SOME BELIZE RETIREMENT QUESTIONS ANSWERED

RETIREMENT QUESTIONS ANSWERED

Got a Louisiana couple here visiting, looking at Belize for retirement. They had some interesting questions.
Why not case in the ceiling like they do in the USA? The reason is field mice and cockroaches in the tropical climate. They built nests in the dead spaces. Same with gypsum board walls. Can’t see the termites eating the wood studs. Field mice nests in ceilings are a big nuisance.
Our building is a utilitarian building. We live mostly wide open to the outdoors, with half Dutch doors open, windows open, etc. Why do I have the wiring on pvc pipe on the inside cement walls? The reason is, for ease of changes and additions. You can build with wiring into the cement block walls and many do. My own experience has been that I’m always wanting more lights, or outlets that were not originally planned on. It is just easier to have an electrician come in and put in extensions. The cost is around $40 usa per outlet.
Why did Silvia and I choose to live up here in the suburb of Hillview in Santa Elena Town. Partly because of the cooler Spring weather, particularly at night for 8 months a year. The other reason is bugs. Like mosquitoes and sandflies, common on the lower altitude coast. We are at 600 feet here and if you study the Mayan thatch villages, you will note, they always build above 400 feet altitude for the same reasons. Cut out the mosquitoes and get better sleeping temperatures. It was also a question of price, availability, convenience of streets, water service and electrical service and garbage service. The East West road is asphalt paved as is the North South highway. All other streets and roads are dirt. We just bought another house and lot in our suburb for $8000 usa. Will take that again to fix it up properly, but still a bargain by US standards. Expect we will increase floor space from the 400 square feet to about 3200 square feet. Our house and hotel here now is around 4000 square feet and started off with one of these small houses.
Building material costs! Most gadgets like nails, hinges, paint and screws are imported. If you take the retail cost in the USA and multiply by 3 times, you have the rough cost in Belize currency of the item. Due to taxes, shipping and customs brokers. Belize currency is $2 bz to $1 usa. Building supplies are erratic in availability. You have to wait when they run out of supplies for a couple of months, for wholesalers to import another shipping container of building supplies.
Building in cement is preferable to wood. Termites are the main reason and lower maintainance. They import cement and make cement blocks locally though. Building insurance for us is around a $1000 usa.
Land prices are variable and based on location and demand. Title processing is complicated and very slow. Lands Department backlogs run about a year.
If you are waiting for Permanent Residency and have completed a year in the country, the backlog in the Immigration Department is running right now about a year and a half. Most of it is due to a very complex inter-departmental sign off process, on the process of regulating things. Your file gets put on somebody’s desk and will get ignored as political party members hustle favors for people. The priority system doesn’t work due to politics.
Why live in Belize instead of the USA? The main reason is climate, this is a rural pristine country with a small population. We have two or three months of summer heat and eight or nine months of nice Spring type climate. ETERNAL SPRING.
Being a statistic in a metropolitan area doesn’t suit a lot of people. Here people know your name and greet you on the street.
That occurs in rural USA also though.
When you get older, medical problems arise. Medical service is better in Belize than in Metropolitan areas of the USA. The doctors are as good, at a fraction of the cost. You don’t need medical insurance and most new retirees have canceled their Medicare A & B, their medical insurance and taken the monthly money instead.
Medical problems can be frightening in the USA. The main reason is; I know of several people who lost their bank accounts, houses, stocks and assets. An example would be a male nephew who was around 40 years old and had looked after his rich aunt for 14 years. She wouldn’t give him power of attorney and he didn’t know enough to be appointed Guardian. Her incontinence in home living became too much for him to handle. So he applied to get assistance. Within 18 hours, the court had made the State her GUARDIAN. She had about $2 million in cash assets and $4 million in real estate. The nephew was kicked out of the house in downtown Metropolitan Miami with zero. He expected to inherit and became homeless instead. It took the STATE about 2 ½ years to run through her fortune. Every time she needed medicine, it required a judge, expensive lawyers to confirm the injection, all debited from her assets. The STATE argument was she would be in a STATE facility care for the rest of her life at no expense after the money was run through.
If you talk to some homeless people on park benches and living under bushes on Miami Beach, they can give you horrific stories. Of getting sick, homes and property sold for property taxes and being evicted. It is not unusual to have a million and a half medical lien on everything you own, for a ten day hospital stay. Nobody cares, once you have no more money. The medical system is designed to strip a person of their assets. If you are single and alone for any reason, you are in big trouble. As you get older you need to protect your assets and cash flow.
Like many countries, Belize has a system whereby if your property taxes are delinquent, the property cannot be transferred, inherited or sold, until all back taxes are paid up in lump sum. You don’t get kicked out on the street in your old age.
p.s. THIS IS A RE-WRITE OF AN ARTICLE DONE A YEAR AGO IN 2008 ON THE BELIZE CULTURE LISTSERVE DEBATING LIST.

LIVING PHILOSPHIES ON HOW TO RETIRE AND HAVE FUN

My second watercolor effort.
Ray teaching himself to paint in Belize.


LIVING PHILOSPHIES FOR RETIREMENT

This may offend some list serve subscribers, but I recently got a reply from one long term friend on the bz-culture listserve, who complained that he did not understand how we as a family we could live on $700 usa per month, when he living in the USA, paid $2500 usa a month just for his medical insurance.
There are many answers and a lot of them depend on your outlook on life and priorities. I have always taught my children and my second wife and family, that the name of the game, is SURVIVAL. It is not a status based standard of living. My wife and I have lived before on a 30 foot sailboat in Miami area with two dogs. So lifestyle is important to us. Basically I believe in QUALITY OF LIFE and not in status style living standards. If you are trying to impress your friends and stay better than the JONES next door, then you have a physcological problem. If you follow our philosophy, then you realize that survival is based on having a roof over your head, to protect you from the elements and a supply of food, good health is a priority and following that is some sort of medical treatment that is adequate. Everything else is a luxury.
Given those priorities for sake of SURVIVAL, then you must manipulate the ingredients to live within your means and desires. Shelter depends a lot on the country you live in, the type of climate you will experience and thus the size of shelter you can afford. The first thing to shake off, is the indoctrination, or brain washing, based on patriotism propaganda, that whichever country you are a national of, usually by birth right, is the best place in the world to live. This is not true! It depends on your comfort zone and desires. I tried very hard to make my children and they in turn are teaching my grandchildren to be cosmopolitan in outlook. To be world citizens. To be comfortable anyplace on Planet Earth. We are citizens of planet Earth, our space ship that circles the sun of our solar system.
If you accept that the EARTH, the whole planet is your backyard, then you can live anywhere. The criteria then comes down to geography, the type of political governments, the latitude and climate you desire in which to live and other nuances of costs, versus expectations.
My wife and I chose to retire in Belize, having tried some different countries and for various reasons stated in the last paragraph. Much of which the long term list serve members well know. We are extremely happy where we live. We have everything we need and more than we could have, or afford if we were in the USA in retirement. We are also not only independent of mind, we are self reliant and do not need the artificial stimulus of metropolitan living and those accoutrements of life style that go with it. How we live is not for every personality. Lan Sluder’s wife called it utilitarian one time. I thought that was cute and remembered that term.
If you want a specific type of climate, then your search for a place to retire will include those parameters. There are many countries that fit your criteria. Food and the cost of food is a requirement to study. Fortunately this location has lots of food and since we eat FRESH food and not processed foods, the cost is relatively cheap. The draw back for those accustomed to the myriad choices of processed massed produced food in the USA, is the lack of variety here. Since for health purposes we believe what we eat will dictate your health, we prefer much less variety of food choices and so do not miss USA supermarkets. We prefer what we have. We eat for body fuel and good health, not for pleasure as provided by the myriad thousands of choices in the USA supermarkets, or that of Europe. Since I’ve reduced the portions I eat each day, I’ve lost weight and feel a lot better and my rubber tire is almost gone now. This translates into good health.
It is in health services and costs that one must consider. My friend in the USA complaining of a $2500 a month health insurance system, has made choices based on other criteria obviously. The USA is a country run in my opinion by a Health Criminal Conspiracy. Many countries and many THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES have better medical treatment than in the USA. My experience is based on Metropolitan Miami-Dade County medical services in Florida. We get much better, cheaper, faster and SUPERIOR medical services where we live in Western Belize. If you have been brainwashed by television ads to believe only the USA has good medical treatment, then what can I say? I feel sorry for you, you poor gullible fool.
Latin America is full of superior medical hospitals and treatments. There are certain types of medical treatment that might be superior in the USA, like burn units, which do not exist here. For all standard type medical treatments, like neurological brain damage, kidney stones, arthritis and so forth, the Latin American countries can beat what you have in the USA, or match it, at a smaller amount of currency. Plus you can pay CASH. Where we live at my age, if I go to the Government Hospital, my medical treatment is FREE. If for some reason I choose a private hospital I must pay, but still costs are far more reasonable than in the USA. Usually less than the co-payment for an insurance scheme in the USA.
Those basics of SURVIVAL taken care of, then the rest of living costs depends a lot on your character, life experiences and capabilities. We are having a lot of fun with our life. Good health and having fun are our life style choices. Since we are old, a siesta every midday and into the afternoon is normal. Chores and hobbies, or projects get done not on some timeline, but as we feel like it. I haven’t touched my art for about a week. We have some other projects that are currently taking up the available time in the day. Mostly I devote 2 hours a day to my hobbies and projects in the early morning and those I cannot do myself, I pay local day labor to do for me. Couldn’t even begin to do that in the USA. I am an avid reader and probably spend more of my day reading than any other activity. My wife watches cable tv news programs and is absorbed in various loom and weaving projects.
I could tell you how to arrange your life in the USA to preserve your assets and live less expensive, but that is another story. It also gets into estate management to preserve your assets from being attached by medical liens from the hospital, or lawyers who have checked your worth and decided to nuisance sue you. The basic secret is to own nothing. You do not need to own anything, you need only control your assets. Limited liability companies, foundations and trusts are the method usually of doing those things. Even small people can do these things to protect their assets. No, you don’t need a lawyer, but you do need to study some legal stuff on the internet and be able to type.
Read about our life in Western Belize on the internet at: http://westernbelizehappenings.blogspot.com
We are currently building a duplex on the ridge above our current home and hostel, which here consists of, five bathrooms, two kitchen and dining areas, one is private ours, the other is a public open kitchen, a living room with hammocks instead of sofas, two furnished one bedroom and bathroom, with their own kitchen apartments, with verandahs with scenic views over the valleys, a modest fair sized warehouse, which includes work bench and tools as well, two smaller storage rooms, parking place under the second floor and two dormitories for our hostel guests to choose from. We can sleep 17 persons besides our family that lives in our smaller interior two bedroom and bath 420 square foot inside personal house. We also have two vegetable and flower nurseries in the yard and a work space with benches for working. We have decided to sell this place if there is a buyer for $338,000 usa and move to the duplex on the ridge above here, one block over. It is not imperative we sell, but seven years have passed and we have new challenges in mind. We have not yet decided to list with a real estate commission agent. I hate to give a commission ( grin! ) Besides they are asking too much for a commission around here. We also are desirous of buying a place in Coban, Guatemala, for the hot summer months high in the mountains also. We have some business ideas to try out, up in the mountains of Coban, Guatemala. Our hostel accommodations were built as an income security blanket in case something happened to our USA assets. Also to supplement our retirement income, which is minimal, about $1100 usa per month. We did not want to work too hard, if at all. So far, all our plans and vision has worked out well, more or less on schedule as planned. We started building about eight years ago and have been retired here for three years. There are other retired expatriates in this area, but we don’t mix much with them. We know most of them casually. Some are very happy and others are unhappy. A lot depends on your personality and self reliance. Some people should never leave their metropolitan city environments. I kind of subscribe to the theory you should live someplace where everybody knows your name and say hello on the street when meeting you. I’m not at all happy living someplace where I am only a statistic, identified by a drivers license photo and social security number. Smothered by rules and regulations.
see: http://folkmusicfl.tripod.com/retirementinbelize
http://westernbelizehappenings.blogspot.com
http://folkmusicfl.tripod.com/adventuresinbelize

HOW WILL THE NEXT ICE AGE EFFECT BELIZE?

THE NEXT “ICE AGE” COMING SOON !

by Ray Auxillou, Jan.13th, 2009

Those of you on the Belize Culture Listserve for the last twenty years, will remember fifteen years or so, ago, when I had a webpage on the coming ICE AGE. Unfortunately, the web page was on a free web hosting service and they wiped it out, along with a hundred other scientific pages I had. Those of you long term members of this listserve, will recollect that my forecast for a very quick ICE AGE was around 450 years from now. I recollect when HOLLYWOOD phoned me about my ICE AGE web pages and asked about the data. Unfortunately, I was unable to respond and if memory serves me, it was to do with the changing orbit of the Earth and tilt of the Earth, along with some other geological data from Ice Cores. The actual forecast was arrived at of several nights of sleeping and dreaming REM sleep with the data then available, when the subconscious arrived at that particular guess of 450 years. Needless to say, most of you will actually be able to remember HOLLYWOOD actually produced a DISASTER MOVIE on the ICE AGE, in which three hurricanes combined to reach into the stratosphere and bring down the cold of outer space into the Northern Hemisphere.

That said, you can watch the Hollywood movie, which in effect is probably as close to what is predicted to happen in a matter of days, even though the process may be somewhat different as a scenario. You can get the movie on CD.

Here though is some updated data on the coming ICE AGE and it seems to be closer than 450 years? Since we are measuring geological changes on the longer term cycles, pinpointing an actual arrival date for the next ICE AGE is inaccurate. Suffice to say; we are OVERDUE for this to happen, roughly 2000 to 3000 years. This event could be triggered and occur at any time! What the trigger is, we do not know. We do know the ICE AGE runs in cycles of around 100,000 years, with minor warming periods on shorter cycles. The warmest interglacial period is that we live in now and we are at the end of this period. Cyclically this period runs around 10,000 years and in this case we are already about 13,000 years into it. We have an idea of what causes the end of the ICE AGE and the start of the 10,000 year warm inter-glacial, but not which event triggers that will start the ICE AGE. The end of the ICE AGE usually comes when the ORBIT changes closer to the SUN and the tilt of the EARTH passes through an asteroid belt, believed to be a long term 26,000 year cycle out of the elliptic. 13,000 years ago, current theory says an asteroid hit the ARCTIC OCEAN ICE CAP and the blast swept across the Northern Hemisphere. This set fires and the geological record confirms this event with a carbon layer all over North America, when fires raged, blast damage was sustained and there are charcoal layers, at that layer of sediments in the geological record. The ICE AGE large predators and animals were wiped out instantly. Of more concern to us today here in Belize, is that the next ICE AGE cycle is overdue and could occur over a few days or a week. How, we do not know? If I was living in North America, Canada or the USA, I surely would recommend moving out of there. My wife and I already did, to BELIZE.

Al GORE, former USA vice president got a Nobel Prize for his presentation on global warming and the rise in CO 2 in our atmosphere. Obviously this was a political structured NOBEL PRIZE, because his science was totally false. His data and presentation was based on rising CO 2 levels in the atmosphere, predicated on human industrial activity in the burning of fossil fuels. Unfortunately in geological terms, his data was based on climate data less than a few hundred years old.

Paleoclimatolgy has served the scientific community with data going back around 420,000 years and this crosses several ICE AGE phenomena. The EARTH is living and breathing in much longer cycles of millions of years. What we have from paleoclimatology and scientific data from astronomy, geology, ice cores from places like Antartica, Greenland and the VOSTOK ICE CORES supplied by the Russian scientific establishment. Including ocean sediment cores and other data, is that; rising CO 2 gases are a normal part of the cycle of change, but that this change is based on leading rising ocean temperatures. If you remember your COCA COLA soft drink, when it is placed in a refrigerator, the carbon dioxide forced into the liquid during manufacture seems to dissolve, or disappear in the soft drink liquid. When it warms up, or is shaken, it fizzes as the CO 2 comes out. This knowledge is also true of the OCEANS. The rising temperatures of the OCEANS preceed the released CO 2 levels found in our atmosphere by around 750 years according to cyclical ice core data. Increased CO atmospheric gas is coming from our oceans, because they are warming. The effect of humans is miniscule on this longer term cyclical process. The obvious conclusion from paleoclimatology is that; rising ocean temperatures are leading rising CO 2 levels by around 750 years, the ICE CORE data show. You can find graphs online for the VOLSTOK ICE CORE data and temperature, and CO 2 levels going back 420,000 years. CO 2 levels will not drop, the cyclical data show, until the OCEANS start to cool. What trigger will cool the oceans? The water will absorb the CO 2.

During the warm interglacial period of 325,000 years ago, the atmospheric CO 2 levels were higher than they are today. True, we are rapidly approaching that cyclical peak of the last couple of ICE AGE cycles this happened in paleoclimatology.

The warm interglacial period in which we live is called the HALOCENE. The astrological cycle studies are three in number and best expressed by a Russian scientist named the MILANKOVITCH THEORY of causation of ICE AGE changes. When you study astrology, or the movement of EARTH by watching the stars, ORBIT CHANGE is usually done in long time periods. What we know is based on periods of TIME longer than a 20,000 year cycle. While humans have been on EARTH for millions of years, if not more than a hundred million years, our written history is based mostly on the past 6000 years, even though we have town and city ruins on EARTH going back to 11,000 years discovered and excavated by archeologists. There has been extensive study in recent years on mini-climate cycles over the past 2000 years. A very short period indeed. We have had some mini short term cold cycles of just a few years, in which humans died off from starvation in the last 1200 years. Changing temperatures, rain patterns and droughts.

Orbital mechanics of planet EARTH are longer cycles, based on periods over 20,000 years. The change in the cyclical orbit of planet Earth is a much slower component of climate change. The most pronounced public data are the RUSSIAN VORSTOK data of ANTARCTIC ICE CORES going back 420,000 years. When you combine the fossil record, geology, paleobotany, zoology, you get the cyclical picture of recurring ICE AGES in a rhythm of around 100,000 years. We are overdue for the next ICE AGE and while the arguments go on, what will cause it to occur; the

TIMING debate is anywhere from 72 hours, to three years for an ICE AGE to swallow the Northern Hemisphere and kill off billions of humans and other animals. That Europeans and North Americans do not make libraries and technology and machine museum storage in places like Belize, Colombia and central Africa is beyond me. We have caves in Belize that could be used.

It is also apparent from archeological work, that humans survived quite well behind the shelter of the Himalayas, in what today is called PAKISTAN, KASHMIR and northern India. There was also a pocket of humans survived in the PYRANEES mountains of Europe, warmed apparently by the GULF STREAM and a wall of mountains. Studies of the BASQUES and NEANTHERDALS have shown us this.

From the viewpoint of us here in Belize, Central America; a sudden climate change would effect our temperatures and the types of crops we could grow. We would change from a tropical environment to a temperate environment, probably within a single week. Humans did live in Belize during the last ICE AGE, archeological work record, by teeth and tool marks on extinct GIANT SLOTHES, a predator of the ICE AGE show. Perhaps our government could ask our local BNE oil company, to share their oil exploration data and tell us what trees and plants grew here in this locality during the last ICE AGE? We need only go back 15,000 years for data. The coming ICE AGE is going to change human numbers from the billions of people living on EARTH, to only a few million, or less, around the world. ARE YOU PREPARED?

References: Joseph Adheumar 1842

Joseph Croll 1875

Milutin Milankovitch 1920 -30’s

John Imbria, James, Hayes, Nicholas Shackelton, 1976

Journal “NATURE” of 1992 on Russian Volstock ice core data


Estimating the arrival of the next ICE within 400 years.
http://westernbelizehappenings.blogspot.com


Information on visiting and living in Belize
http://folkmusicfl.tripod.com/adventuresinbelize/

MUSTARD GREEN OR EMU LETTUCE GROWING IN WESTERN BELIZE?

MUSTARD GREEN

Earlier post I thought a lettuce I was growing was an EMU LETTUCE taken from the Chinese Tawainese Experimental Farm test plots and transplanted. It tastes like MUSTARD though. So I am thinking it is a Mustard Green? I need some Mustard Green seeds. Can anybody send me any in ordinary mail envelope to try out? Appreciate it down here in Belize.

Ray Auxillou
Organic Hydroponic Vegetable Experiments
Box 276, San Ignacio Post Office, Belize, Central America

http://westernbelizehappenings.blogspot.com

NEWS BLOG ON THINGS HAPPENING IN WESTERN BELIZE AGRICULTURE AND RECREATIONAL AREA

http://folkmusicfl.tripod.com/adventuresinbelize/

INFORMATION WEBSITE FOR ALL THE DIFFERENT LINKS AND EXPEDITIONS AND TOURS IN WESTERN BELIZE OUT OF FALCONVIEW BACKPACKERS ADVENTURE HOSTEL.

http://folkmusicfl.tripod.com/retirementinbelize/

INFORMATION WEBSITE FOR PEOPLE WANTING TO RETIRE IN WESTERN BELIZE AND PERSONAL EXPERIENCES OF PEOPLE DOING IT RIGHT NOW.

Building contractors ride bicycles eight miles to work in Western Belize, Cayo District

Bullet Tree workers ride bicycles to work, all of eight miles to Hillview on the side of Green Parrot Valley. They have just finished tiling the floor in my daughter Sharon's little government built house about a short block away from me. Her house is a vacation house and hurricane shelter. Sharon lives in the Redlands, Homestead of Miami Dade County where she and her husband run a landscaping business for big hotels and government properties. These two guys were just arriving, if you watch the early morning sun shadows and I gave them a key for Sharon's house, as they are going to start plastering the ceiling inside this morning. Their names are Virgilio Garcia Jr. and Eugenio Garcia, two brothers and their telephone in Bullet Tree Falls is 667 1808. They borrowed my ladder this morning as well. Labor is tight in Cayo District, when workers have to ride bicycles eight miles away and house owners need laborers and skilled craftsmen.

Western Belize Happenings -Antonio the mason working