Lone Ranger's Blog: Dollars and Sense

Let's talk money today. As I was sitting in the waiting room at the Honda dealer while the oil was being changed in the Fit I picked up the daily newspaper. As I flipped through the pages pretending I could read Spanish, I came to the grocery advertisement.

We don't think to much when we go to the grocery store about the price of things, we just buy what we need. As I sat there today I got out my phone and used the calculator to figure out prices. The exchange rate at the cash machine today was 14.98 pesos to the dollar. That means 10 pesos equals 67 cents.

Here is a photo of the produce section from the ad:

Here are the price conversions on a few of the things we buy all the time:
Tomatoes - 30 cents per pound
Bananas - 9 cents per pound
Broccoli - 41 cents per pound
Oranges - 15 cents per pound
Mango - 90 cents per pound
Corn on the Cob - 9 cents per pound
Potatoes - 55 cents per pound
Lettuce - 15 cents per pound
Tunafish - 50 cents per can
Orange Juice - 97 cents per liter

In other ads the best Sirloin Steak was $3.60 per pound.

A large croissant in the bakery is 38 cents. I know this one well from being addicted to them.

They do an interesting thing here with sales taxes, they are all included in the price. You never have to wonder what the final price is, it's what ever the sticker says. Simple.

Yesterday I had a full wash and detail inside and out of the car for 60 pesos or $4.00. It takes the guys about 40 minutes to do the job. They power wash the exterior and wheel wells, hand wash exterior, hand dry exterior, wipe all door jams, vacuum interior, dust and clean all surfaces and finally do the wheels and tires. I won't work that hard for 4 bucks.

So while I was sitting in the dealership I struck up a conversation with one of the new car salesmen. We talked about the new Honda Fit for 2015. All Fits and CVR's are made in Mexico now. I really liked the new styling on the 2015 Fit. I finally got around to asking him the price of a Honda Fit Sport in Mazatlán. 236,000 pesos sounds like a lot until I did the conversion to dollars.

$15,754.00 or about $3,000.00 less than I paid for mine 2 years ago. Oh well. I only have 36,000 miles on ours so it's nowhere near time to change.

This years exchange rate is the highest we've ever seen. What it means to us is that for the six months we are here it is a 20% increase in our retirement income.

On top of the cost of living we also like the sunsets.