The cost of living in Chapala and Ajijic is a very broad question. Homes are available to purchase anywhere from US $49,000 to $2 million; it comes down to location, location, location. Anywhere that a typical North American expat would like to live and feel comfortable, safe, and have the amenities that they previously had where they lived is going cost around probably $200,000 for a home.
You can rent anywhere from $450 per month for a small apartment to $2,500 for a beautiful home with a view, a pool and all the amenities. The average is about $900 a month.
Overall, the housing in Ajijic / Chapala is half the price or less than half the price of the US.
Overall, the cost of living in the Ajijic area is much less than, for example, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, which is a fabulous university town where I used to live. Part of the reason is due to the retreat in the value of the peso because you can buy so many more pesos with your US dollar than before. When we first moved here, the exchange rate was 10 pesos to the dollar. Now it’s been averaging 18.5 pesos to the dollar. As a result, everything for an American is much less expensive. This is not as true for Canadians because the exchange rate for a Canadian is only about 12.5 to 13 for a Canadian dollar.
The Chapala area in general, including Ajijic, is a bargain, with significantly lower medical cost. It’s so affordable you can pay out-of-pocket. My wife just took our grandson to have a dental x-ray for 80 pesos (about US $4.30). A total annual blood work for myself was around 1,200 pesos (US $65). Getting a teeth cleaning in the US could cost between $125 to $200. Here, its 150 pesos (US $8) at Dental Express, right down the way from our office, in the heart of Ajijic. They do an excellent job.
Property taxes are so much lower here. For example, I have 13,000 sq. meters (3.25 acres) of land where I live and a house that’s 421 sq. meters (4,531 square feet) of construction and my property tax is about 5,000 pesos (US $272) a year.
If you’re cooking in your home, it’s inexpensive to buy the food here compared to what it is in the States. Because of the decline in the value of the peso over the last year and a half to two years, restaurants have gradually been inching up the prices on their menus, just because most of their customers are Americans and they can afford to pay the difference. A $15 meal in Tuscaloosa, Alabama might cost you $9 here.
There are a lot of people who service cars and trucks here. By experience you find that right person that you can work with, at a cost that is much, much less than what you would have to pay in the States.
(View of Lake Chapala from a living room, Ajijic, Mexico, pictured.)
The cost for a vacation rental in Portugal varies on the size of the property. A villa with three or four bedrooms and with a pool would cost €1,600 (US $1,750 or £1,100) a week in the high season; self-catering. If it’s without a pool it costs about €1,200 (US $1,300 or £865) a week. This is in Cascais, which is the most expensive places in Portugal.
One of the things that I like about fishing in Belize is that catch and release is being promoted and practiced here. 
and Canadians, with a few from Europe. Many are in what we would call in Nicaragua, their “third age”; between 50’s and 60’s. Many are professionals who have come here to retire but have found also other ways to spend their time doing something useful. 
Editor’s note: We had the privilege in early March, 2017 to talk with Michael Eager. The Eager family is a bit of an institution in the Ajijic area, where Michael’s brother Mark owns a real estate sales company and Michael runs the business that started it all in the 1970s, formerly the Posada, and now the Nueva Posada. In this interview, Michael tells us the unlikely set of events that started it all when Ajijic was just a small, out of the way village and well...
Writer's forward: Why people in places such as Mexico, Panama, Belize and Nicaragua are willing to work for expats for less than if they were located in the US or Canada is the subject of another article. Suffice it to say that those of us fortunate enough to be from Western industrialized nations have hit the “Where You’re From Jackpot” through no particular virtue of our own. We were just lucky to be born in the US, Canada, etc., and to be able to use US or...
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