One of the things you have to deal with in moving to Mexico is money. On the surface this is not too difficult. Mexico uses Pesos; the US uses Dollars. A fraction of a peso is a centavo. One hundred centavos make a peso. That's pretty simple. It gets even easier. The current exchange rate very roughly works out to 10 pesos make a dollar. Right now it is probably somewhere between 11 and 12 pesos to a dollar, but 10 is very easy and I'm not hurting myself. About now you are thinking about skipping to the next post. I would be. I mean this is easy stuff why bother writing about this anyway? I'm going to ask that you keep reading, but at the same time, I'm going to tell you it gets even easier.

Mexican paper money comes in 20, 50, 100, 200, 500, 1000 denomination bills. Each denomination is a different size and is a different color. Even the first time you see them it is clearly easy to differentiate between the bills. You can go to PuertoVallarta.net [4] for a look at the current bills and coins if you are interested. If you are paying attention you might have noticed that a 20 is the smallest denomination bill, and you might think that is a little odd. So now I'm going to make things a little more complicated by throwing in coins. While there are $1 coins in the US everyone is pretty well used to the idea that paper money is whole dollar values and coins are reserved for fractions of a dollar. Not so in Mexico. There are 1, 2, 5, 10 and 20 peso coins. There are also 50, 20, 10 and 5 centavo coins. Don't start worrying too much though. Each coin is easily distinguishable from all the others. Color, shape, and design are different for each coin, but most importantly so is size. The smallest value coins are the smallest in size gradually increasing to the largest value coin. Without going into a discussion on what moron in US history decided to make the dime smaller than the nickel- I will say that it makes perfect sense and makes life very easy for the size to coincide with the value.

Now you are probably wondering why you listened to me earlier when I asked you to continue reading. I don't blame you- my patience with this subject would be worn very thin by now. Almost any kid old enough to carry lunch money could handle this with very little problem. Hold on a minute longer- things are going to start getting more complicated.

I'll start with the simplest and most obvious issue. Numbers are different. OK, I'll grant you that numbers written in number form are exactly the same. However, written in word form or spoken they are different. I won't bore you with a list of Spanish numbers from 1 to 1000. After all, I'm pretty lucky as it is if you are still reading and if you are curious it won't take any effort at all to look it up. Yes I am too lazy to include a link, go find it yourself. I will say that this is still not a very big problem. By the time we get around to money it has become painfully obvious to whomever I am dealing with that I'm not from around here. 90% of the time people will write the number on a pad, or enter it on a calculator and show it to me. 5% of the time they will speak the number to me in English because their English is clearly better than my Spanish. You might ask about the last 5% of the time. If I can't muddle through and am completely lost, I can just start handing them money. The odds are ridiculously good that they will stop me when I reach the correct amount and give me correct change if change is due.

Now let's take things a step further. I keep talking about money, but just to make sure things are really clear. Mexico is an extremely cash based society. On an average day, you will not write a check or use a credit card here. In case you don't fully appreciate how much you rely on those things on a daily basis- start asking yourself before you leave the house each time: How much money do I need to carry with me? I'm going out to do the weekly shopping- how much will I spend? I'm going out for lunch and a couple of beers, how much money do I need? I want to go out for a night on the town, how much money do I need? Congratulations if you mananged to reasonably answer each of those questions - although I will remind you that you have lived in your economy for a while and have a pretty good idea what things cost. I'm new here, and I am still learning every day what things reasonably cost.

Now I'm going to start making things pretty difficult. Even though Mexico is a cash based society, most people or stores don't have much cash on hand. You have to be very careful about how you spend large bills. The problem isn't that people won't accept a large bill, but that they probably simply don't have enough change to make up the difference in what you owe and the large bill you gave them. Quiz time- I told you earlier that including coins have 1, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 500, 1000 denomination currency. What is a large bill? I'll help you out a little- I've never seen a 1000 peso note. It is pretty easy to guess that a 500 peso note is a large bill, but what about 200, 100, or even 50?

Time for a day in my life. We are going to the bank to pay our rent, which has to be paid in cash and we don't have that much cash on us. So Jennifer and I need to stop at an ATM and take out some cash. We have to go to Bancomer to pay our rent and there is an ATM right outside, but their ATM's dispense mostly 500 peso bills which are definitely large bills and very hard to spend. So even though Bancomer's ATM is very convenient, we will probably stop at Scotiabank on the way to withdraw money because from them the largest bill we will get is 200 pesos. 200 pesos is still a pretty large bill so I have to be a little careful about breaking them so I have some smaller bills to spend. After paying our rent we stop at the local shrimp vendors to buy fresh shrimp for the next couple of days. The total is 120 pesos. I think this is a perfect opportunity and smiling I hand the lady a 200 peso bill even though I have a 100 and a 20 in my pocket. That is the wrong choice. She doesn't have that much change. So while I stand there embarrassed she asks her friend for help making change. The friend goes through her purse and together they manage to come up with 80 pesos to give me change. I walk away knowing that she now owes her friend money and I have cleaned her out of change. I figure I'll know better in the future.

Then next day we stop by a local vet office and pet supply shop and buy a brush for the dogs. The brush costs 45 pesos. This being a reasonably sized establishment, I hand over a 100 peso note for the brush. They don't have enough change in the till and the woman working at the register gets out her purse and starts fishing for money so she can make up the change. See how difficult this can be? That afternoon we go to the local fruteria for some fresh fruit and vegetables. The total is around 12 pesos. Without thinking I hand over a 20 peso note. This time when they start scrambling for change I am quicker and manage to apologize and count out 12 pesos exactly.

Now I think I've learned my lessons and I am hoarding small bills and coins like my life depends on it. However so far I have been talking just about pesos. What about centavos? This starts to make life really interesting. Most people price things in whole pesos and don't deal with centavos with a few exceptions. We'll go back to the fruteria. Jennifer just picked out a couple of cucumbers and a tomato or two for dinner. These are all priced per kilogram. While the price per kilogram is almost certainly a whole peso value, the items she picked out are going to come to fractions of kilograms. This fruteria has a nice register and I see the price ring up. Let's say it comes to 11.73. I hand over 11 pesos and 80 centavos. Not only are there not single centavo coins, but most people don't really deal with 5 or 10 centavo coins. She very nicely hands me back 20 centavos and explains the money to me again thinking I just don't have a grasp on the coin values yet. However, when we go to one of the larger supermarkets for a few things, the total will almost certainly not come to a whole peso value. Here if I round down, I probably haven't given them enough money. In fact depending on the store, they may round my change down to the nearest peso- again to avoid dealing with centavos.

Ok. It has been a couple of weeks, and I really think I am starting to get the hang of things, although by now I am convinced that I will never guess when to round up and when to round down. I've accepted that centavos will always be a problem and I simply don't care which way it goes. Either way, I'll have a beer later and forget about it. Today, Jennifer and I go to one of the weekly gringo gatherings. This one is in the bar at Las Flores hotel in the Golden Zone. Things are a bit pricier here and large bills shouldn't be a problem. At the end of the evening our bill comes to 120 pesos. Jennifer hands the waiter a 200 peso note. No problem here, right? Wrong. The waiter brings back 70 pesos in change and it takes me a minute to understand that he is saying they don't have any 10 peso coins right now, but he will bring us 10 more pesos in a few minutes. Turns out Jennifer is a faster learner than I am. We have been here before, and in fact had the same waiter, and she knows that even though we are in the Golden Zone this is not a ploy to get a larger tip. So without missing a beat she just counts the ten pesos as part of his tip hands him back the rest of the tip and we continue on our merry way.