The team at Mexico News Daily is always trying to think of new content ideas to help better educate and inform our readers about Mexico. A few recent examples include our Expat Safety Perceptions Index, the MND Mexico Healthcare Survey, and the Sheinbaum, Mexico Economy, and Peso Indexes.
As we have been working on these content ideas over the past few months, we have received feedback from readers on other ideas, and we have identified some additional gaps as well. One of them is to create an index that focuses more on Mexico’s social progress (or lack of) versus more economically focused indicators. We are actively working on that one — stay tuned!
Another big gap we identified was regarding the whole issue of money and personal finance in Mexico. It occurred to us that there is often a real gap in knowledge when it comes to money in Mexico. Many people who are extremely sophisticated financially in their home country oftentimes don’t even have a bank account in Mexico. Others that I have met have little more than a local basic checking account with a debit card. Still others lose significant amounts of money on currency conversion.
The light bulb really went off when we were reviewing the results of the Expat Safety Perceptions Index. The data of our survey showed us that most expats/foreigners have not had personal safety issues and in fact, for the most part, feel very safe in Mexico. From a personal safety perspective, most feel pretty good. But that got us thinking and asking questions like:
1. What financial issues have you had in Mexico?
2. What are the financial risks the immigrants face here?
3. What are common mistakes that immigrants make with money here?
4. How many MND readers have been victims of a financial crime in Mexico?
5. What can you do to protect your finances in Mexico?
We believe that this is an extremely important topic and there is much to be learned and applied. As a result, Mexico News Daily will be going “all in” on this topic. We will start with a survey that we will be asking thousands of expats in Mexico to take. The results of this survey will be shared with our readers and will also help guide and define the topics of a new weekly series of “Mexico and My Money,” beginning next week. In this series, we will be covering everything from common mistakes made to best practices for protecting and growing your money in Mexico. We will cover topics like banking, exchanging money, rental income, investing, and dealing with contractors and local service providers.
Our goal is neither to scare you nor lead you to a false sense of security, but rather to provide you with the information, best practices and lessons learned of others to help you best manage your money in Mexico. Stay tuned, I am certain that we are all going to learn a lot from this survey and series.
Travis Bembenek is the CEO of Mexico News Daily and has been living, working or playing in Mexico for nearly 30 years.
