Mexico has become dramatically more expensive in the past 5 years
I have heard that this has a lot to do with Mexico's economy being directly tied to their much richer neighbors to the north and that very well be the case. I'm not going to dig into it because knowing why it is that way isn't going to change anything.
I have been using Mexico as a "hub" of sorts for many years in my travels all through Central and South America because they have extremely favorable visa options for North Americans. Again, I do not know why this is but I would presume it is economic in nature. Americans get 6-month visas on arrival and if you want to stay longer than that you basically can go ahead and do so, they don't seem to really care how long you stay there. I rarely stay there for the full 6 months but it is nice to know that it is an option should you want it to be.
However, this might change as my "hub" because Mexico has become basically like the United States as far as expenses are concerned.
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Now a lot of people would say, and they would be correct, that Mexico is still a lot cheaper than USA, but honestly, given how wildly out of control expenses have gotten in America, this is not a good comparison. The cost of living in USA has been rather crazy for the past 10 years and especially in the last 4. So I suppose if you are paying crazy rent in some metro area of the USA that coming here would initially seem a lot cheaper to you. That isn't really the case with people who live 90% abroad like I do.
I'll just give a few examples of how expensive it is here: I have a car that I am allowed to borrow from a friend while I am here and gasoline is around $5 a gallon now and it was half that much when I was here just a few years ago. I don't do a lot of driving but when I go to fill up the tank and it costs nearly $100, this is something that hits me pretty hard. It isn't like this in other places in the world and once again, I have no idea why this is but it is the case.
Rent is also wildly higher than it was just half a decade ago. When I come to Mexico I will normally rent not on a site like AirBnB because they mostly cater to short-term stays, but still it ends up easily being more than $1000 a month and this isn't even for a very nice place. There are some gems out there that can be found for less but they always seem to end up being near $1000 a month. That just seems to be the point that all landowners are aiming for these days and once again, I have no idea why. Is it greed? Is it inflation? Is it taking advantage of the honestly, overabundance of gringos here? It could be any of or a combination of all of the above. The fact remains that it is what it is and there isn't anything you can do to change that.
Now comes something that I think any traveler or resident can relate to: The cost of beer.
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While the trend of designer craft beer pubs have definitely become a thing in Mexico, most places still stick with the classic popular lagers that are well-known around the world. I have been drinking beer in this wonderful country for nearly 20 years on and off and the price remained relatively stable as far as this was concerned until recently. In the past you would expect to pay around $1.50 per beer at a bar and of course less if you were just at a grocery store. Recently though, it is normally nearly double that amount and this is just the norm. For someone living in Los Angeles it might seem like a dream come true to ONLY pay $3 for a beer but we need to look at this from the perspective on the local region, not a global sense. For a beer to nearly double in price in a few years is an indication of a much larger problem that could be anything from taxation to increase in rental cost for the people who own the business there.
I used to go out for beers with friends without much of a worry about how much it would cost but these days I check the prices before I sit down. Keep in mind that I am not always in tourist areas either because I have been coming here for so many years. The price at places that mostly locals go to has also gone up dramatically.
Lastly, I will talk about something that we might presume would never go up in price and that is a head of lettuce. I wanted a head of iceberg lettuce to make a salad one day and was just alarmed that for a regular head of iceberg lettuce I was going to have to shell out $4 for the pleasure. The price for something like this in the past was so low that it was insignificant. These days, you have to be quite careful when shopping as it seems that almost all things have gone up a great deal in price.
This is all very disappointing to me because Mexico was always one of those places that I had hoped would remain affordable for backpacker types until forever. I can say after this trip, unless something dramatic happens, that those days might be permanently behind us. These days the costs here are starting to look more like Belize, which has always been an relatively expensive place to the point where it boggled the mind since Belize is surrounded by much cheaper countries.
I think an objective of mine in the next year or so is going to be to start to look for a more affordable Central American hub such as Honduras, Panama, Guatamala, or even Nicaragua. I have been to all of these places but never considered them to be a central point of my travel / worklife. I suppose it will have to be time for a change even though I don't relish the idea of changing what I have been doing for years but unfortunately the cost increase has just gotten a bit crazy in Mexico. I can only hope that it will change in coming years. In the meantime, if you are a budget travel or budget conscious type who is looking for that expat life, I don't think that Mexico is a good idea anymore.