The 21 Best Places to Live in Mexico for Retirees

Published January 23, 2023

Mexico has some clear geographic and economic advantages that make it the #1 retirement destination for Americans and Canadians looking for their place in the sun. You can easily live there for half what it costs in the USA or Canada and you’ll end up with a better quality of life if you do it right.

It’s a big country though, about as wide as those two to the north, so it can be daunting to narrow down your options. Beaches or jungles, heat or cool climates, dry or humid, urban or rural, filled with gringos or not?

There are plenty of expats living in Mexico who are not retired, of course, including me, plus there are some cities where you could go for days or even weeks without seeing another foreigner. If you’re looking to gather around with other retirees at least occasionally and converse in English, that already narrows down your options. The question then is whether you want to be in a place that’s dominated by people who look like you or a place where there are just a few of you and it’s still very Mexican.

Some spots in Mexico offer a low cost of living but others are flooded with moneyed tourists and are priced accordingly. Then there’s the weather. Some retirees want to live in Mexico because they want the opposite of snow shoveling and down parkas, so they move to the hottest place they can find. Others want a more temperate climate and move to a higher elevation. Some want a big city, some don’t. Some want a beach, others want a historic city where they can walk everywhere.

Fortunately, there’s an option out there to please most any desire as long as you don’t try to duplicate where you just came from. (Go straight to Puerto Peñasco if you just want to cross the border for lower prices and be surrounded by Americans.) This is a foreign county with its own strong culture and traditions, so Mexico for retirees is still Mexico. Go with the flow and learn the language, at least the basics. Then you’ll be much happier in the end, no matter where you end up.

As mentioned in an earlier post, in theory you can live here for a while with a tourist visa, which grants you up to 180 days, but the application of that has been inconsistent lately. If you really intend to stay long-term, it’s best to get legal residency in Mexico.

Here are the top retirement destinations in Mexico, the places where plenty of others have already forged a path and it’s relatively easy to get set up with housing and what you need to settle in. I am listing Airbnb monthly rentals for price comparisons only between locations. You should easily be able to find much better local accommodation rental prices by the month through other channels.

Read more […]