Is the grass greener on the other side? What can we learn from other people’s opportunities?
Frank And we are live.
Welcome to Opportunity Exchange, which fosters the exchange of ideas and practical solutions with the focus of empowering those who don’t have the opportunities that others have through a dialogue and a collaboration.
And we have with us today, Igor, who lives, works, resides, has fun in Los Angeles. And the question here, I suppose, is Igor, is the grass really greener on the other side? Yeah.
Igor That’s a $1 million question.
Frank That’s more than $1 million.
Igor Yeah. For sure.
Frank So, so you had the opportunity a couple of months ago to move from Brazil to Los Angeles. And there would be a lot of people who would love to have this opportunity like you did, but who simply for whatever reason will be unable to do it. Maybe they won’t get work there, or maybe they simply don’t have the money to fly to Los Angeles and experience what you’re experiencing.
And what I’m looking at or trying to explore is, do they really have to go to LA to experience what your experience, or with a little bit of help and creativity and lateral thinking, they could do pretty much the same, where they are, as you can.
And I’ve created this representative for all of these people who do not have your opportunity, and we’re going to call this person Max. Max is either Maxine or Maximilian, depending on whether the listener is a male or a female. And this is going to be our friend, our fictitious friend who can then maybe explore what can I do in my home area, if I am, if I am not allowed or can’t go to Los Angeles.
So, let’s start with one particular subject and that is challenges and overcoming them. So, what were some of the challenges that you faced when moving to LA. And how did you overcome them.
That’s the first question. And the second question is, what can Max take away from this. From this thought process. So, let’s start with the first one.
Igor That’s a great start. That’s a great start. Yeah. So, I would categorize the challenge within two different categories. So, the first one, let’s say financial challenge, which is a big one that maybe Max can relate to, maybe not, but most people will relate to. And then bureaucratic challenge. So, I think that’s helpful to categorize because they will change according to each context, right?
So, talking about my challenge, financial challenge, I would say that the main one is figuring out how much will be your cost of living. It’s very difficult. Even with so much information online, it’s pretty much impossible to have a real sense of how much you have to spend monthly on grocery store, rent, if you’re going to have a car, how much is your insurance cost.
It’s very hard. It’s impossible, actually, because there are so many information and conflicting information. And in the end of the day, it all depends on your lifestyle.
So, if you search on Google, what’s the average living cost on Los Angeles? You’re going to find a value, but this value, it’s probably someone who is intending to be a car, to live in a nice place.
So, it’s hard to know. So, well, I will list the challenge. Then we’re going to talk how to overcome them, right?
Frank Yeah. Yeah.
Igor That’s one financial challenge. The other one is how much it will cost to move to Los Angeles because there are a lot of costs involved. So, you have the airplane ticket, you have the visa application process, how much it costs. Maybe you have to move from a place you have. In my case, for example, I was living in an apartment in Brazil, and I had to, we call it deliver the apartment in Portuguese. I don’t know if it makes sense in English, but we have to make sure the apartment is nice so we can deliver back to the owner and that costs money. So, this is the financial challenge. And then you have the bureaucrat, which really varies on your nationality.
For Brazilians, which is of course my context, we have different kinds of visas. And since I came thinking to stay at least five years, four to five years, I had and I have to figure out how I stay here for five years legally because being illegal, it’s a terrible idea.
So, in my case, I had the tourist visa already, which was great and very helpful. But if I didn’t have, I would have to apply and wait. The waiting time in Brazil now it’s close to one year.
So, it’s a really bureaucratic process. I would have to get approved. So, it all depends on who you are and where you live and of course your history. But yeah, those are the challenges, the main challenges I faced. I didn’t change other kinds of challenges that I can see other people facing. So, I can’t talk about them, but I can think of like, maybe you have to convince your parents that you will come here. Maybe you have to deal with your relationship. But those weren’t my challenges.
Frank Fair enough. Okay. So, let us say that Max has just listened to this, and he’s going to say, or she’s going to say that the cost of moving doesn’t really apply because I live here. The bureaucratic challenge of waiting time visa and so on and so forth doesn’t really apply either. But the cost of living is an interesting one. So, let us say that Max moves to his or her own city. And cost of living is a global topic because inflation has reappeared. And there are a lot of people who don’t actually know the inflationary periods of the 1970s and 1980s, or they live in high inflation environments anyway, like Turkey, like Venezuela.
But let us say that Max is moving to his own city, is wondering how can he find the best deal, the best cost of living approach so that he can save a little bit of money, live well, and get through the month without any bumps and problems.
So, what did you do when you arrived in LA to figure out the cost of living and where the good places are and to go shopping? And what did you actually learn in the process that was different to your home in Brazil?
Igor So, what I did, and that’s how usually I deal with those kinds of unpredictable things, is like start with the most expensive things you have to figure out. So, in my case, it was rent. So, let’s start with rent.
In my case, we really prioritized being close to where you have to be. So, we could find cheaper places far away, like in the south of Los Angeles, it’s cheaper, in the east side, it’s cheaper.
But we chose to live nearby where we have to be. And then we basically had this radius in the map that we wanted. So, we didn’t really brainstorm outside of this radius. And then there is a key learning that we had right in the beginning is that you really should look for apartments that are being rented by the owners themselves and not, how do they call it here?
Frank Some sort of management companies or?
Igor Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So, management companies, like they charge more because of course they have to have a cut on the rent and they are really bureaucratic, like no joke. It’s really hard to rent that place through a management company here in the United States.
So, yeah, that’s the first step. You should look to the owners, like to the landlords. And usually they are very kind and they also don’t like management companies. So, you’re going to pay less, and everything will be easier. Not only in the rent process, but meanwhile, like while you are living in the place, it’s everything easier, right? That’s the first thing.
And then we didn’t want to have a car, so we didn’t put that on the equation. But if you are looking to have a car, you should look, the principle of dealing with the owner, it’s better as well.
Of course, you can go to a dealership, it’s an option. But in our experience, we are going through a process of buying a car right now. And in our experience, it’s way better to look for people like individuals who are selling cars, not organization.
Frank So, private people, you would go on Craigslist and say, who’s looking to sell his car? You would contact that person and then you’d meet up and you have a look at the car and then either you say yes or no.
Igor Yes, exactly. And then you can negotiate because 90% of people we have been talking to, they are open to negotiate. So, you should try to negotiate the price.
And then the last one is grocery shopping. At least in Los Angeles, that’s the craziest thing that it will vary a lot. You can go to a market and it will cost $10 and another market down the street will cost $20. So, that’s crazy how it varies here.
So, you should really, in the beginning, do your research. It’s worth, I guarantee. I am someone who never cared about that. But in Los Angeles, I’m very happy that actually my girlfriend, she found a really nice place that they deliver to our doors and has a really fair price.
So, it was worth researching for sure. We would be spending at least 50% more than we are spending if we didn’t go through this research. And that’s it, I think. I would say those are the three main things.
We can talk about entertainment and things that you can do on weekends. But yeah, that’s really personal. Some people will spend $10, others will spend $1,000. But you have options in every price range you can imagine, including free.
Frank Okay. So, you are in the fantastic position of actually renting your accommodation at the moment. That is almost actually a given because buying probably in California is either for you challenging because of legal reasons, because you are there for a temporary time period, or it’s prohibitively expensive, or whatever. So, would you say that renting a place and then maybe moving regularly to optimize your living area, your living environment is a good idea? That maybe Max should not move every 5 or 10 or 20 years, but maybe should move in shorter time spans, just like we should change our energy providers, our cable providers, or whoever. That maybe rent is becoming a flexible option as well. And that if you can move to somewhere cheaper and better, then do it.
Igor Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think that one advantage of renting a place, and that’s why I rented all my life. I never owned that place and I don’t plan on a place in my lifetime. I can change my mind, of course, if I have kids, etc. But for now, I don’t see any reason to buy a house. For now, it can change.
And renting gives you the flexibility, which is great. And also, it’s cheaper. Of course, it all depends on the interest rate of the place you are trying to buy a house. But when you do the math, in Brazil, it’s 100% the case. In the United States, it can vary a little bit, but renting is almost always cheaper.
Like if you had, for example, let’s say $500,000 to buy a house here in Los Angeles. You have a hard time finding a place with this price, but let’s say you have this option.
If you invest that money in, let’s say, in American bonds, like treasury bonds, the rentability you’re going to have probably will be enough to rent a place. So you have the money that you have put together, like $500,000, and now you use your rentability to rent a place. So you don’t have to spend the money and now you have flexibility. In Brazil, it’s 100% of the cases.
In the United States, it varies because the interest rate here, now it’s high, but it can be very low in the future, so it can change. But yeah, I think that renting is not only good in terms of flexibility, but also in cost, most of the times.
Frank Okay. You said transport. Now, of course, public transport is not always possible, and I think LA doesn’t do public transport that well.
Here in Europe, we have car sharing schemes, especially in major cities where you can rent a car from a car sharing organization for a couple of hours, and you collect the key from somewhere, you return the car to a designated spot, and you make sure that the tank is full.
So a car, again, becomes a commodity that you can dispose of and use only when you need it. Now, you’re going down the road of buying a car, so you’re tying up money into an item which will lose value.
Yes, okay, you’re buying a used car, a secondhand car, but it will depreciate in value, and it’s going to cost you in maintenance and in service and in anything else that comes up.
So let’s go down the road. What would be better, going into some sort of car sharing scheme if it exists or buying and having the luxury and the flexibility if it’s in front of the house whenever you need it?
Igor Well, that’s a great question. First of all, that’s the last thing I wanted to do in my life. It’s owning a car. We are just doing that because we really don’t have the option.
In Los Angeles, I am a guy who has ran 100 miles. I can bike 200 miles in a day if I want, but in Los Angeles it’s impossible. You need to have a car if you want to explore it. Everything is very far away. It’s really dangerous to use a bike here, so you have to have a car. So if I come into Los Angeles, you won’t be able to live without a car. I’m just saying that. And here we searched for this kind of services. We couldn’t find a good one. There are a lot of options of places you can get the car and deliver the car.
The one we found, it’s called Toro, something like that, but it’s really expensive. The amount of money we would spend six months renting a car for the weekends, it’s the money we’re going to spend to buy a pre-owned car. So yeah, I think that’s something to look into. But here, at least in Los Angeles, we couldn’t find these good options regarding car sharing. We really couldn’t find.
And the thing about the United States, generally speaking, is pre-owned cars are really cheap. So most of the time it’s fine to buy. Let’s say we are buying a Honda Civic 2012. We are paying like $5,000.
I don’t know, but in Brazil, you would never find a Honda Civic 2012 for $5,000. So it’s worth buying, in my opinion here. And that’s not the cheapest one. We have seen cars, really old cars for $2500 to $3,000. So it’s not that expensive to buy a pre-owned car here. That’s why we chose to buy.
Frank It’s California registered because I think California has some of the tightest environmental laws in the United States. So that must come into it as well.
Igor Yeah, so they call it a smog check. So the car has to go through a smog check. And so when you are looking for a car here, you have to make sure either the car already has a smog check, which is the best scenario. It’s our case. Or this car will pass through the smog check because the risk of buying a car and it doesn’t pass the smog check is that you can be fined. I don’t know how much it is, but I bet it’s expensive.
Frank It’s electric or is it gasoline?
Igor It’s gasoline. That’s gasoline. We talked about buying a hybrid, but I don’t understand anything about cars. I am a disaster in terms of understanding cars and mechanics. But I have a cousin who really understands, and he mentioned that a hybrid is good, of course, because you can save on gas. But the price difference in the United States is not that high. So that’s okay to spend with gas here.
Although California has the most expensive gas in the United States, and according to him, I’m not sure if it’s true, a hybrid car tends to have more trouble in terms of battery. So he knows me and he knows that I hate to worry about little things in life. And he mentioned you won’t be happy with a hybrid car because you have to deal with problems in the battery. You have to go to the mechanic and etc. And you don’t want to do that. So we chose a gasoline car.
Frank Well, yeah, why not? I mean, that’s an 11 year old car. Okay.
Igor Yeah. Another thing that’s almost unanimous. Everyone we talked about buying a pre-owned car in the United States told us that we should choose a Toyota or a Honda. Everyone. No exception, right? That’s important information because I think the maintenance is cheaper. And also those cars, they are now, at least in the United States, I don’t know elsewhere, that they last a long time without any issue. So that’s a good tip.
Frank My mother has a I think it’s a 15- or 16-year-old Toyota Corolla.
Igor Oh, Corolla. Yeah, that’s what everyone suggested. We couldn’t find one, but that was the top one recommended pre-owned car.
Frank It has more kilometers on the clock than my 11 year old French made Renault. And it is in a far better condition. And just to put this into context, my mother is 86. She still does a lot of driving.
Igor Oh, that’s nice.
Frank Yeah, she does about 300, 400 kilometers.
Igor That’s very nice. Yeah. Oh, wow.
Frank Anyway, when she goes to the service, when she gets the car serviced twice a year for a winter checkup and a summer checkup, the people they know her, of course, they sort of hint that the car will outlive her. That’s how reliable this car is. And my mother’s fit. She’s a fit woman. You were going to say something.
Igor Oh, yeah. We went to see Ford Focus the day before yesterday. It was Ford Focus 2013, I think. And then we took a Uber and on the way to the place, we would see the car. I was searching online about Ford Focus 2013.
And like the rate is like in terms of five stars, like from one to five, it was like 2.5. And everyone was complaining about the transmission. Transmission will surely give you headache. Like, it’s not a question.
And then I was thinking about that. Okay, we saw the car, we liked the car. If I didn’t know about the transmission, she probably would just buy the car at this spot. But then I said to the guy, oh, I will think about that and I will do some more research.
And on the way back, we took another Uber and the guy was very friendly. And I asked him, okay, what do you think about Ford Focus 2013? And he was very funny.
He said, that’s a crap, man. Don’t buy this shit. I love the honesty of the guy. And then we decided not to buy it. Like the guy was on fire. He hated Ford Focus.
He was driving on the freeway and he was like, do you see any Ford Focus here? Like, look around. Do you see Toyota? Do you see Honda? Do you see any Ford? And I was like, yeah, makes sense.
Frank Wow. Okay. Well, yeah. So here’s a little tip. Yeah. If you need to buy a car, speak to those who live in them and they’ll be the Uber drivers.
Igor Yeah, exactly.
Frank They are probably your best knowledge of driving, of hiring, driving, buying a car and running a car. Well, that’s a good point. I never thought about that but makes sense. Like Uber drivers, they really get to know their cars, right?
Igor Yeah. That’s a really good point. Yeah. If you have to figure out things about cars, yeah, you should ride your Ubers and talk around.
Frank Okay. So what you should actually be doing before you commit to buying this Honda Civic is try and find an Uber driver who drives a Honda Civic, preferably a 2012.
Igor That’s true.
Frank And ask him what he thinks about it.
Igor Wow. That’s a great idea, actually. Yeah. Should have a way to filter the car you want to ride on Uber would be nice, but I don’t think they have.
Frank Okay. All right. So these are really big ticket items. You know, the rent, the transport, the car and so on and so forth.
But really down to, to, okay, the little details, grocery shopping. So you had, you had the advantage or the disadvantage, and I think your girlfriend probably appreciates this more than you do. You had this advantage of coming to a city that you do not know what to buy, where, when it comes to day to day living things. And you basically had to go and do your research. Now that could be a structured way, or it could be just a random, let’s go and see what’s, what’s around in our neighborhood.
So let, let, let us say that Max has never lived in his own city before, or her own city before, and is going to go on this adventure of finding the best place to buy the best quality food at the fairest price, not necessarily the cheapest or the expensive price but to get good value for money. What did you two do that Max could do in this now totally new environment?
Igor Yeah, so it’s easier than it looks. The way I always did, like it’s, I didn’t start doing that just here in LA, but first go to where locals go. Like, don’t just look in the map and go there. Like look, look where like locals are going to do their grocery shopping.
That’s the first thing. If you, if you can’t figure it out by observing the world around you for some reason, you should go, the one technique I really like, I have been doing that all my life is go to a hairdresser.
Like, you know, like local hairdressers that they have like a little door on the, on a street like that no one’s know, like go there, do, do like, do your hair and talk to them, ask about what you want to know. They usually know everything because there are so many people going through them every day. That’s, that’s very easy to do that. That’s what I did. I found, I have a hairdresser, her name is Fabula. She’s very funny. And I asked her one day, okay, where do you recommend me to take my girlfriend to dinner? And the criteria were the one you mentioned. Should it be good food, and should it be a fair price? Right. And she recommended that place, which is a Honduran restaurant. I don’t know if that’s the right term, but from Honduras, right? The country.
And that place is so nice. Like we eat so much. We ate so much and for a fair price that we have been back there like three times in two weeks.
Frank Wow.
Igor But we wouldn’t find, we wouldn’t find that place. Well, maybe we would find, but wouldn’t be like the first, first restaurants on the list, right? If we search for restaurants in Los Angeles, we wouldn’t find that place because it’s a very local place. You go there, people talk Spanish with you. They don’t care if you talk English or not. You see locals eating. It’s not a tourist place. There’s no, there’s no like 100, 1000 square feet parking lot. So it’s just you enter, you eat good food and that’s fine, you know?
Frank Wow.
Igor Yeah. So that’s my technique. Go to a hairdresser or a barber and talk to them.
Frank And I suppose you could actually just to sort of, you know, enlarge your radius, but you could go to a hairdresser in district A and then you could go to a hairdresser in district B and then district C and then you have such a wealth of local addresses. Wow. Yeah. That even surprises me.
Igor Just to make a point of the going to place where locals go, when I arrived in Los Angeles, we were staying in an Airbnb at a neighborhood called Korea Town.
And in this neighborhood, walking around, we found out that there were two big grocery stores. So one, I don’t remember the name. Yeah, I don’t remember the name, but doesn’t matter. One was like a huge market that that’s a very popular brand here in Los Angeles. And another one was, it was called Joe’s. It’s a very small grocery store, but it was always full of people and we could see that they were locals people.
So the price difference was absurd. So the place where the locals went, of course, were cheaper. And the other market was more like people driving through, you know, because they could just exit the freeway, go to the market. And it was a very clean, modern grocery store, but it was very expensive as well. So that’s an illustration of going where the locals go. Usually it’s cheaper.
Frank And you could get all the brand products that people buy in either store, or did they just have their own special lines?
Igor Yeah, well, the most expensive, usually they had special lines. That’s what they used to justify being more expensive. But unless you don’t want a special item, there’s no reason to go.
Frank Okay. All right. So basically, to summarize what Max might do in order to rediscover his own city is, first of all, have a look where he’s living, and maybe think about moving to a different area, if that is at any point feasible. So, Max really needs to know what he does in his life and has to possibly even reevaluate certain things in his life in order to get the best opportunity.
Transport, that’s really, really, really a geographical scenario. You in LA have a really simple scenario. But the takeaway there is speak to someone who drives a lot professionally to get the best review on what car to buy. And if you are in looking to maybe lower your grocery bills or to do something along those lines, go speak with a local hairdresser, do this in different districts, get into the local community, they know the best deals, they know what’s going on. So basically, Max can move to his own city with the experience that you had taken from moving from southern Brazil to Iba. Yeah, I think those are good frameworks to have in mind.
Frank Okay. Any last word of advice that you want to give Max to wrap this one up?
Igor Let me think. So assuming he or she is moving to a huge city, something that I would suggest, I have been using a lot of Reddit. Do you know Reddit, the social media? Yeah. Yeah. So I assume it’s a huge city because I don’t think it applies to small cities. There are a lot of good tips of locals. So, for example, when we started to use Metro here, we quickly found out that wasn’t a safe thing to do at night. And then I was looking on Reddit to find out what people do. And I found a lot of good tips like, oh, if you want to go to this place, I’ve already did this metro station, go that way.
Maybe one tip that we use a lot is that we tend to think that Metro will always be faster than going by bus. But that’s not the case for Los Angeles because we don’t have many metro lines. So sometimes you’re going to have to do a big round if you go extremely by Metro and by Metro, I mean subway. Right.
And sometimes it’s faster to get a bus and buses are way safer because you have the driver. People don’t use the bus that much. So it’s just safer. And then we started to take more buses. I would never think about that.
I read that on Reddit. So that’s my last word on that. Like, look for tips on Reddit. It’s a really good place because I think my theory is that people can comment anonymously. So they say whatever they want. Right.
Frank Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, I’m going to take this concept to other people, see how we progress. But we have other topics that we can cover in the LA Max world, cultural adaptation, skills and personal growth, possibly networking and opportunities. I think that’s something that’s really good for LA because LA has just such fantastic networking challenges and opportunities. Work-life balance and lifestyle changes, of course. Yeah. So that’s probably a big thing that you’ve come across as well. Moving from South America up to the US and future perspectives. How do you see the future now that you’ve moved, et cetera?
So there’s a couple of topics here that we can take on and give Max something to think about that he can figure out the opportunities that he may not have had or seen, but can learn from people like you, something along those lines.
It sounds really complicated. Anyway, Igor, thank you for your insights. Thank you for your words. And we’ll talk about the next installment next time.
Igor Yes, let’s do it. Yeah. In terms of getting along and meeting people, I have a lot of things to share because I am this kind of person who, like, as an adult, a male adult, and I say that because most of male adults have this difficulty. Like, it’s not easy to make friends and meet new people. And I tried a bunch of different things here in Los Angeles and a few things worked. So I have things to share about that.
Frank Great. Well, we have a lot to talk about. I look forward to it.
Igor And there’s the hook we needed.