We Moved to Mexico in 2021 With No Plan — Here’s What Actually Happened

In 2021, we did the thing everyone around us thought was slightly mad. We packed up our lives as a family of three, left the UK behind, and moved to Mexico — with no job contract waiting, no expat package, no safety net beyond a one-way flight and a short-term rental booked for the first month.

Five years on, we have Mexican residency, we’ve spent springs and summers across Europe, we’ve just finished a three-month road trip across the USA, and we are now preparing to relocate to Andalusia, Spain in summer 2026.

This is the honest version of that story. Not the highlight reel. The real one.

Why Mexico? Why 2021?

The pandemic had done what it does to a lot of people in midlife — shaken the foundations enough to make you ask whether the life you’d built was actually the life you wanted. For us, the answer was complicated. We loved parts of it. But we were also exhausted, overextended and very aware that time moves faster than you think it will.

Plus as a newly qualified nutritionist, during the pandemic, I was deep in the non public media research about what was going in the Pandemic! Yes I guess one of the “Conspiracy theorists” at the time. Most of my theories and thoughts back then about what was going on have since been proven. Strange times buy I believed nothing about what the media was telling us and it was the same for travel. It was actually in between lockdowns in the UK and we left. I didn’t want my son in public education at the time in England and we wanted an alternative.

Mexico had been on our radar for a while. The cost of living. The climate. The extraordinary food culture — as a Registered Nutritionist, I was genuinely excited about this. The fact that a high quality of life was achievable without needing a UK salary. And the sense that it was far enough away to feel like a real reset, but connected enough not to feel isolated.

What the first 6 months were actually like

Nobody tells you about the administrative fog that descends the moment you land. You are suddenly a person without a functioning bank account, without a GP, without any of the invisible infrastructure you spent decades building. Everything requires a document you don’t have yet, which requires another document you also don’t have yet.

The first six months are humbling in a way that’s hard to describe unless you’ve done it. You feel incredibly free and occasionally completely overwhelmed, sometimes within the same hour.

For our child, the adjustment was different to what we expected. Kids are more adaptable than we give them credit for — but they also feel the uncertainty more than they show. Building routines early was the single best thing we did.

What genuinely surprised us

The food. Better than I imagined, and I had high expectations. Fresh markets, extraordinary variety, produce that actually tastes of something. As a nutritionist, Mexico’s food culture was a genuine revelation.

The community. The expat community in Mexico is large, warm and remarkably helpful. People who’ve been through it remember what the first months feel like.

Healthcare. Excellent private healthcare at a fraction of UK private costs. Finding a good GP, dentist and specialist was easier than expected — though you need to do your research.

The pace. Genuinely, meaningfully slower. Once you stop importing your UK urgency into a culture that doesn’t share it, it becomes one of the best things about your life there.

What was harder than we expected

Banking. Opening a Mexican bank account without residency is genuinely painful. Plan for this to take longer than you think.

Bureaucracy. The residency process isn’t complicated once you understand it, but it requires patience and the right paperwork in the right order. Budget around £500–800 for a good immigration lawyer — it is worth every penny.

Missing people. This one never fully goes away. You manage it. You find rhythms. But the distance from family and close friends is real, and anyone who tells you otherwise is not being fully honest.

And now we’re moving again — to Andalusia

In summer 2026 we’re relocating to Andalusia. Not because Mexico didn’t work — it worked beautifully. But we’ve spent our springs and summers in Europe for several years now, and we know what kind of life we want next. The food, the climate, the proximity to the UK, the lifestyle — southern Spain has been calling us for a while.

Before we get there, we spent three months travelling the USA — Los Angeles, San Diego and Florida — which we’re documenting here too. If you’re at the beginning of thinking about any of this, I hope the honest version is useful. It always is.