Moving to Mexico from the US: The Residency Rules Changed in 2025

Mexico is no longer the easy, cheap residency option. Consulates now calculate financial solvency from the UMA index, pushing the temporary residency income…

Mexico is the destination Americans move to more than any other, and it is the one where the gap between the fantasy and the paperwork is widest. The fantasy is that it is close, cheap and easy. Two of those are arguable. The third stopped being true in 2025. If you have read that Mexican residency is the easy option, that advice is out of date. Here is what the process looks like now. The income test changed, and it went up Until recently, consulates calculated the financial requirement from the Mexico City minimum wage. Since mid-2025 they use the UMA (Unidad de Medida y Actualización), a separate national index. The switch raised the bar substantially. For temporary residency in 2026, you generally need to show one of the following: Monthly income of roughly US$4,300–4,500, evidenced over the previous six months. Or savings and investments averaging roughly US$73,000 across the previous twelve months. Permanent residency requires more again. The exact peso figures are set in UMA and converted at the Bank of Mexico rate on the day of your appointment , so the dollar equivalent moves with the exchange rate and can differ between one consulate and the next. Check the number for your consulate, not the internet Mexican consulates have meaningful discretion, and they publish their own solvency sheets. The figure that matters is the one your consulate applies on your appointment date , not a number in an article. Find your consulate through the Mexican Foreign Ministry: gob.mx/sre Many consulates post a solvency PDF directly — for example, the Orlando consulate economic solvency sheet . Print the sheet from your consulate and take it with you. The application starts outside Mexico This is the detail that catches people who have visited often. You cannot generally convert a tourist entry into residency from inside the country. The visa interview happens at a Mexican consulate abroad — for most Americans, one in the United States. The sequence is: Book a consular appointment, which in busy consulates can mean a wait of months. Attend in person with your financial evidence in original form. Receive a visa sticker giving you a limited window to enter Mexico. Enter, then complete the exchange for your residency card at an INM office within 30 days . Missing that 30-day window is one of the more common and expensive mistakes, because it can mean starting over. Cheap is a regional claim, not a national one "Mexico is cheap" has become unreliable in exactly the places Americans most want to live. Sustained foreign demand has pushed rents in parts of Mexico City, San Miguel de Allende, Playa del Carmen, Mérida and Puerto Vallarta to levels that would be unremarkable in a mid-sized US city. Meanwhile a great deal of the country remains genuinely inexpensive. The variation within Mexico is larger than the variation between Mexico and the US , which is why a national average tells you almost nothing about the budget you will actually live on. Healthcare: three systems, and you need to choose Residents have several routes, and they are not interchangeable: IMSS — the public system, open to residents by voluntary enrolment, inexpensive, with pre-existing condition exclusions and waiting periods. Private insurance — Mexican or international, far more expensive but far quicker. Paying cash privately — which many expats do for routine care, because unit costs are low enough to make insurance feel optional until something serious happens. The decision is city-level. Access to good hospitals in Guadalajara or Monterrey is not the same as access in a coastal town two hours from a specialist. Taxes do not stop at the border Living in Mexico does not end your US filing obligation. Spend enough time there and you may also become tax resident in Mexico , at which point you are dealing with two systems at once. Get advice from someone who works across both before you move money or sell property, not afterwards. Who Mexico suits It suits people who want proximity to the US — real flights home, a compatible time zone, family able to visit. It suits people with income at the level the consulates now require, and people prepared to learn Spanish rather than settle permanently inside an English-speaking bubble. It suits less well those whose plan depends on Mexico being the cheap option. At current thresholds, the financial bar for residency is higher than for several European routes , which surprises almost everyone. Before you choose a city Mexico is the clearest case of a country where the national picture is useless and the local picture is everything. Rent, healthcare access, safety, school availability and whether you can manage without fluent Spanish all change enormously between one city and another. Our free assessment asks what your situation and budget actually are, then shows you how well a specific city fits before you spend anything. The full report researches your chosen city across fourteen areas — visas, real costs, healthcare, schools, safety and the practical steps — with sources and dates rather than reassurance.