Blog & News

Every time I search “cost of living in Mexico,” I find the same thing: blog posts written by retirees or solo digital nomads, listing numbers that don’t reflect what it actually costs to raise a family here. A one-bedroom apartment budget doesn’t help you if you’re moving with kids, a car, and school tuition to plan for.

So here’s the real version. These are our actual numbers, not averages pulled from a cost-of-living calculator. We’re a family of four living in a fraccionamiento in a newer part of León, Guanajuato, and this is what a real month looks like for us.

A quick note before we dive in: all peso amounts below are converted at roughly 17 pesos to 1 US dollar. Exchange rates shift, so treat the dollar figures as a general reference point.

This post may contain affiliate links, which means that if you click through and make a purchase, I’ll be compensated at no additional cost to you. I only recommend products I love and used!

Housing: What Rent Actually Looks Like

We pay 25,000 pesos a month (about $1,440 USD) for a furnished, three-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bath house in a fraccionamiento, a gated residential development common in newer parts of León.

Furnished homes cost more than unfurnished ones, but they save you the expense of buying furniture right after a move. Fraccionamientos often include security and shared amenities, which factors into the price. Rent also varies significantly by neighborhood, so this reflects a newer development, not an older or more central part of the city.

Utilities: The Category Nobody Breaks Down

Most cost-of-living guides skip utilities entirely, so here’s exactly what we pay every month:

〰 Internet: $37 USD
〰 Home gas: $50 USD
〰 Water: $22 USD
〰 Electricity: $20 USD (I divided this in two since the CFE charges every two months)

That’s about $129 USD (roughly 2,244 pesos) combined each month. Compared to Chicago, this was one of the more pleasant surprises. Utilities here have been noticeably lower across the board.

Healthcare: What We’ve Actually Paid Out of Pocket

This is the category I get asked about most, and honestly, it’s the one that surprised us the most, in both directions.

We don’t have insurance here. We pay out of pocket for everything, and here’s exactly what that’s looked like:

〰 An OBGYN consultation for me, including a pelvic ultrasound and check-up, cost 1,000 pesos (about $59 USD)
〰 A separate endometrial mapping ultrasound cost 1,500 pesos (about $88 USD)
〰 A dentist consultation cost 300 pesos (about $18 USD), plus 500 pesos (about $29 USD) for x-rays at a partnered imaging center
〰 Prescription medication has been noticeably cheaper here too. My husband’s three-month supply of blood pressure medication costs 600 pesos (about $35 USD) total, even without insurance

Then there’s the number that genuinely caught us off guard. My husband had a scare with chest pain and high blood pressure and needed an ER visit. We went to the nearest hospital, which turned out to be one of León’s more expensive areas. The bill came to 10,500 pesos (about $618 USD) for a full blood panel, an EKG, and medication administered during his time in urgencias.

That number stung in the moment. It’s still a fraction of what the same visit would likely cost in the US without insurance, but it taught us an important lesson: not all private hospitals are priced the same, and the nearest one isn’t always the most affordable one. If you’re moving here without insurance, it’s worth researching which hospitals in your area are known for reasonable emergency pricing before you actually need one.

Expenses With Kids While Living in Mexico

Here’s an important category I haven’t seen almost anyone else write about when moving abroad, and I want to be fully transparent about it since it’s a real part of our monthly budget.

Private School Tuition

Our kids attend a private school in León. It isn’t a bilingual school, but it includes one hour of English instruction daily. Tuition runs 3,600 pesos per child, per month, about $207 USD per kid, or roughly $414 USD combined for both kids each month.

That number is tuition only. It doesn’t include inscription or enrollment fees, uniforms, school supplies, or extracurricular activities. We pack our kids’ lunches, so that’s not a cost we factor in.

Kids’ Extracurriculars

Our kids take swim lessons twice a week, which runs 268 pesos (about $16 USD) per kid, per month. One of them also takes guitar lessons once a week, at 300 pesos (about $18 USD) per week, which adds up to roughly 1,200 pesos (close to $70 USD) per month.

Altogether, extracurriculars run about $100 USD (roughly 1,740 pesos) a month. None of this is essential, but if you’re planning a realistic family budget here, activities like these are worth including rather than treating as an afterthought.

Groceries and Eating Out

We spend around 2,000 pesos a week (about $115 USD) on groceries, split between local fruterías and verdulerías for produce and chain stores like Walmart, Costco, and HEB for everything else. That’s roughly 8,000 pesos, about $460 USD, a month.

We’re intentional about eating out. A nice dinner for our family of four costs around 1,700 pesos (close to $100 USD), and we limit ourselves to once a month, but it all depends on the season.

Cars, Gas, and Transportation

Gas runs us about $160 USD (roughly 2,780 pesos) a month. This is the category that doesn’t fit the “everything is cheaper in Mexico” narrative. Gas prices here run comparable to, and at times higher than, what we paid in Chicago, and car maintenance has also been more expensive than we anticipated.

Everyday Help and Personal Care

This is the part of our budget that changed the most compared to Chicago, and mostly in ways that pleasantly surprised us.

El aseo, or house cleaning, costs us 500 pesos a week, about $29 USD. That’s a fraction of what cleaning help costs in most major US cities, and it’s made a genuine difference in our day-to-day quality of life.

Landscaping runs 250 pesos every two weeks, roughly $15 USD twice a month, for someone to maintain our yard.

Beauty services are dramatically cheaper here too. A pedicure with no design costs 400 pesos, about $23 USD. Compare that to $75 to $80 USD for the same service in Chicago. For the guys, their haircuts are more frequent than me, where I’ve spent nearly $400 USD in the past year for a cut and color. We spend about 1,500 pesos at the barber for all three of their haircuts. That’s close to $14 USD for one haircut per person! This expense line is one of the more noticeable everyday savings we’ve experienced since moving out of the US.

Gym membership My husband and I also have a gym membership between the two of us, which costs $35 USD a month combined.

Our Real Monthly Budget, Add​ed Up

Here’s the rough total, combining everything above:

That healthcare line reflects a typical month of routine care, not the ER visit, which was a one-time 10,500 peso event worth planning a buffer for rather than budgeting monthly.

What This Number Actually Means

I want to be honest about something: this isn’t a “look how cheap Mexico is” post. Some things cost noticeably less here, like healthcare, utilities, and personal expenses. Others, like cars and, in our case, one unlucky ER visit, genuinely don’t. What this budget really reflects is a different set of trade-offs, not a universally lower cost of living.

For our family, those trade-offs have been worth it. Affordable healthcare, quality private school tuition, and being closer to family have changed our day-to-day life in ways a spreadsheet can’t fully capture. But if you’re considering a similar move, I’d rather give you real numbers to plan around than a rosy estimate that doesn’t hold up once you’ve actually moved.

If you’re weighing a move like ours and want help thinking through your own numbers and what a realistic budget looks like for your specific family and city, I offer 1:1 consultations to help families plan exactly this kind of relocation.

And if you want more real numbers and honest reflections from our first year in México, get on my newsletter. I share details there that don’t always make it into a blog post.