New Bills Aim to Boost Social Security Checks

America's seniors have one option to still survive on SS. Retire to Mexico as I have. There are hundreds of thousands of American retirees living in the Yucatan, and hundreds of thousands more in other beautiful places in Mexico, totaling millions. English is widely spoken, so forget the language barrier. Mexico altered its laws and essentially threw open the doors to American retirees, passing massive legislative changes.

In less than six months after arriving in Merida, the capitol of the Yucatan, I received my FM2 visa, the one you want. It is a Residency visa which costs about $300 annually. After five years, you receive dual citizenship. Prices for those costs which are gradually bringing down the elderly into even greater poverty are about 30-50% less. Often the prices for the same brands at Sam's Club and Walmart are significantly less than in the states! (Of course, they're here, along with hundreds of other American companies. Merida is a modern city. Most Americans have a border-town image of Mexico in their minds. The interior is completely different). Enormous malls and ultra-modern theaters provide everything you have in the states.

With an FM2, you can bring your possessions into the country duty-free, the biggest barrier until the laws were changed to attract Americans.

So even if you live in the rural area of a poor southern state in the US, your cost of living is likely 150% higher than if you simply move across the border. It isn't dangerous for Americans, in fact far safer than most US areas, and you will find the locals eager to know you and help you adjust any way they can.

For the foreseeable future, the changes in what increases SS made under the Bush administration will ignore the continuous spiral of those costs faced by most SS recipients, as it was designed to do by slight of hand. Mexico gives you an option to live a decent life, visit endless tourist sites, museums, so much art and culture to enrich your life, and there are countless Americans and Europeans all around you. You'll feel very much at home sooner than you think. You just need to face reality and have the courage to make a decision that will save you from the downward "go quietly into the night" attitude of both political parties. They DON'T have the courage to correct the system. You must change your own situation, not dwindle gradually as they toss their rhetoric back and forth without ever doing what's really necessary to maintain your dignity.

Michael of AR 1:36PM December 07, 2009