Visit to the Midwest

I am writing today as I wait for Andy to knock off of work for the day.  That’s always the best part of the day and it comes early since he is working on pacific time and his company works on central time.  It starts early too.  But he’s a morning bird so I think that works for him.  A few weeks ago we bought tickets to hear Metric in concert here, in Vancouver.  I normally would be overly excited for a concert night but today, not-so-much.

It’s Thursday and just last Sunday we returned from a whirlwind ten day trip through the Midwest.  Andy had to be in Lisle, IL  for a Company meeting for two days.  I wanted to tag along because hey, time in Chicago!  We flew into Chicago and visited friends on our first night.  They have a pretty amazing apartment overlooking Michigan Lake, but we were there for dinner and only were able to enjoy the night lights of the City from the balcony to the black.  And as a dear friend and avid sailor once told me, just remember that black is always water.  The second night we had a yummy steak dinner at the original Harry Carry steakhouse.  There was a game on and we sat at the bar and cheered along with the locals.  When the game ended we got to chatting with the bartender, an interesting guy.  He wants to open a bar that serves only piña coladas.  How great is that?  We told him to look into Playa del Carmen.  Maybe we will see him there someday.

On Sunday we rented a car and drove to Lisle.  On the way we visited some fun and interesting landmarks like Hemingway’s birth home and Frank Lloyd Wright's designs.  It was really quite extraordinary. It’s an easy under-an-hour drive so we arrived relaxed Sunday evening and Andy was fresh for work Monday morning.   After each day of meetings the team participated in company events like visiting a brewery and attending a Bulls game.  He really seemed to enjoy the time he spent there.  “A lot of good folks” was definitely one of the takeaways from this year’s meeting, like last.  And me?  Well, I found Naperville.  I didn’t know places like this existed.  It’s old town charm with upscale shopping.  I found my beloved LOFT store and bonded with the sweetest sales person like we were friends forever. On the day Andy’s work was completed we drove back to Chicago, in a  soft snow and took a flight to Detroit.

From the airport we rented a car and drove to visit Angie at the hospital.  Angie is Andy’s little sister and she had just been readmitted after a setback during her treatments.  You see, Angie is battling stage 4 cancer.  And when I say battling, I mean she is fighting with all her might and ability.  She is a young 42 year old woman.  Besides herself, she has a husband and three small children to fight for through all of the struggles and setbacks.  The next day she was able to return home and by the time we left her treatments had started again. We were so glad to be there to visit with her for an hour here and an hour there when she felt up to it. During our time there we witnessed the total support of her church and community.  It was truly unbelievable and inspiring.  Andy and I did a few small projects around the house that Angie wanted completed but had not been physically able to get to.  It was good for us to feel like we helped in some small way.  Although, I know inside there isn’t anything that we can really do that makes a real difference in Angie’s recovery except to love her.  As we pulled out of the driveway I waved goodbye and I cried. 

Podcast Episode 3

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We moved to Vancouver BC and we're loving it.
Shout out to Kevin Smith.
Do we miss Mexico City? Some things yes, other things no.
Really enjoying the freshness and variety of food!
The views here are crazy beautiful.
But before we left Mexico City went to the Lucha Libre to see the fighting grandmas.
Shout out to that bummer of a movie called Roma on Netflix. Congrats, by the way.
Contrast Roma's Mexico City with reality.
Go to El Diente de Oro, La Xampa, Xaman, and Parker and Lennox in Mexico City.
Brunch in San Francisco on the way to Vancouver.
Our Vertoe experience was kind of sketchy.
Terrible weather and good food. Don't need to go back.
Next podcast: SFO vs SAN battle of the bands -- and what's up in the YVR.
Timberland luggage is amazing.
Santa Claus wants Nespresso. Shame George Clooney! Get ready for the Bill Murray Christmas watch-along party.
Vancouver taxi union stranglehold.
Dar's is collecting them Yelp badges.

Please excuse my cold!!

Music: "Something Elated" by Broke For Free

From the Free Music Archive

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We've Moved!

Well now we’ve gone and done it.  We moved from Mexico City.  Well, that didn’t seem to take us very long.  We wanted to head to some cold country before spring was gone.  After researching several cities in Canada we landed on Vancouver.  At first, we looked because it was close to a lot of cities in the US that we wanted to be able to explore on weekend trips.  You know, like Seattle and Portland.  Places I had never been.  But also, Vancouver looked great on paper.  Minutes from a beach and minutes from skiing, parks, hiking, snow, sunshine, bar culture, good food.  I mean, what was Vancouver missing?  It sure looked good on paper.  So sight never seen, we book three months Airbnb in Chinatown, downtown Vancouver.  We booked a penthouse overlooking the mountains.  And we were excited for months leading up to our trip!

The trip itself was a forever day.  We awoke at 2:30 am to catch a 5:30 flight out of the City.  I detest early flights but we landed on that departure for a very good reason.  Our connecting flight in San Francisco gave us a seven hour layover.  San Fran, yet another Pacific coast city I’ve never visited, so we decided to make a day out of it.  We departed and landed in San Fran on time so we Ubered (yes it’s word)  to the Vertroe where we checked our carry ons and continued over to Fisherman’s Wharf area.  The day was cool and brisk and the sea air was refreshing.  We chose a restaurant on the water and I tried a dish of Cioppino, a supposedly iconic dish of the City.  Filled with various seafood, it was a bit outside of my comfort zone, but I wanted it and I’m so glad I didn’t pass it up.  It was delicious. Spicy, rich, and comforting, it reminded me so much of the seafood gumbos I ate so often as a child.  After lunch we walked in the misty cold on the wharf a bit more, picked up our bags and headed back to the airport.  It was an afternoon well spent and the highlight of the day.

After the long travel day we arrived in Vancouver around 8 pm.  Immigration was a breeze and our taxi ride to the apartment was about 30 minutes.  There, the driver dumped us and our five suitcases on the sidewalk in the middle of downtown.  Our contact waited for us in the lighted lobby of the building and let us right in even helping with our mounds of luggage.  I say mounds, but you would actually not believe the amount of belongs we shed before leaving Mexico City.  We had gotten in the habit of accumulating all manners of niceties and creature comforts.  But now we arrived with our necessities which consist mostly of tech and cold weather gear.

So we are here in Vancouver and trust me, it’s glorious.  Even better than we imagined.  The air is so clean and crisp, the people are so very friendly, the food is off the charts fresh and tasty, the scenery is beautiful, and the city is so very walkable with shops, restaurants, and pubs in every direction.   I can’t believe it took us our whole lives to get here.  We have fallen in love with this City.  Now don’t get me wrong.  We still have our plans to back to Mexico City in the summer and in Playa Del Carmen in the fall.  But I must say, this Vancouver trip may just become a yearly spring visit.  Who could blame us?

Why Tim Ferriss was oh so wrong about (at least) this one thing.

Around the time we began disbursing all of our worldly possessions to embark on our work – travel adventures, Andy had already been an avid follower of Timothy Ferriss for quite some time.  Now if you don’t know who Tim Ferriss is, like I didn’t, I will share with you that he is a guru of just about all things.  If there is anything at all you want to know about, anything at all, just ask Tim.  He probably has an answer for you.  And if I sound a little snarky well, then you’re feelin’ me.

Sometimes when you make decisions in life, you do not have 100% knowledge of how that decision might impact you, particularly in the minutiae.  So when it came time to figure out how we were going to handle regular mail as we travel the Americas it came as no surprise that Tim had the answer.  The answer?  *We can uses services provided by Earth Class Mail (ECM).  This appeared to be the perfect answer. We would set up a mailing address which would even continue to be in San Antonio and have our mail forwarded there.  Earth Class Mail was the service that would receive the mail pieces, scan them automatically or by request (our preference), and then recycle or forward pieces by request.  All of our mail would be managed on line.  Even further, we could receive checks at our address at ECM and the service would deposit them to the bank of our choice.  Brilliant!

We have been using this service for about a year and a half.  Sorry Tim, things really did break bad.  This service has been such a bad experience and I am working every day to get out from underneath this obligation.  Earth Class Mail and taken front and center as my daily struggle, thorn in my side, and challenge for trying to get even the simplest things done with them.  They advertise “We digitize your mail so you can get to work”.  When in actuality, I spend some of my work week, every week, managing what they have done or didn’t do correctly, whichever the case may be.  Here are some of my issues with ECM.

1.        Crazy number system – My troubles began immediately with the first email from Earth Class Mail.  Although I was told that I would have a San Antonio address with a suite number, my new address arrived at Suite #104  ECM #610804.  So now I have 10 digit extension to my address with a firm warning that if a sender did not use the ECM number, my mail would be returned.  And they did. The extensive numbering system provided several challenges from this point forward.

2.       Always updating, never working – Almost every time I log into ECM it looks different.  I know those engineers and developers are working back there to provide more bells and whistles than ever.  But it doesn’t do me a bit of good if the bells don’t toll and the whistles don’t blow.  Buttons and options appear and disappear regularly and many times just don’t work.  Who is in charge of quality back there?

3.       Slow to nonexistent customer service - The last ticket I opened for customer service was on Feb. 1^st.  As of this writing, Feb. 13^th, I have had no response.  I sent a follow-up email this morning, again to my point of having to provide for my time to work out issues with this service provided by ECM.

4.       It’s very, very expensive – The service seemed reasonably priced for the promises made at signup.  And I thought it would be money well spent for the great customer service promised.  But after using it for all of this time, I can promise you that it feels like I am paying 10 times what the service is worth.  Over the term of my service I have worked about a dozen tickets with outstanding issues and some of them have taken weeks to resolve much like the one I am working on today.  And please don’t try to find a phone number to contact anyone.  I’ve also tried reaching management through LinkedIn and Twitter.  Believe me, they don’t want to hear from you.

5.       The process is terrible – Here’s something they don’t tell you.  When I receive a check in San Antonio it’s not scanned and deposited at my location, even though my bank, USAA, is in San Antonio.  This is the reason I chose a San Antonio address for my deliveries.  Nope, the check is received in San Antonio, shipped to the west coast where it’s scanned, prepared, for deposit, and shipped back to San Antonio.  Not realizing this extended process I paid a $30 extra fee each time I wanted to “expedite” a deposit which means I was paying to ship it BACK to San Antonio.  After several emails of digging to find out why deposits took so long, a help desk finally disclosed the process.  Incredible.

6.       The money grabs- The above is a sample money grab by ECM.  There have been others.  Back in December when one of their bells and whistles (namely the RECYCLE button) didn’t work, a whole lot of junk mail (it was Christmas after all) got moved into a “storage file” which I never once used and didn’t check.  Further, the storage folder provided no indication that there was anything in there so I never really looked.  But there all of that junk mail sat until Feb. 1^st when I received an $80 bill for storing all of that mail.  By the way, that’s the ticket I opened on Feb. 1^st.  Like I said, there have been others.

Should I go on? I literally could write ten more pages on the issues I have had with ECM detailing each ticket I opened for customer service, but I am done for today.  I just want to put this out there to save others from the hassle from which Tim Ferriss did not save me.  ECM offers pay for play which may have been the program that Tim Ferriss operates under, an affiliate program.  If so, he sure got a lot of our money.  If anyone is attempting the hard core sell on ECM, this may be your reason why.  But there is a happy ending for me.

A couple of months ago I started researching remote mail services.  Obviously it’s a move I should have made to start with all that time ago.  But I learn from my mistakes and I hope you do too.  With a lot of research I landed on a service that I liked for a new start.  I booted it up and have been running it simultaneously with ECM.  The new service, PhysicalAddress.Com has been a dream.  I have not experienced any of the headaches borne out of ECM service.  In fact, it offers and great piece of mind at a very reasonable price.  If you have remote mail needs, I recommend it and no, I’m not on an affiliate program.  But do your research.

*NOTE:  Earth Class Mail was specifically called out in the book Four Hour Work Week.  I hope that it’s updated at a future date.

Podcast Episode 2:

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Nomad Notes:

• Still in Mexico
• Went to El Diente de Oro whiskey bar. Highly recommend.
• Loving Uber in Mexico City. Come on Vancouver!
• Finalizing travel plans
• Vancouver, San Diego, San Antonio, back to Mexico City, then Playa del Carmen.
• Andy loves to grill -- Who doesn't?
• Cold weather and English -- What?
• Wrapping up our final weeks in Mexico City.
• Emergency Planning -- What goes into your bug out bag?
• Foreign Earned Income Exclusion
• Stay tuned next month for Tech Tips!
• Check out our Instagram

Music: "Something Elated" by Broke For Free

From the Free Music Archive

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How we avoided our taxes - legally!

We just completed our tax return.  We are scheduled to receive a 100% tax refund.  Here’s how it worked for us.

Andy spent a lot of time reading the statutes and regulations surrounding the foreign earned income tax exclusion in 2017.  Of course, he has made a career out of reviewing, understanding, interpreting, and reporting to government statutes and regulations.  So this wasn’t greek to him.  As he explained it to me, if a US citizen lives outside of the country for a predetermined number of days during the calendar (tax) year, that citizen is eligible for an exclusion of 100% of taxes paid for the year.  Even if the company paying you is a US company?  Even if you are being paid into a US bank account by your US employer?  Even if my business still resides in the US and all of my contractors are there?  My questions to him just free flowed, searching for the loophole that would snare us.  But the response to each question I generated was a confident Yes.

We moved to Mexico in October 2017 so 2018 would be the first calendar year we would be able to put the exclusion to the test.  My test, would be borne out through TurboTax.  Good old TurboTax.  My tax buddy for many years past would surely assist me through this new chapter in our lives and I had every confidence that whatever the case may be we will learn the outcome one way or another once it was time to file our 2018 tax return.  So during the year, knowing the travel to US had to be restricted, Andy meticulously counted his days in the states.  We actually made several trips to see family and once visit Washington DC.  But with every trip we counted and recounted his number of days in the country.

When near the end of January arrived, I completed the checklist of all of the forms that were to be received for filing purposes including a W2, 1098, 1099, 1099 INT, and so on and a so on.  I was armed and ready to accept the consequences of what was yet to come.  When I booted up my old friend TT he went to work straightway uploading all of my info from last year with a lot of assumption that nothing had changed.  But oh, it had.  We had been living in Mexico since 2017 and sold our home in the US in 2018.  Everything was different.

Turbo Tax didn’t make it simple to find this exclusion.  We had to strip away all of the income information that we normally use from year to year.  And here’s a tip, scroll down.  Among many other types of income options down the page, you will find the Foreign Earned Income selection.  This sounds confusing to me because it seems like this is where a person would report income earned from foreign entities.   But nope.  This is where a person would enter the income received while living outside of the country.  This is where all of our income, from work, was captured.  This included his W2 and my 1099s.  Next on the process was the physical presence test.  We entered the dates for each time we traveled into the US and counted the total number of “full days” we were there.  As expected, we were within the requirements of being outside the US for a minimum of 330 days.

CONGRATULATIONS!  You qualify for the foreign earned income exclusion!  said TurboTax.  And with that, my return calculator quickly rolled and rolled to the amount of our return that was equal to all of the federal income tax we had paid throughout the year.  The hard part is over.  Now we haven’t received the actual refund yet, but I will certainly keep you posted right here.  Meanwhile, here's a look at the worksheet Form 2555.

DISCLAIMER:  I am not a cpa, or even a bookkeeper, and I am only discussing our own experience. If you need tax advice, please contact a professional tax adviser. 

The Speakeasy

If you don’t love a good speakeasy you have no sense of adventure at all. When I graduated from college I had a BFF that went to work in Manhattan and I was so fortunate to take many trips to the big apple.  But even better than spending time there was having a local to show me around.  And we loved going to the bars with no names.  There’s something special about knowing where the locals go.  So far we have found only a couple of such places in Mexico City and here is where I’ll tell you about one of our local speakeasies.

A few weeks ago a friend visited from San Francisco, Marcel.  He used to live here in the City and in fact went to high school with Andy.  We were out to dinner, wrapping up and relaxing when Marcel mentioned he wanted to go hear some live jazz.  He recommended Parker and Lenox.  We hadn’t been but always love trying new places and even though we are not true lovers of jazz we went along to check the place out and extend the evening.  When we arrived at the address there was a building, yellowish in color with an unrecognizable symbol for their signage.  No street number, no name, no nothing to indicate we had arrived at the correct location.  When we peaked inside there were a few tables and a diner style bar.  There certainly wasn’t a stage present nor a sole in the place.  We walked the side streets hoping to happen upon the correct address.  But with no luck we returned to the original location to ask a hostess if they knew where it where it might be. 

She smiled and told us to follow her.  I thought she misunderstood was going to seat us at a table.  But we walked past all of the tables, down a long dark and narrow hall.  At the end she pulled back a long black velvet curtain that ran floor to ceiling and let us pass through.  We were there, in the jazz club with live music going in that familiar syncopated rhythmic patterns.  The place was full of people.  There was a bar with people standing from their seats and swaying on their feet.  There were loungers and pillows near the stage full of people looking up at the stage, watching the band, with smiles from ear to ear.  There was other various seating around the rather small room with the squat ceiling.  We were able to get what seemed to be the last small table near the door.  The drinks arrived quickly and the music was excellent jazz, although sans a singer.  It was strictly instrumental.  We sat for a couple of sets and enjoyed the night before saying goodbye to Marcel.  And the bonus?  Parker and Lenox is located blocks from our current apartment and we enjoyed a nice walk back.  And now that we know how to find the place we will certainly be back, especially with our visitors that want to go where the locals know.