A FIRST-CLASS BUS, WITH SNACK AND (PROBABLY BAD) MOVIE
PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION
For quite some time I've been wanting to live without a car. Not easy outside major cities in the USA. When we moved to this pueblo 12 years ago we bought a house within walking distance to my job, downtown, and the grocery store. So we could actually live here without a car--several of our friends do. But. . .we still have one.
We're going to move to a pretty big city in Mexico (1 million) and we want to live in the historic centro. There will be public buses to wherever we want to go and taxis are cheap. For longer trips there are first-class buses that are quite comfortable. In our many trips to Mexico we've found easy-access public transportation in both cities and small pueblos. In short, you can get where you want to get without owning a car.
A couple of months ago I went to the Social Security Office in my pueblo to sign up for Medicare. I had studied the booklet "Medicare and You 2010" and I had found my original SS card with my maiden name. I expected to show some ID, my SS card and that would be that. NOT! I had to pick a number, sit and wait (even though there was no one else in the room), observe the uniformed guard watching TV until, for some reason unknown to myself, my name was called and I went behind the bullet-proof glass.
The Medicare Interview: my mother's maiden name, my mother-in-law's maiden name, the birth dates of my children, my marriage date(s), my husband's SS#, etc. At the end she said, "do you swear that everything you have said is the truth?"
Hmmm. . . "I think I got the birth year wrong for my younger child." Whew! A potential problem now is that my medicare and SS have my middle initial as "A" (my middle name), while all my other IDs have my middle initial as "P" (my maiden name). What flight will I be denied because of this, I wonder. Of course I didn't think of this at the time.
Then I had to choose among parts A,B,C,D. Part A is hospitalization and it's the only free one. Part B is doctor visits and costs about $100 a month. Part C is for treatment of renal failure! (How did that disease get singled out?) Part D is for medication and costs about $100 a month. So, big decision! I'm healthy and take no medication right now, but when you're old you have to think about that disease/condition just around the corner waiting to zap you. On the other hand, I want to be able to live on my and my esposo's Social Security plus a small pension. $200 is a big chunk of change and it's double what I'm paying as an employee.
So. . .how about retirement in Mexico for the health care?
How do you decide where you want to retire? Maybe you want to stay in the same place you've always lived. You're going to wait til the kids come and take away your car keys and drag you away. Maybe you want to be in a retirement community where the weather's. . . . warm/hot (Florida, Arizona).
I started thinking about this retirement issue when I was in my 50s. I have lived in suburbia, in the country and in a small town. I want an urban setting for retirement. I want to live without a car, go to the symphony and plays, sit in the park and maybe dance there too.
The population of the Mexican city we've chosen is about 1 million. We want to live in the historic centro. We want a place that looks traditional--an open air area in the middle, colorful ceramic tile everywhere, and maybe a little garden out back.
