{"id":13263,"date":"2026-07-30T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/citylaws.com.mx\/?p=13263"},"modified":"2026-07-30T17:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T22:00:00","slug":"income-requirements-mexican-residency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citylaws.com.mx\/en\/abogado-migratorio\/income-requirements-mexican-residency\/","title":{"rendered":"Income and Savings Requirements for Mexican Residency (Economic Solvency Thresholds)"},"content":{"rendered":"

To qualify for Mexican residency through economic solvency, you generally need to prove either a steady monthly income or a large enough bank balance<\/strong> for the six or twelve months before you apply. As of 2026, the Mexican Consulate in Houston sets the temporary resident threshold at roughly $4,342 USD per month in income<\/strong> (680 days of the UMA) or a savings balance of about $73,189 USD<\/strong> (11,400 days of the UMA). For permanent residency through retirement or pension, the bar is much higher: around $7,281 USD per month<\/strong> in pension income or roughly $292,820 USD<\/strong> in savings. These USD figures are consular approximations calculated on the 2025 UMA; the operative 2026 requirement is the peso amount recalculated with the 2026 UMA. There is no single nationwide peso figure written into the law, and every consulate can apply its own numbers.<\/p>\n

This is one of the most common questions we get at City Laws from US and Canadian expats, and it is also one of the most misunderstood. People assume there is a fixed federal amount they can look up once. In reality, the Mexican Migration Law (Migration Law<\/em>) never states a dollar or peso figure at all. The numbers come from consular guidelines that are tied to an economic index called the UMA, which is updated every year. Below we explain where these requirements actually come from, what the current 2026 figures look like, and why you should always confirm them with the specific consulate where you will apply.<\/p>\n

Why the law never gives you a number<\/h2>\n

The first thing to understand is that the Migration Law defines categories<\/em> of residency, not amounts. Article 52, section VII creates the temporary resident<\/strong> status (valid for up to four years), and section IX creates the permanent resident<\/strong> status (indefinite). For foreign retirees and pensioners, Article 54, section III requires only that the applicant show “an income that allows them to live in the country” \u2014 again, with no figure attached.<\/p>\n

So where do the dollar amounts come from? The law defers the actual thresholds to its Regulations and to the Lineamientos Generales para la Expedici\u00f3n de Visas<\/em> (the General Guidelines for Issuing Visas), which are applied by Mexico’s immigration authority (INM) and its foreign ministry (SRE). That is why the specific numbers are published by each consulate rather than in the statute itself. For US and Canadian readers, this is the opposite of how a fixed federal income requirement usually works back home: here the framework is federal, but the operative figure lives in a consular PDF that can be revised at any time.<\/p>\n

The UMA: the unit that sets the amounts<\/h2>\n

The thresholds are expressed in multiples of the UMA<\/strong> (Unidad de Medida y Actualizaci\u00f3n). The UMA exists because of Article 26, section B of the Mexican Constitution, which “de-indexed” many legal amounts from the minimum wage and tied them to this separate unit instead. INEGI publishes a new UMA value every year, and it takes effect on February 1<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

For applications filed in 2026, the values in force since February 1, 2026 are:<\/p>\n