Hi! I'm a 30 year-old man, software engineer, currently working as an EFL Teacher at highschool and college levels. Whenever I have the chance, I do some freelance web development. I used to work as a photographer, too.
My wife, who is 22, and I have been married for 2 years. She is pregnant, so we are expecting our first baby to be born in late March or early April. She was studying a major in human nutrition, but after a few semesters, she realized she didn't like that career, so she is planing to study to become a nurse in a few years. She doesn't have a job right now.
I was born and raised in Mexico, and my wife was born in the US, from a Mexican mother and a Dane father, but she was raised here in Mexico.
We live in a small city in the southwest of the state of Jalisco, in a very little apartment borrowed from my family, where we don't pay rent, but we are trying to move as soon as possible to place of our own. We need to save around $40,000 to buy a decent house. Rent for a house on that price is around $200 a month.
We already have all the appliances and furniture we need. I have a 2006 Peugeot 206 which I bought used in 2011. I try to use my bike as much as I can. One advantage here is that everything is in biking distance. Most people go everywhere on cars, though.
Currently, our main source of income is my salary of less than $11,000 a year, and the rest comes from the ocassional project I take as a software engineer, around $2,000 a year. We have a debt of around $4,000. This is considered middle class around here.
As my wife is a US citizen, we've been thinking about moving to the US, but this is only a B plan, because most of our family and friends live here. I've been in the US before, but only while I was studying a TOEFL course on a scholarship, so I didn't have to work and I lived on campus. I don't really know much about a normal life with jobs and regular chores. My wife only lived there for a few months when she was a baby. Then her parents divorced and her mother brought her to Mexico.
Sincerely, I think my life is pretty good, and I don't think I need anything else in the material aspect. But to be honest, when we find out about the baby, I was frightened, because I felt I didn't have anything to offer. We don't have any savings and we were struggling to make ends meet. I'm working around 60 hours a week, so taking a second job is not an option. After doing some research about how to fix my financial status, I discovered this website. And I can say for sure that all this principles apply here as well as in the US, mostly because we spend a lot of money on things we don't really need. I know many people with a salary lower than mine who buy brand new cars.
Now, I consider myself a mustachian, I feel more confident, and I'm happier than ever because I feel I'm on charge of my financial situation for the first time in a while. I'm so excited about this, that I'm planning to start my own blog in Spanish, about financial freedom and early retirement. It is going to be in Spanish because many people here need it, and you already have this one. :)
Even though my monthly salary is around $900, we've reduced our debt in around $800 in less than two months. And I think we're going to be debt free in less than six months, hopefully before the baby arrives.
Thank you Mr. Money Mustache, and thank you fellow mustachians.
A grateful mexican mustachian.