Working 30 years overseas, I settled in Mexico

I just joined the Expat.com.  Amazing how small our world has become.

I spent 30+ years working in 'developing' countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and other regions.   I started in the days before CNN and the internet.  How I ever survived, I don't know.

The Guardian newspaper had multiple uses; first to be read and then recycled as toilet paper!  What a deal.

My choice in retiring was Mexico.  It is closer to my country of birth than many of the other places in which I have worked, lived or traveled.  Mexico offers some of the informalities of a developing country.....while offering, to a large degree, a similar standard of living and services as it's neighbors to the north.  In Jalisco, the weather is great all year round!

Here nearly 5 years, I've spent a good deal of time working on a document just recently published;  "Life Planning in Jalisco" (www.lifeplanninginjalisco.wordpress.com)

I started the research for my personal household, and then was encouraged to start publishing the information. 

It's a practical guide for those of us moving south-of-the border often without family or caregivers around, and typically without any knowledge of the legal or medical systems. 

With life, and especially with aging, we are subject to emergencies, and short-term or long-term incapacitations.  Up north, many of us had legal documentation in place to make sure someone could act for us if we could not speak for ourselves in any way and needed medical decisions made, or had living wills in place expressing our desires for care or not.   

The question was to what extent these documents could be 'legalized' in Mexico, or Jalisco, or what else was available.

The publication offers suggestions for setting up an emergency contact system, documenting emergency information, getting all of the legal 'stuff' in place and how to do that, and then pulling all of the information together in one spot in the event that anyone would need it to help out in a time of need.

JaliscoSusan