hey guys Andrew here with the Medellin Buzz today is Wednesday it's a regular work day for me so I'm gonna walk over to the co-working space as I walk over there I want to talk about some of the great things about living here in Medellin and obviously some of the downfalls some of the bad things because a lot of people hype up the city and hype up living here because the cost of living is low the women are beautiful uh there are many things to do the weather is amazing I'll show you this view in
a second I was forced to live in Colombia I was deported at 29 years old after living in the United States for 26 years since I was four years old I was forced into this life I made the best of it there are a few things that are great about living here but there's some things that you're just like for me can can we just get a brain and do things better so as I walk over let's talk about that uh let's look at this view real quick though okay so let's start with the pros
the first pro is the obvious one the cost of living if you're retired on a pension or maybe you're just early retired because you've had a lot of business success or maybe you own a business you're an entrepreneur or maybe even a digital Nomad with some sort of income that's over two thousand dollars a month you can live a very comfortable life in Medellin Colombia the minimum wage in Colombia is 250 dollars per month so if you're making two thousand dollars per month plus you're in the upper middle class of people in Colombia so what
can you do with two thousand dollars per month well first of all your rent is going to be about 600 to 800 if you go the unfurnished route in El pollado or in a nice area in laureles if you go the furnished route you could be expected to pay a thousand dollars or maybe a little bit more but if you're here long term you're not going to be renting out furnished you're not going to go through Airbnb you're going to maybe do that for the first couple months but then after that you're gonna be looking
for a long-term solution maybe unfurnished maybe furnished but for a lot less than what you get on Airbnb I made a video which I'll put right here so that you can check it out on how to rent apartments without going through Airbnb with two thousand dollars a month let's say your unfurnished apartment rent is 600 or 800 per month that means that you have a lot more money left over for for example a maid to come to your house two times a week that could cost you two hundred dollars a hundred fifty dollars per month
and she'll do the laundry she'll cook she'll clean it's amazing usually groceries for a couple of weeks maybe even stretching it to the whole month could be about 200 to 250 dollars per month and that leaves you with a bunch of money left over to do extra things for example like entertainment learn something take courses take Spanish classes salsa lessons whether you go to the studio or you have someone come to you money for Ubers Ubers are super cheap here I think the most I've ever spent on an Uber was what like 12 dollars so
even even though I have a couple of businesses and I'm doing a lot better now than I was when I first got here and I was completely broke my monthly expenses stay at about two thousand two hundred dollars per month give or take which leaves me a lot of money left over to save and to invest in buying property here or do whatever I want with it but the fact of the matter is that I don't know if I'd be able to do that in the United States with what I make or maybe I'd be
able to save but I wouldn't be able to own multiple Apartments maybe just one in Southern California regardless I made a video where I break down my whole budget you could check it out here I'll put it there the next Pro is social life Colombians as a whole are pretty social and Medellin is no exception there's always something to do in Medellin whether it's Monday or Sunday doesn't matter any day of the week you can find something to do if you want to immerse yourself in local culture you could do a ton of things for
example going to the local soccer matches going to the local salsa club to go dancing with the locals in places like laureles Belen even downtown if you want to take cooking classes to learn how to cook Colombian dishes you can hire a chef which is pretty inexpensive compared to the United States to teach you that so no matter what your Social Circle is going to grow here on top of that if you want to hang out with other expats because sometimes it can get lonely if you don't speak the language fluently and you just want
to be able to have a conversation with someone in English that's from your country or from an English-speaking country you can do that in Medellin the expat Community is pretty big there are a lot of Facebook groups where you can make those connections on top of that there are also WhatsApp groups make sure to check out the mde community the link is in the description below I have no affiliation but it's just an amazing resource pretty much anything that you want to do you can find a group already created so you're going to meet people
no matter what I've been here 13 years and I pretty much meet people weekly because of the things that I do at 42 years old I think about what my life would be like in the United States what my Social Circle would be like would my social life be this same as it is here in Colombia I've got a local staff and local friends but I also go to my local sports bar to watch baseball games basketball games where there's a lot of tourists and a lot of expats so I meet people from all over
the world all of the time and that's pretty enriching for me I I love that I wouldn't want it any other way another Pro is hiring local talent if you're an entrepreneur if you own business like I do hiring people is pretty great because of the fact that you can find people that speak English really well and you're going to be able to pay them less than what you would in the United States and you're giving them a great salary here with benefits or if they're an independent contractor at least pay them really well where
they don't have to worry about money to catch a bus or get an Uber somewhere which is a problem that I've seen here when I first got here I became an English as a foreign language teacher here and all of my colleagues always had those issues they always had money problems because they're making Colombian salaries and those could be very low especially if you have other responses abilities and most Colombians do have other responsibilities even if they're not married or they don't have any kids they're forced to help their family that's why a lot of
people here live with their families until they're older so the low cost of living also means that there's cheap labor which means that it gives you the opportunity to help someone by hiring them and offering them a better salary but on top of that you're getting a good worker that is trainable and that can be dependable and very loyal that's one thing that I've found about hiring people here is that when you pay someone well and you treat them well they become very very loyal that's the beautiful thing and the wonderful thing about Colombians that
I really really respect and admire is that it's not like in the United States where it's an employee culture meaning that employees are always on the lookout for a better company with better culture with better amenities with better benefits here there's not a lot of that especially in Medellin so those are the big Pros for me now what are the big con number one is renting renting an apartment unfurnished through a local rental agency can be very difficult because number one you need a local ID so if you're a foreigner and you don't have a
local ID you can pretty much forget about that you're gonna have to go through a company that caters to foreigners that can rent on a passport but that's going to be a marked up price that means that you're probably going to have to pay a big deposit or some months in advance when I first got here it was easy for me to get an ID because I am Colombian but even with the ID I couldn't rent because when you rent an apartment here not only do you have to have some sort of Colombian credit but
you also have to have work history and on top of that you have to have a co-signer that can back you up in case you don't pay your rent and I was new here so I didn't know anybody no one's going to co-sign for me so I had to roommate with people for a few years until I built up my credit I built up my business and started making more money and I was able to find a friend that could co-sign for me to get my my own apartment bang on that real estate tip another
con is getting a loan for buying a property here if you're a foreigner with no ID and no credit history or work history within Colombia it's pretty much impossible to get a loan to buy a property but even if you do let's say you build up your credit you've got a local ID you've lived here for a couple years and you want to get a loan they only loan 70 percent of the total amount you have to come up with 30 down which is way different than in the United States where you can get a
four percent loan at a very low interest rate another con is the high crime rate despite Medellin having gone through this amazing transformation of being one of the most dangerous places in the world to an Innovative City with opportunity for its locals great Transportation low cost of living more safety it's still higher crime rate than a lot of the places around the world and a lot of people will say well in South Side Chicago you can get murdered in South Central late you could yeah but I'm not going to South Central L.A to retire or
build a business or live my great life here even if you're living in the Beverly Hills of Medellin which is in El polal there's still that chance that you could get mud and robbed in the United States or countries like it if you're in an upper class neighborhood you're pretty much safe I know because I lived in one in Southern California I could leave the keys to my car in my car or in the ignition and I know it's not going to get robbed I can leave the door to my house open and I know
no one's going to come in I could leave my backpack at the local library and come back and find it I can leave my cell phone at the Starbucks and I know I'm gonna get it there now if I did that in South Side Chicago or South Central L.A yeah someone's gonna steal it but I'm not comparing the Beverly Hills of Medellin to South Side Chicago I'm comparing it to a safe neighborhood in the United States where here there's still that chance that you can be mugged you can be robbed if you leave something laying
somewhere you're probably not going to see it again if you leave stuff in an Uber there is a chance that that Uber may just ghost you and take it and go sell it and you'll never see it again so there is still that chance that being said I've been here 13 years I've never been mugged or robbed on the street but I know people that have been so I know there's that possibility so I'm always aware of my surroundings where I don't really relax and let my guard down completely in Medellin I don't have that
100 feeling of safety people that have been here for years or maybe they're new have been at the wrong place at the wrong time they got robbed held up at gunpoint their computer stolen their cell phone's stolen maybe even they fought back and they were stabbed I've known people that that's happened and then they leave the country with a bitter taste in their mouth we're talking about a country that has a minimum wage of 250 dollars per month people are still dying of starvation in this country so of course there's going to be people that
are going to want to violently take something from someone else so yes Medellin is an amazing place but it's not all butterflies and rainbows there are Pros there are cons and some of those cons can be deflating but even though I have all those frustrations with some of the stuff that happens here the pros have always outweighed the cons for me otherwise I wouldn't be living here and doing business here or making this video to inform you so if you're interested in moving to Colombia part-time or full-time make sure to click the link in the
description below to the Medellin Master Class please make sure to hit the like And subscribe button and I'll see you guys in the next one foreign [Music] [Music]
