September 1, 2026
The Peso Slips Under 17, and Your Money Setup for Mexico
A strong peso, a Monterrey band at the NFL halftime, a 2,000-year-old find in Veracruz, and how to bank once you land.
September is Mexico's big month. The flags go up on every second balcony, the chiles en nogada show up on menus, and the peso decided to mark the occasion by sliding under 17 to the dollar. Good news for anyone paid in pesos. Slightly less good for the rest of us. More on both below.
Trivia
Mexico's currency once traded at more than 3,000 pesos to the US dollar. In what year did the country knock three zeros off it?
This Week in Mexico
- The peso has settled under 17 to the dollar for the first time since mid-2024, up about 6% this year. Great if you earn pesos. Not so great if your pension lands in dollars or loonies.
- President Sheinbaum delivered her second annual report on Tuesday, led with record foreign investment and a firm peso, and starts a 32-state tour Thursday that ends in the Zócalo. Economists note that almost 89% of that record investment was profit reinvested by companies already here.
- Monterrey rock trio The Warning will play the NFL halftime show when the Vikings meet the 49ers in Mexico City on November 22, with tickets on sale in stages from September 14.
- A UNAM physicist now leads the team building a particle detector in Mexico for the next version of CERN's ALICE experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. Construction starts in 2028, the switch gets flipped in 2036, funding permitting.
- Archaeologists in Veracruz pulled a 1.88-metre carved stone with Maya-style figures out of a housing development site near Coatepec, part of a settlement that goes back roughly 2,000 years.
- Mexico's economy grew 1.4% in the second quarter, its best showing since early 2022, while inflation crept up to 3.26% in early August, still inside the central bank's target range.
- Tropical Storm Marie formed off the Jalisco coast on Tuesday, about 735 km out to sea, days after a storm flattened trees and damaged shopping malls in Guadalajara.
- A new INAH book dates the Tonalámatl de Aubin, a calendar used to read the future, to 1494 by carbon testing and traces how it was hidden through the colonial period.
- Aguascalientes confirmed its first human case of screwworm, a 22-year-old treated at an IMSS hospital, as the state tracks 33 active cases in cattle.
- The US military used a high-energy laser to shoot down three cartel-linked drones near the Rio Grande Valley last week, the first time it has done so at the border.
Worth Knowing: Banking and Moving Your Money to Mexico
A peso under 17 is a good moment to talk about money, because it shows how your budget can change without a single price in Mexico moving. If your income arrives in dollars or Canadian dollars and your rent is in pesos, the exchange rate is a line item you don't control. Build a buffer into the plan. Ten percent is not paranoid.
Now, the practical part. Do you need a Mexican bank account? For a short visit, no. Your cards, some cash and a working ATM will do. For a six-month snowbird stay, maybe. For a full-time move where you're paying rent, electricity, a school or a plumber, yes, eventually. Most of that gets paid by SPEI, Mexico's instant bank transfer system, using an 18-digit account number called a CLABE. Your landlord will send you one. So will the guy who fixes the water heater.
Opening the account is where patience earns its keep. Banks generally want a passport, your residency card, a CURP, an RFC (the tax ID), a Mexican phone number and a Mexican proof of address. One branch may say no while the branch across town says yes, same bank, same day. Verify with the branch you plan to use, and do not build your first two months around having an account. Bring backups instead.
Backups means at least two cards from different issuers, because foreign cards get declined here for no reason you'll ever learn. Use bank ATMs in secure spots, not the standalone ones at the beach. When the machine or the card terminal asks whether you'd like to pay in dollars, say no. That's dynamic currency conversion, and it's a markup dressed up as a favour. Always choose pesos.
For moving money in, Wise, Remitly, Xoom and Western Union all work, each with its own fees, limits and speed. Wise sends straight to a CLABE and suits monthly living funds. A bank wire is the right tool for a big, formal payment like a property deposit, and big transfers can trigger a compliance review where the bank asks where the money came from. That's normal. Keep your statements and sale documents handy, and don't leave a large transfer to the last minute.
One thing people miss: your home bank. Some Canadian and US banks, brokerages and pension providers have rules about foreign addresses and tax residency. Ask before you leave whether your accounts stay open, where a replacement card gets mailed, and whether your two-factor codes will reach you in Mexico. Keep your home phone number until every financial login works from here. Cancelling it early is the single most common way people lock themselves out.
The everyday version of all this is manageable on your own. Cards, cash, one transfer app, and a Mexican account once you're settled. Where a professional earns their fee is the big stuff: property purchases, business income, or foreign accounts that create tax reporting questions back home.
There's a fuller guide on the banking basics at movetomexiconavigator.com/resources/banking.
Más México
Right now, and only right now, restaurants across Mexico are serving a poblano chile stuffed with pork, apple, pear, peach and raisins, covered in a white sauce made from Castilla walnuts, and scattered with pomegranate seeds and parsley. Green, white, red. Chiles en nogada.
The story every menu tells is that Augustinian nuns at the Santa Mónica convent in Puebla invented it in 1821 for Agustín de Iturbide, the general who had just won independence and was passing through town on his way to Mexico City. A nation on a plate, cooked up in a convent kitchen.
The historians have quietly stopped believing it. An archaeologist has documented a 1714 manuscript that describes stuffed chiles in a white walnut sauce, a century before Iturbide. The first printed recipe, from 1831, used almonds instead of walnuts. Even the convent now calls the 1821 version a legend, and INAH held its first national congress on the dish just last week to sort fact from folklore.
None of which changes how it tastes. The season runs through September, tied to the walnut and pomegranate harvests, and then it's gone until next year.
Move to Mexico Navigator has free guides on residency, healthcare, banking and the rest of the questions that come up once the daydream turns into a plan. Start at movetomexiconavigator.com/resources.
Trivia Answer
On January 1, 1993 the nuevo peso replaced the old one at 1,000 to 1, so a dollar that had cost about 3,000 pesos suddenly cost about 3. The word "nuevo" was dropped in 1996, and the bills in your wallet today descend from that reset.
Nos vemos (See you). Corey
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