What Six Months of Slow Travel in Mexico Taught Me About Money

In October I closed the door of a small apartment in a big expensive city, dropped my keys with the landlord, and got on a plane. I had no return ticket and a vague plan to spend the winter somewhere warmer and cheaper. I ended up in Oaxaca for six months and most of what I thought I knew about money quietly came apart.

This isn't a travel post. It's a money post that happens to be set in Mexico.

Cheap is not the point

The first thing people ask is how much I saved. The honest answer is: a lot in absolute terms, less than you'd think in proportion. I still spent money. I just spent it on completely different things.

Rent dropped to a quarter. Groceries to a third. But I started taking long taxis I'd never have splurged on at home, eating out almost every night, signing up for a Spanish class with a private tutor. The total wasn't a quarter. It was about 55%. The shape of the budget changed more than the size.

Most of my old spending was anxiety

Looking back at my last year of expenses in the old city, I can see that a lot of it wasn't really spending. It was a kind of low-grade self-soothing. Coffee I didn't taste because I was on a phone call. Takeout because I was too tired to think. A gym I went to four times. Small subscriptions that added up to the cost of a flight.

Anxious spending and joyful spending leave the same trail on a bank statement. Only one of them is worth the money. Most people can't tell which is which until they remove themselves from the environment that produced it.

The exchange rate of attention

What I gained in Oaxaca wasn't really money. It was attention. Slower mornings. Time to read a whole article instead of three opening paragraphs. The mental space to cook things, instead of the mental decision-fatigue of choosing where to order from.

Once I felt the difference, the old city stopped looking expensive in dollars and started looking expensive in attention. That's the conversion rate that actually matters and the one no spreadsheet can model.

Going back, kind of

I'm not going to tell you to move to Mexico. The country doesn't owe anyone a personal-finance epiphany. But I do think most people, including me, have a kind of money that they only see when they leave the room they earned it in.

I'm planning a return to the old city this summer. Not the same one I left, though. The deal I'm making with myself is to spend like a visitor: deliberately, with curiosity, with a budget that has shape. We'll see how long it lasts. I'll write about that too.