I’ve spent a lot of time in multiple states in Mexico, lived there for a year, and have a house in Guanajuato I’ll return to for two years as of next summer. Here are the two books I’d recommend the strongest for anyone interested in lowering their expenses and dialing back the stress level by moving south. Both are new editions released this year.

Living Abroad in Mexico

This is a great nuts-and-bolts guide to what you need to know about moving to Mexico. It’s heavy on the kind of practical information any future expat is clamoring for: visas, housing, health care, shipping, telecom, transportation, and language. It’s written by Julie Doherty Meade, an American who spent nearly a decade living in Mexico and traveling around the country (she’s now in NYC).

Even though I lived in Mexico and own real estate there, I learned some things from this book I didn’t know for the next time around. It’s a thorough guide that does what any good moving abroad book should: answer the questions you do have and then answer the ones you hadn’t even thought of yet.

There’s a good array of history and cultural information that will help you understand how the country works, which is essential with a neighbor that’s so close, yet so different. Some will probably complain that the section on where to live leaves out a lot of great areas for expats, but look at a map of Mexico and you’ll understand why. This is a big country with 30-some states, not a small dot like Costa Rica or Belize. So naturally the million or so expatriates have spread out far and wide. She highlights where the majority of them are concentrated. Go there for more people like you, go elsewhere for fewer of them.

After all the info presented, there’s a good resources section at the end for more. This book comes in at 488 pages, including some photos, and it’s a great reference for both dreamers and doers. I’ll be pulling it out a few times before I move back and will definitely bring it down across the border for my Mexican home. Follow these links to buy it from Amazon U.S., Amazon Canada, or Amazon UK.

People’s Guide to Mexico

The first book listed here is objective, efficient, and to the point. The People’s Guide to Mexico, however, is none of that—and is far more fun to read as a result. I’ve said before that this is my favorite guidebook of all time and this new edition has only reinforced that view. This is a book so filled with a love for Mexico in all its quirks and annoyances that every page sparkles with enjoyable prose. It’s the only guidebook I can think of where I’ve read 50 pages in a stretch because I was enjoying it so much, not because I had any questions I needed answering or had nothing else to read on a bus.

The authors, who have lived and traveled in Mexico since the 1970s, don’t just give you dry facts about the 2nd-class bus system. They give you nuggets like this:

The only time I’ve driven a fast car in Mexico, I was passed by a second-class bus traveling at over 80 miles per hour. This wasn’t unusual, nor were the three young men on the rear bumper. The one reading a comic book, however, without holding on, seemed abnormally blasé.

You get opinionated, experience-filled lines like that over and over on pulque bars, roadside cantinas, haggling in vegetable markets, and finding a house to rent.

Carl Franz and Lorena Hayens put the first one of these out 35 years ago and if they had stopped along the way, we’d say, “They don’t write them like that anymore.” Thankfully we don’t have to because they didn’t stop. This is the 14th edition, with 768 pages of hard-learned lessons and the kind of insight you only get from someone who can speak fluent Spanish in a way that includes all the idioms and street slang unique to Mexico.

If you have any interest at all in spending real time in Mexico, living there or just getting away from the sheltering resort areas, spend some quality time with this gem of a book. Read it through and you’ll know more about the country than half the people in Ajijic. Get it at Amazon, Amazon Canada, or Amazon UK.

I’ve navigated quite a few countries in my time, but a few of them felt like different planets from a cultural standpoint, especially Korea, Japan, and India. There are just so many baffling customs and social rules that if you don’t get schooled a bit in the local ways, you’re going to offend, annoy, and alienate people on a regular basis.

I’ve always liked the various culture shock books that help you navigate all this, but there’s a new series out there for the Kindle with an unbeatable price: $1.95. Don’t be fooled by the price tag though: the information within will save you lots of embarrassment and make your time abroad run more smoothly, especially if you’re moving to one of the 20 countries covered.

The author, Bill Drake, ran a cross-cultural consultancy and he’s an avid traveler. His guides dive much deeper than any source I’ve seen for free on the web, so this is a case where two bucks is a hundred times better than nothing.

Cultural Dimensions of Expatriate Life in Korea is quite a mouthful, but it’s definitely $1.95 well spent. I checked this one out first because I spent 14 months there as an English teacher in the late 1990s. To say it was a struggle sometimes from a cultural standpoint is putting it mildly. Some expats couldn’t deal at all and they bailed out. Others coped by doing nothing but working and hanging out in expat bars, avoiding contact with most locals. Others just got bitter and were a royal pain to be around. The easiest course is to go with the flow, and this guide has plenty of advice on how to do that. Some examples:

Koreans often find it difficult to trust a business partner until they have gotten drunk together. Drinking together is seen as the only way to resolve a sensitive issue or to close a complex business deal. Although it is become more accepted to refuse to over-indulge, the attitude that the person who drinks less than his counterparts is hiding something or is afraid to let down his defenses is still quite prevalent.

It should be noted that it is customary among friends that one individual picks up the tab. Koreans consider the American custom of dividing the check somewhat barbaric.

The “seamless” integration of the individual into the group is considered a principal goal of the society. All forms of social training,indoctrination, education and conditioning have such integration as their core assumption and ultimate objective. In such societies, any evidence that a person is “individualistic” is treated as a social pathology.

I found the information throughout to be spot-on and consistent with my experiences there. I wish I’d had this in hand before I moved there and started working.

Less engaging but still useful is another one I read through called Educating Children in Expatriate Environments. It requires more hunting for the right nuggets in this one since the subject matter is so broad. Figuring out what to do with a pre-schooler in England is very different than trying to navigate high school in such different environments as Mexico, India, and Japan. Again though, it’s not hard to justify your $1.95 investment with the nuggets that matter.

Guides are available for a wide but oddball assortment of countries, from expat hotbeds like the Czech Republic and the U.K. to ones with far fewer travelers and foreign business workers, such as Nicaragua.

There are plenty of e-books out there with information like this selling for 10 or 20 times the price. If you’re heading to one of the countries profiled in these guides and you’ve got a Kindle, round up some change and go make a purchase.