The step-by-step plan for Mexico

Mexico has two cards for whoever stays. The residente temporal is the route of almost everyone: a visa at the consulate on proof of your means, then within thirty days of arrival the card at the INM. First one year, then renew up to four in total, and then permanent. The residente permanente is the same gate, for good at once — but only for whoever has a pension and clears a higher bar.

The thresholds aren't in pesos but in UMA days, a unit of account that is adjusted every year in February. That makes the amounts on old consulate pages quietly untrue; this plan works with the UMA of 2026.

And one thing is different with Mexico than with most destinations: the application can only be made at a consulate outside Mexico. Whoever is already in the country as a tourist and wants to stay flies back to The Hague. That is no punishment but the rule, and it is the reason phase 2 lies before your departure.

Three things that almost no Dutch-language page puts together.

The tax. The treaty of 1993 splits your income in three. Your occupational pension and your annuity are taxable only in Mexico, so the Netherlands lets go once you have the exemption. Your AOW the Netherlands may keep taxing, but at no more than 17.5 percent of the gross — and Mexico credits that. Your government pension stays Dutch, unless you also become Mexican.

The AOW itself. Mexico is no treaty country under the Wet BEU. The AOW comes along up to the married rate: for a couple nothing changes, but whoever goes alone falls back from seventy to fifty percent of the minimum wage, and the supplement lapses.

The healthcare. Mexico isn't on the list of treaty countries for healthcare either. No CAK, no treaty contribution: your Dutch basic insurance ends on deregistration and a policy — private, or the voluntary IMSS package with its exclusions — is the system.

Your AOW accrual stops — that's something different from the payment. What you've built up until you leave stays yours. But as soon as you're no longer insured in the Netherlands — for most emigrants the moment of departure — you build up nothing more, and every year until your AOW age costs you 2% of your later AOW. Voluntary continued insurance with the SVB is possible, for ten years at most, but the application has to be in within one year of your insurance ending; after that the door is closed. If you already receive AOW, this no longer applies.

Holiday Mexico and living Mexico are two countries. The Riviera Maya and Los Cabos have the flights, the English and the prices of Florida; the highlands — Querétaro, San Miguel de Allende, Guadalajara and Lake Chapala — have the climate you live in all year, the Mexican prices and the largest foreign communities in the country.

Factor two things into that choice that don't stand out on holiday. Where you live decides which hospital is within reach, and private healthcare in the big cities is excellent but expensive. And the coastal strip is constitutionally restricted zone: buying there is only possible through a bank trust — see phase 5.

On the application side Mexico is affordable: the visa costs less than ten euros in fees, the card for the first year a good eleven thousand pesos. The money sits in three other items: the health policy that replaces the CAK, the move across the ocean, and the car — which almost never comes along.

With Mexico this conversation has one hard rule you have to see together: the AOW fallback hits only whoever goes alone, and the health policy hits whoever is older the hardest — insurers take almost nobody new above seventy. Whoever sits on the edge decides here not only whether but also when.

And discuss the distance. Eleven hours' flying is no weekend home, and the time difference of seven or eight hours turns every phone call with the Netherlands into an appointment.

From here everything counts back. The tightest clock of this journey is in phase 5: thirty days after arrival you have to be at the INM for the card. The longest is in phase 3: the health policy has to be accepted before you deregister, and acceptance takes insurers weeks.