Seventh heaven: Seven benefits of living in Colombia

@wwaycorrigan

[For an audio/vlog version of this story, click here.]

I've let it be known many times before how Colombia can be bad for one's health and well-being — or my own, at least.

The high life: Wrong Way is a fan of Colombia's highlands.

For one, there are the ubiquitous panaderías with their constant supply of fresh-but-of-dubious-quality bread that can be hard to resist, especially when it's just out of the oven.

Then there's cheap barrio-tienda beer. Its affordability often encourages those of a certain disposition to imbibe more than is advisable. (In mitigation, it does promote socialising. If one is going to drink, isn't it better to do so in a public house rather than at home? There's surely a mental health benefit to be had.)

We've also got apartment complexes and their complexes i.e. their many ridiculous rules. The mentally and physically damaging playing of loud music often goes unpunished yet prepare yourself for the firing squad if you dare to air clothes at the only window you have that the sun reaches. Well, if not quite the firing squad certainly a fine will be forthcoming.

And let's not forget the largely non-existent customer service, although this isn't exclusive to Colombia.

'You don't have to go out of your way to eat healthily here.'

I was going to include the difficult damas, the complicated chicas, but thanks to my frigidity these days, such stresses are a thing of the past.

However, in recent months the antics of some frenemies have taken their place. My ability, nay willingness, to trust people has taken a hit in these lands. I do, though, still tend to take folk at their word until proven otherwise.

Now, in light of the previous, one might think that I actively seek out negatives, that I'm a fan of self-flagellation so to put it. Not at all. It's not that I'm a sucker for punishment that I've stayed in Colombia this long. Honestly, it's not.

The following, in no particular order, are some of the main reasons why I've been captured, in a good sense, by Colombia. (Yes, I could have used captivated instead of captured but captivated is a bit too quixotic for me!) These seven benefits have played their part in my reluctance to let Colombia go.

Fresh fare sourced locally

When it comes to the bare necessities, Colombia has an abundance of relatively cheap fruit and vegetables available all year round, most of which are grown in the country. So you don't have to go out of your way to eat healthily here. And the grub doesn't have to travel too far to get to you either.

One significant snag, though, is that we can't be sure about the safety of any pesticides these natural goodies may be dosed in during cultivation. Unless we grow our own from scratch — impracticable for many — we just have to hope that the chemical balance is tipped in our favour health-wise.

Independent living

Now, there's no point in having access to a range of fresh produce if you rarely have the time to cook. For the average working-class, city-dwelling Colombian, this can be a challenge.

However, some foreigners from higher-income nations who come to settle here are often engaged in work that comes with generous me-time, more so than they would most likely enjoy in their birth country anyway.

Fresh fare: The food looks good. Hopefully it's not riddled with harmful chemicals.

The likes of native English speakers who teach the language can usually expect to earn a decent hourly rate. So they can do fairly well without having to work the long hours forced upon many locals.

It's even better for those who are paid in one of the world's stronger currencies whilst based in Colombia.

Alas, having grown tired of English teaching and not having a foreign-currency income to rely on, I haven't exactly been rolling in it of late.

Nonetheless, with my rather minimalist lifestyle — it comes naturally — I have been able to maintain my independent living to a greater or lesser extent, replete with regular, refreshing bouts of travel around Colombia.

While the fallow periods can be worrying, I'm happier to ride them out than return to work as a wage slave. One is open to all serious offers all the same!

Rentafácil

Those fallow periods just mentioned, of which there have been many of late, have been offset somewhat by, whisper it, a rather generous savings scheme.

Banco Caja Social's Rentafácil, literally easy income, has been at inflation-busting interest rates for some time, offering much better returns than the CDTs I wrote about in 2020. My cautious, doubting nature is waiting for the catch but so far, so good, it seems.

Shrewder investors will most likely find fault with the Rentafácil or view it as an amateur investment. All I can say is that if the interest it's accruing is all mine to enjoy then I'll be quite content (it is, by the way, an instant-access scheme but I haven't withdrawn any funds yet).

Active at altitude

Whatever about the future of the returns on my Rentafácil, they're unlikely to take me to the high life socially speaking. Colombia's topography, on the other hand, offers plenty of natural highs.

'In Bogotá, only the very sensitive to cold might want home heating at night.'

And while it's far from certain that living at lofty altitudes is better for one's overall health than life around sea level, I at least think that the high-ish life has been good for me. And if I think it hard enough, I can make it the truth, can't I?!

In fact, at times I feel that Bogotá, at 2,600 metres above sea level, isn't high enough. So I'm considering setting up a new base camp in Colombia — if, that is, I can make it financially sustainable and the country continues to be my home.

One option, um, high on the list is Güicán, a town I recently visited and enjoyed, perched about 400 metres closer to the stars than the capital.

Fun in the sun

Speaking of being closer to the stars, Colombia's location in the tropics ensures that the sun's strength provides sufficient vitamin D throughout the year.

Even during Bogotá's rainiest days the sun usually shines sufficiently for the average person to soak up enough of this immune system booster.

This can't be said of my native Ireland and other similar places.

Goldilocks zone

Mentioning Ireland, for large parts of the year a heat source is usually needed to keep people warm inside.

In Bogotá, only the very sensitive to cold might want home heating at night. Those aside, if one feels cold, an extra item of clothing and/or some physical movement should warm one up sufficiently. The same goes for most Andean locations at an altitude of roughly 1,500 to 3,000 metres above sea level: a Goldilocks temperature all year round.

For places at the lower end of that range, finding ways to cool down is the main issue. Well above 3,000 metres, one can expect to prepare for occasional night frosts. And because many of Colombia's buildings are poorly insulated, it can often be colder inside than outside.

Inside outsider

As for inside and outside, in my beloved working-class barrios and pueblos, I usually feel like an inside outsider.

That is, with the local people who know me, I'm not just another random foreigner. I'm viewed more as a part of the community. Yet, I can still maintain my distance and play the foreigner card (not the gringo one!) when needs be.

Now, this is the least one might expect after almost 12 years based in a country. However, settled immigrants don't always become accepted, be they in Colombia — in certain places more so than others — or around the world. This can be due to an immigrant's own behaviour, the locals' attitude or a mixture of both.

During my time in Colombia, I feel I've found the right inside/outside balance.

Some, though, argue that I've become too cosy with working-class Colombia to the detriment of my career and financial development. There's merit to that.

Yet, taking all the above into account, Colombia has been a more positive experience than a negative one. Maybe other places offer all these benefits but have fewer negatives. If so, do let us know about them!
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Swimming against the Big Tech tide

@wwaycorrigan
[Listen to an audio version of this blog entry here.]
I recently wrote about how Big Nanny State has facilitated a tendency amongst some in society to forego growing up and taking responsibility. 'Leave everything up to me, little ones. Simply submit, follow the rules, however arbitrary many may seem, and off with you to enjoy your highly regulated lives.'

The QR-code revolution: Wrong Way is not a fan.

Virtual reality

Cosily tucked up with Big Nanny State in her warm global bed is Big Tech, monitoring everything from our sleeping patterns and what we eat for breakfast to our favourite pastimes and guilty pleasures. While this might appear a rather clandestine undertaking, the reality is, it isn't.

The virtual world that practically all in higher-income countries plus the middle classes elsewhere have signed up to with countless usernames and passwords means we have voluntarily — or at least it was voluntarily initially — invited Big Tech and its associates into our lives. And while some folk seem fairly blasé about this, there does appear to be pushback fomenting in other quarters.

The question is, shy of a system overthrow or a complete retreat from society, how does one go about living in the 21st Century whilst endorsing minimalist technological use?

Unless you're already a "made" man, woman or whatever you wish to call yourself these days, not having the likes of WhatsApp and/or an email account together with being connected to the internet 24/7, leaves you at a distinct disadvantage. And even if you are comfortably settled on Easy Street, this doesn't mean you can effortlessly free yourself from Big Tech's dominance.

Many services, from the world of finance to dining and everything else in between, now expect the user to be equipped with a smartphone — a device that tends to sap any modicum of intelligence from said user.

'In the pandemic pandemonium where each fellow human being is seen as a Grim Reaper, QR-code menus take away one potential area of contagion.'

All of this is supposedly being done in the name of convenience. Fair enough, if you can do everything from the comfort of your own home or wherever, there's something to be said for that. However, when it's done to the detriment of being able to actually sit down and talk to somebody face to face should the need arise, while I'm all against it.

A mine of information

Just one manifestation of this — something that, thankfully, rarely affects me in my modest existence in Colombia — is the switch to QR-code menus and suchlike in restaurants. Some people think this is a wonderful development.

For one, in the pandemic pandemonium where each fellow human being is seen as a Grim Reaper, it takes away one potential area of contagion: the handling of reused menus. It also cuts down on paper by reducing the need for said menus, therefore, so it goes, it's good for the environment.

Both of those "plus points" are true, but one's smartphone doesn't exactly run on fresh air, does it? Plus, outside of its component parts — including those lithium batteries, mined in ethically questionable ways, to say the least — it has to be recharged regularly.

Speaking of mining, in places where you actually order electronically, how much personal information is hammered out of us in the process? Another aspect to Big Tech's perpetual profiling.

In the realm of finance, so far my bank in Colombia, Banco Caja Social, hasn't forced me to go fully mobile. Indeed, in some regards, this particular institution is too archaic and overly bureaucratic. Nonetheless, when it comes to money, you can't be too careful all the same.

In contrast, the only bank I currently do business with in Ireland, Bank of Ireland UK in Belfast, more or less forced me recently to download its app in order to continue having access to my account. Come on guys, there are only so many apps a bog-standard smartphone can hold!

The net result of this 'move to mobile' is that it leaves us at the mercy of a faceless Big Tech. Technology is the master. To borrow, in a way, from Winston Churchill, 'Never has so much power been in the hands of so few, controlling so many.'

Call me, if you will, a contrarian conservative fearful of what amounts to nothing more than innocent and innovative change.

However, in a world where we are ceding more and more of whatever independence we had to faceless forces, I will do what I can to resist, at least for a little while longer. It will, most likely, be a futile exercise.
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Listen to Wrong Way's Colombia Cast podcast here.

Facebook: Wrong Way Corrigan — The Blog & IQuiz "The Bogotá Pub Quiz".

A Colombian account with interest

Ignorantia juris non excusat. Ignorance of the law is no excuse. 'It's your fault, buddy, if you didn't know what you were doing was illegal. Don't waste energy blaming the system, take your punishment and learn from it.'

Wrong Way was also none the wiser about a CDT until very recently. (Image from Facebook.)

Taking that legal principle and adapting it to other areas of life, we can use it more positively, as an encouragement to find out about beneficial things that are readily available to us but we simply hadn't known about them. 'If you don't ask, you don't get', so to put it, yet at times the question doesn't even enter one's head at all.

A little appreciation

I say this following my somewhat pleasant recent discovery of a Certificado de Depósito a Término (CDT), what we'd call a fixed deposit (FD) account in English, with my Colombian bank, Banco Caja Social. That I didn't know of its existence until just a few days ago was largely down to the fact that for most of my time here I hadn't any savings of note to put aside for a defined period.

So when I had a steady, fixed income from December 2018 to January of this year I was fairly content to see my monthly salary lodged to what is termed a savings account here, cuenta de ahorros, but what in effect is simply a current account.

'At least I can now say my money is working a little bit for me. It certainly wasn't heretofore.'

Somewhat paradoxically, it was only in recent weeks and officially unemployed (freelance, isn't it?) as I am, that I started thinking more so about the money — and not that much, I hasten to add — sitting in that confusingly called savings account. I'm not even sure if it accrues any interest. Whatever the case, it's effectively depreciating with each passing month when one takes inflation into account, which will be in the region of 3.5 per cent for 2020.

By pure coincidence, in casual conversation with my current housemate — it can, literally, pay off to move place regularly — she told me she had just received an email from her bank, Bancolombia, about saving in a CDT. I hastily got in touch with my 'insider' at Banco Caja Social and he told me that, of course, and in classic curse-of-knowledge fashion ('Didn't you know, Brendan?') such an account exists at that institution as well.

With annual interest rates slightly north of four per cent, dependent on the amount lodged and length of time this is locked in for — there is considerable flexibility on both fronts — these accounts are far better than their equivalents in the likes of Ireland and the UK. Hence my eagerness to get in on the act.

Average avarice

Now, to state the obvious, I'm no financial expert and I'm generally risk-averse when it comes to money, so I'm sure the savvier types on such matters will say I'm still selling myself short by putting my small savings into a CDT. For such operators, these accounts no doubt don't even constitute a real venture, so any talk of a true gain is nonsensical.

It's a start, though. At least I can now say my money is working a little bit for me. It certainly wasn't heretofore.

Plus, I'm not exactly in the position to invest in something of a high-risk, high-reward nature. Indeed, my disposition and closeness to people who have suffered badly by taking on this type of gamble may mean I never really will engage in such behaviour.

Let's see the state of affairs in six months when my little 'investment' matures. For now, I've to learn to live with even less disposable income. At least these coronavirus times and the current restrictions imposed to combat it make that somewhat easier to do.

Here's hoping there are no nasty surprises in the meantime that will make me regret my money move. Maybe I didn't ask enough questions before diving in. Oh well, I will only have myself to blame.
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Listen to Wrong Way's Colombia Cast podcast here.

Facebook: Wrong Way Corrigan — The Blog & IQuiz "The Bogotá Pub Quiz".

Colombia's best bank: And our winner is ...

Sometimes you have to accept that certain things are the way they are – at least for a specific moment in time. So while the Colombian banking system frustrates more than what I had been used to, you just have to deal with it.

However, depending on your circumstances and requirements, it is worth shopping around if you're looking for a safe place for your money here.

Banco Caja Social: Wrong Way's kind of bank. (Image from Facebook.)

What’s more, reflecting the general lack of customer service in this country, banks don’t seem to care one iota if you decide to ‘take your money and run’, closing an existing account. A great business sense that, leaking clients at will. My ‘millions’ are better off in Ireland and the UK for now.

If you do, though, require a Colombian bank account, from my investigations, coming at it as an independent visa holder, without having to go to extraordinary lengths to prove your importance,* here’s the low-down on the lukewarm to the damn right cold:

Banking is Caring and Sharing: 

First place goes to Banco Caja Social or in its initialism form, BCS (hence the introduction, geddit?). 

This bank offers a standard savings account without any management fee, or so they say. 5,000 COP (Colombian pesos, roughly €1.90) is held in bolsillo (‘pocket’) and taken from your account each month. 

However, it’s your money, not theirs; you can access it whenever you want, apparently. You’re allowed up to five free ATM withdrawals per month – in BCS’s own cash machines that is, of course (there is a fee to use those of other banks, the standard practice in Colombia).

Moreover, all you need is your Colombian immigration card (Cédula de Extranjería), and cash obviously, to open an account. That is to say you don’t need to show a certified proof of income, a requirement in many of the other banks and something that can be a bit of a hassle to get as an independent, non-contracted worker.

On top of all this, in a case of what’s seldom is wonderful for this country, the guy I dealt with in the bank’s 19th Avenue with Fourth Street (Calle 19 con Carrera 4) branch was extremely friendly and helpful and seemed genuinely interested in having me as a customer (cheers Oscar!).

Worthy of mention: 

A much smaller bank than Caja Social, Bancoomeva’s standard savings account comes free of charges for the first six months. Thereafter, there is no standard monthly fee, but you pay for every transaction. 

At their own ATMs the fee is minimal; 1,300 COP for each of your first four monthly withdrawals. However, it’s more than double that if you withdraw from other banks. This could prove costly considering the current small size of their network nationwide.

A newcomer to the market, the Ecuadorian Banco Pichincha, has a monthly management fee of a not-too-excessive 6,900 COP. Like Caja Social, it’s simple to open an account, with no proof of income required. On the downside, like Bancoomeva, the network is small.

Banco de Bogotá’s monthly fee is 6,500 COP, which allows up to five cost-free ATM transactions per month. The paperwork required to open an account there is somewhat off-putting, though.

It’s relatively straightforward to open an account with Davivienda but the monthly fee of 9,500 COP is at the higher end of the scale. Plus, in one of its branches at least, employees could do with some intensive customer-service training.

Best to be avoided: 

With a total monthly fee of a whopping 18,000 COP, broken down as 10,000 COP for management plus an 8,000 COP administration charge for good measure, Banco Popular is certainly not popular with Wrong Way anyway.

Three of a kind: Disinterested, costly banks ...

Bancolombia charges 9,700 COP per month and requires proof of income. The Spanish bank BBVA is also one of the more expensive ones with which to do business.

I have it on good authority that Citibank’s priority in Colombia is at the upper end of the market; fee-wise it’s at the upper end of things in any case.

It must be said that some banks such as Banco Av Villas, Banco Occidente and Banco Agrario failed to provide me with information as requested (and promised in a couple of cases). 

Also, if anyone knows of any other bank operating in Colombia that can trump Banco Caja Social – bearing in mind this little study is based on an independent visa holder or somebody without contracted employment – please do tell.

For now, though, it’s off to Caja Social I go.
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*By ‘extraordinary lengths’ I mean having to write, in a strong manner, to branch managers and indeed company directors to get any sort of positive attention. Even that doesn’t guarantee any improvement in conditions.