Oh my.... that hurts...

Today has been a rough day struggling with how things are done, or not done, in Mexico. We're trying to pay our mortgage. Whats that you say???? No problem, set up automatic withdrawls?? Nice try. No such thing here. Transfer online to the mortgage account?? Ha, another good try. How about post dated cheques??? Actually, I just thought of that... I wonder if that will work. anyway....

Here is what we go thru to make a payment on our mortgage:

- collect money from our wedding photography clients. They give us USD into our Paypal account. Where Paypal takes 3% of this just for using the service.

- withdraw from Paypal account into CAD account. Paypal will not let us withdraw into US dollar account (because we are canadians). So we pay the exchange to canadian dollars which they take about 2% of

- remove pesos from bank machine. Where CAD bank dings us on exchange and service fees. Make that 3 service fees of 5 dollars because the bank machine limit is $500 per transaction. That is, IF it decides to spit out money. No worries... it will always debit the account... but sometimes runs into technical difficulties dispensing money.

- take pesos to the bank, stand in line to exchange them back to original currency of USD, where yet a 3rd bank will ding us on currency exchange

- stand in another line, where we will apply a payment to our mortgage. be sure to get a receipt!!

- scan proof of our payment

- send proof to our mortgage specialist that we have made the payment before the due date.

This is not a joke. This is real life, every day mexico. Don't try to give me suggestions because we've run through them all.... over hours and hours.

We do have a possible solution with involves an actual USD bank account. That will take another couple months to setup and test. We'll keep you posted....