Some of the WORST Things About Living in Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires is the beautiful city that I’ve had the pleasure to call home for the past 5 years. I’ve traveled a couple of times here and there and every time that I leave I can’t wait to come back. I am so in love with it that when someone I met told me they HATED the city I was genuinely heartbroken for them because I couldn’t understand how they didn’t see how wonderful this city was. But like everything in life, it really can’t be perfect. So I think it’s time I also talked about the things I don’t quite love so much about Buenos Aires.

There is also a Youtube video about this, so feel free to check it out for an even more detailed opinion of each of the things mentioned here:

• Nobody wants to work.
  • I mean this in the best way possible, I love the way they value and prioritize their lives, friendships, and family relationships more than anything, but sometimes it’s ridiculously hard to just get one thing done. Whether that is in a public institution or a private one, services are ridiculously difficult to hire. My private health insurance for example. Also, if you have to hire a plumber, a carpenter, or any other type of manual labor like that, it’s going to be EXTREMELY difficult for you to get someone to actually come to your apartment to fix stuff.
• Everything starts late.
  • This is something that even now, 5 years after being here, I am not used to. And it might be a result of me being a 75-year-old lady who doesn’t like to stay up until very late at night, but the reality is that this complicates the way that I can relate with the locals. People here will meet up at 10 pm to have dinner somewhere and then go to another bar to hang out, or they would go to someone’s place at 11 pm to have a drink and hang out and then go to the club at around 1 am because THAT’S WHEN THEY OPEN. Now, don’t get me wrong I have made some friends who are a bit more aligned with the types of things that I like to do, but I’ve recently made friends with some people from my gym and I can hardly ever hang out with them because they always say “oh yeah you can come over at 11 or 12 pm” and… I am all ready to go to sleep at 12 because I have to work the next day at 9 am.
• On the same note as nobody wants to work and everything starts late: Everything opens late
  • You will most likely not be able to find a single place of business that is open before 10 a.m., not even the coffee shops for people to have breakfast before work. If there’s a Starbucks open before 10 a.m. it’s mostly one that is not even a full Starbucks, but a stand inside an office building filled with companies, so that’s open because it’s a fact that you will have company employees streaming in very early looking for coffee. But absolutely everything else opens very late. And if it’s a government institution, not only will it open late, it will also close super early.
• They have a weird obsession with cash
  • I will admit this is something that has changed ever since the pandemic happened, many places had no other choice but to incorporate ways for people to make electronic payments. My love for being able to pay for everything with MercadoPago hasn’t changed. But there used to be places that would only let you buy things in cash, and now that they give you the option to pay with debit or credit cards, the incentive for you to pay in cash is that the price might be significantly lower if you pay in cash than if you pay any other way. For example, I had to get my old laptop repaired because the charging port thingy was not working, if I’d paid by debit card the price would have been $9800 pesos, but in cash, it was $7500 pesos. THAT IS 2300 PESOS LESS, just to pay in cash. That’s a huge difference. I know this is because of the different tax implications that paying with a debit card has on the business, but honestly, it can get ridiculous.
• Opening a bank account as a foreigner can be extremely difficult
  • And you have limited options.
• On the same baking system note, they will not give you a credit card if you are a temporary resident
  • If you are a temporary resident they will not give you a credit card if you have a personal account in any bank because you are considered a “high-risk individual”, and this of course limits the possibilities that you have to purchase stuff in monthly installments. You might be wondering why you would want to purchase things in monthly installments to begin with, and that is because using installments is particularly handy when you are going to buy things like home appliances and furniture which are very expensive and the regular person might not have enough money to buy in cash. The only way that you will be provided a credit card by a bank as a temporary resident is if you are under employment with a company and that company opens a bank account for you under their payroll because this gives you more credibility or whatnot.
• Renting an apartment is ridiculously complicated
  • The requirements that they have for people to rent an apartment are ridiculous, and if you want to try and get these requirements is super expensive. When you want to rent an apartment with the three-year lease they demand that you have a “garantia propietaria” which is essentially you pledging that you have another property available to use as collateral to pay for any damages that may happen to the property you are renting. Not satisfied with that, they sometimes go as far as demanding that property be under your direct family member’s name and that it be located in Capital Federal as well. This is already difficult for Argentines trying to rent an apartment. Do you know who doesn’t have a property in Capital Federal from a direct family member to use as collateral to rent an apartment? Immigrants. And that is just ONE of the requirements.
• And for my next point, if you do manage to rent an apartment, no one wants to take responsibility for apartment repairs
  • Not the building management, not the owner, it will most likely be down to you fixing things if you want your apartment to be functional after something breaks. And even if it’s the owner's responsibility to cover it, they will take any minuscule excuse to make you cover part of it.
• They take their passions very seriously
  • This is something that I both love and hate about the country, because when everything is going well and they are happy you share in their happiness, but they can take it to an extreme that is not pleasant. For example with football and the McDonalds in Obelisco.