Kelsey Shipman: expat, ghostwriter, mom

Kelsey Shipman is a 39-year-old writer, mom, former teacher, and ambivalent expat living in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, while escaping the heat, politics, and high cost of her home state of Texas. (kelseyshipman.com / @kelseyerinshipman)

Kelsey is the weirdo world traveler from an otherwise conventional Texas family who ended up living in Ghana, Bolivia, the Czech Republic, and Uzbekistan over the course of two decades. Now she’s come to accept that living abroad is key to “doing her life’s work” and raising her young daughter with sanity.

Kelsey mostly works as a ghostwriter, focused on memoirs and cookbooks. Her husband does remote IT work and schoolteaching. Together they work a combined 40-50 hours a week and earn $5-6k/month, which is more than enough to live well in a beautiful, expat-friendly city in Mexico. Previously they were earning twice that in Austin, Texas, where they lived on the city outskirts, drove everywhere, and felt deep financial stress.

Finding affordable, high-quality childcare in Mexico changed everything. Previously they paid $1300/month to send their daughter to a preschool in Austin that didn’t even cover the full day. Now, their daughter goes to a preschool within walking distance and has a wonderful, caring nanny.

We discuss the ethics of living abroad, bringing US dollars into lower-income countries, and contributing to the cultural change that rapidly transforms places like San Miguel de Allende. Kelsey reveals the irony that while she may be “part of the problem,” she and her husband were also priced out of Austin by Californians who migrated there during the pandemic.

Finally, Kelsey offers advice for behaving well as an expat—namely, keeping your voice down and not talking about “how cheap everything is.”

Kelsey’s Substack is White People School (https://kelseyshipman.substack.com/)