been to Iceland/Norway/Sweden you will know that the Scandinavian folks do NOT mix social circles....BsAs is absolutely not this way.
just buy the cheap packs that are $1.30 USD for a pack...they aren't soft, but they're cheap!
https://www.carrefour.com.ar/papel-higienico-hoja-simple-carrefour-4-x-30-m/p
whaaaaaa? only because the windows are single-pane. i slept like sh*t in a lot of cities like Berlin, because there are constant ambulances, people yelling and partying, etc. - i've found BsAs to be pretty quiet at night, especially considering young people party from 11p-5a a lot. i've slept really well in BsAs the past 2 months. the only reasons i've had issues is from annoying apartment neighbors with shared walls. and i've been in 5 different apartments so far in 8 weeks.
could just be the heat and humidity? i've never heard of air pollution being linked to skin. have you traveled to other humid/warm places and not had the same issues? i had some minor allergies my first week, but i feel like most of it was not being around smokers for 5 years, then coming to BsAs where people blow smoke on you all the time (the less-educated the population, the more smokers there are), but i haven't sneezed since after the first 1-2 weeks!
like how the US FDA blocked Ivermectin for years, because it treated COVID and they needed emergency authorization for record Billions$ profit for Pfizer/etc. with an experimental mRNA vaccine, and killed millions of people who could have been cured with Early Treatment protocols? or just normal communist/peronist nepotism corruption?
true, but like i said to Jenn, this applies to any city with over 100k people. it's just the norm now, in the USA and here in BsAs. in good weather, people choose to live on the streets and get handouts. people in BsAs seem to love paying bums to be bums, which is strange. i see healthy 25-yo males begging from table to table, and they could easily go work a normal job. economically, they are likely making more money from bleeding-heart people than they would working, so they're incentivized to keep being parasites.
interesting, haven't seen this at all in the past 8 weeks of hot season. i'll keep an eye out for the next 30 days as the summer finishes. but even on the days that are high 90s fahrenheit, the heat is weak compared to summers in Florida, the South, or Phoenix AZ. i haven't been dripping with sweat whatsoever, and i run 3x/week.
it's obvious BsAs police have never consulted any other agency in the world. having your lights on is sooooo stupid. what a strange and counter-productive thing to do, for fire department vehicles (red), ambulances (green), and police (blue). this was also shocking for me, coming from working as a cop in 2 big counties in the USA. this is a really stupid aspect of Public Safety and should stop.
ever been to Phoenix?
https://www.azcentral.com/story/new...graffiti-street-art-collide-phoenix/78360066/
less than 15 items, self-checkout for the win! skip past all the normies
🙂
credit cards were getting good rates for the past month. you don't
have to use WU. cash is bulky and silly. but might be more advantageous this week, depending on the MEP/credit card rate. but ATM-wise, use a Schwab Visa debit card and you won't pay any ATM fees, ever (and they're about $6-8 USD each time, to withdraw a maximum of 35,000 Pesos or $37 USD). these issues should change now that Avocado and CheVos lost the election and their corrupt leaders have no more power to destroy the country with insane regulations and decrees.
did you see Milei is allowing 20k and 50k bills? this should have been done by the peronist dummies a year ago:
way worse in Peru. like, 50x worse. but yes, if anyone doesn't immediately accelerate at full speed, the drivers behind honk. and if you are crossing a crosswalk and are jogging because you see a car in the distance, they will honk (and you want to stop them and say 'no sh*t, idiot, i was jogging because i saw you coming...now you lose your horn privileges for a month!')
damn, ever been to Phoenix, Vegas, or anywhere in the USA South? these summers have been weak-sauce! i can still run, in Phoenix it's 115F and you ain't running. also, a lot of your complaints are annoying, sure, but that's part of coming to a third-world country where things aren't stable, because as an Expat you can do the Doug Casey style of "crisis investing" and save/make a lot of money : )
plenty of people here make enough money to live according to the cost of living, and save money. it's all relative; in Zurich you can make 50k USD and be in debt. in Uganda, you can make $5k and live in a village just fine (average salary was 30 USD per month, last i asked my buddies). COL is cheap here in BsAs, so wages are less. this happens all around the world, from Norway/Singapore to Thailand/Belarus.
sure, that's what your mom tells you. or you could work remotely and make a normal living, not have to be part of the broken SickCare USA system, and get taxed 40-60% of your income, and be present for another Trump/Biden election year, and not have to be around for the WW3/CivilWar2 chaos that is being fomented right now. being mobile is a huge advantage if you're trying to avoid political chaos. more info:
1. NomadCapitalist calls this "going where you're treated best" -
https://nomadcapitalist.com/global-citizen/how-to-go-where-youre-treated-best/
2. SovereignMan calls this avoiding turmoil and other things you don't want -
https://www.schiffsovereign.com/trends/no-sire-it-is-a-revolution-13528/
3. SovereignMan/SchiffSovereign #2 -
https://www.schiffsovereign.com/lif...xpat-was-the-best-decision-i-ever-made-18554/
4. Doug Casey/InternationalMan plants his flags in places where the future looks bright -
https://internationalman.com/articles/leave-home/
this is a worldwide phenomenon after so much stuff was given for "free" - i tried to get people in the Midwest to do work on a house, and the ones from the nearby Reservation would absolutely refuse to work. it seems like from 2020 lockdowns onward, people are getting paid to not work. not sure
how since i can't figure-out if they're just doing unreported cash work, or if they are getting unemployment/etc., but it's been very weird. i ended up doing a lot of work myself via YouTube because i just couldn't find anyone to show-up in 2 different USA states, for a 3-year period. not sure if it's any better now. usually, when people are incentivized to not work, they don't. this is why Universal Basic Income/UBI (also known as the start of actual Communism) will never work, despite what 'smart' people like Andrew Yang claim. experts can quite often be morons when they are full academics and have no street smarts/real-world knowledge.
hopefully this changes with all the rental laws being repealed!
how would locals compete with you on remote work? wouldn't, well,
everyone in the world be able to compete, since it's remote? one benefit for Expats is that very few working-age Argentines speak English. i think i've met 3 total in 2 months that are actually fluent. i've discussed this even just yesterday with an employee at a big health food chain store. she said she regrets not learning English, and 'needs' to learn it by putting time in, but she speaks zero and she's about 24 years old. i really only see people 50+ speaking English, or people who i meet that are well-traveled (wealthy, educated abroad) and are back in Argentina just for the season they like, to see family (they're Argentine expats). so, you can compete with remote work because (according to the Internet) only
4-15% of
argentinos have any true fluency of the English language, which is the lingua franca of the int'l business world.
as mentioned before, this leaves-out the entire premise of being an Expat. would it be a good plan if you knew Iran and the US were going to exchange a couple tactical-size nukes in the next year? would another BLM/commie 'summer of love' riot season where your nearest city is scorched by mob violence be a sign you're in the right place? what if they capped Nurse pay nationally, like they were talking about last year? what if your retirement was seized and forced to invest in government bonds, because the economy was collapsing? what if there were food shortages in the USA, especially in rural places? what if the federal government fires on TX National Guard troops and we see a secession of Conservative states, with actual american-on-american violence? these are all part of the equation that your mom isn't considering. my dad does the same thing (he's around 65) - he has zero consideration that at some point, in his nice suburb neighborhood, there could be criminals looting when things get bad. his investments are all in stocks, and despite living through a 50% loss in 2008, he has no plan to diversify anything for this year's crash/recession. so, age doesn't always mean wisdom, and older people sometimes have an echo-chamber where they don't have a fresh mind to consider something radical.
here's a female who moved to Norway:
families moved out of USA for various reasons the past couple years:
https://www.romper.com/life/three-american-families-move-abroad
this person immigrated to the USA and hated much about it:
this couple did the math and could retire 15 years earlier if they left the USA:
compared to what other cities with similar size/amenities? i've found the parks in BsAs to be the complete opposite. have you been out and about in Spain when the college kids are partying? have you been around football hooligans in England?? ever been to a bar where there are 2+ Aussies?? i don't know where you're at, but i disagree very much about BsAs. i'm a light sleeper, and with single-pane windows in apartments, i would not be sleeping if this were a loud city. i've slept really well, for a metro area of 13 million people, and poor insulation/windows/seals (weather is so good here that i don't see insulation quality like Canada/north USA).
