Relocating to Costa Rica in 2022
Penni Livingston
We love Costa Rica. I really had not thought of visiting another country let alone moving to a foreign country before visiting Costa Rica on a fluke. I am a lawyer and political scientist and love Illinois and the US. Why would I move to another country? Insanity, right?
Well, I was 60 approaching 61, having just eliminated breast cancer with dramatic treatments that took a toll on my body and psyche. Our kids are grown, although sometimes needy and even our grandkids are nearly grown with one left in high school. Phones and easy electronic communication keep us in touch pretty well and they are visiting in one week!
I had not taken a new litigation case in nearly five years and was winding down my environmental practice with the expectation of closing all cases soon. I nearly achieved that but environmental cases can really last- so I still have one case going strong, 14 years into a fight about five miles of illegal levees. I represent a local elected government tasked with protecting farm land from flooding.
My husband consults for the company he retired from and can work remotely on 90 % of what he does. He loves serving the company he worked for over three decades and he thoroughly enjoys engineering work and the people he works with. He qualifies for social security but loves working.
Winter was just getting to be too much and so were property taxes and caring for a forested property. We visited Costa Rica and kept coming back- even during the pandemic, an irresistible draw. We were so drawn to the natural beauty and the pleasant non-judgmental people. No one cares if you are bald or have no eyelashes. Nope- not gonna give you a photo of baldness!
The mild temperature and colorful cool birds are at the top of my love list. The flowering trees, the mountains, insects, sunsets, stars, and oh the monkeys! I could really go on and on so here is my point of view on why we moved to Costa Rica last year and what I think about it- so far.
Way Less Expensive to Live in Costa Rica
In Illinois, I paid property taxes over $3000 a year for 30 years, paying over $5000 (now nearly $6000) per year for the last 16 years -roughly $125,000 to St. Clair County taxing authorities since 1993. That’s a lot and I haven’t had children in the school system for 18 of those years. I paid property taxes elsewhere in Illinois before that too.
Insurance and mortgage were another $26,000 per year. Utilities including $1800 or more per year in propane for heating and a rising water bill of nearly $50 a month combined with an average electric bill around $150 or more per month. Then there was internet and cable before groceries, etc. The monthly housing and utilities in Metro East Illinois ran us just over $3100 per month.
In Costa Rica, our rent on a $250,000 home has been $1300 a month with internet, cable, water, and electric running less than $200 for a total of $1500 per month. This includes a pool guy and a yard guy. We pay our cleaning lady, Idani, (who we absolutely adore) the equivalent of $24 a week now that the dollar is worth less than when we got here 10 months ago. We did not have a cleaning lady in Illinois so this one change has improved quality of life for sure.
Groceries here include much more fresh food at low cost although everything but food is more expensive than Illinois. Two large bags of fresh food run about $20! The comparison on monthly expenses for housing and utilities alone then is Illinois $3100 a month, Costa Rica Central Valley $1500- less than half to live in warmth surrounded by paradise.
In fairness, the house and property we are moving to that is on Lake Arenal, with a view of the volcano and lake that is truly amazing, is a much more expensive house, one that is more comparable to the price of the house we sold in Illinois. It just sold to a woman investor from the west coast for $470,000. The house is much nicer than the pretty nice house we had in Illinois although we did live on a 28 acre oak forest with fabulous wildlife visitors all the time and with absolute privacy.
Our new house has five acres of landscaped tropical plants and flowers where our nearest neighbor is a horse named Sisko. The house with a to-die-for kitchen, a salt water pool with a deep end, and a built in hot tub, rents for $2200 a month with a full downstairs apartment. The rent- one payment-includes electric, water, internet, cable, a cleaning lady, a pool guy, and a gardener.
That means our monthly expenses are still $900 less per month than we paid to live in Illinois. And no winter! No hurricanes, no tornadoes, no below zero days, no property taxes, no property maintenance. For example, re-paving our driveway in Illinois three years ago was $26,000. What if we needed a new roof? Ug. Also, we have our house sale money invested and it earns $1200 a month we reinvest into the bond market but could use to reduce our rent.
I should also mention that each year you live in a foreign country, you are allowed a one hundred thousand dollar deduction from your income tax! You can earn $100,000 federal income tax free!
Some Things are more expensive- our Car Saga.
We bought a car that would fit 6 for $12,000 in St. Louis right before we moved. This saves our visiting people rental car fees and lets us all travel places together in one vehicle. It cost $3000 to ship the car from Miami where we delivered it and caught a flight with our cat. The cat cost about $800 to bring with the new required shots and state certifications. He is worth it since we bottle fed him since his mother abandoned him nearly four years ago. Our other cats passed away before we came. They were really old.
Th car saga was frustrating as we paid $7000 in taxes on our $12,000 vehicle after it sat in customs for three months awaiting the tax. Bureaucracy is just ridiculous. We do get liability insurance with the annual fee we pay to license our a car for a mere $200.
Everything coming in must be shipped and taxed. A comparable vehicle would have cost about $22,000. At least then we would not have gone without a car during the rainiest time. And yes- I do miss my infinity I gave to one of my daughters! And our side by side too. My husband missed his harley so while our car was kept hostage for three months we got a very cool motorcycle for around $4000. We went without a car two months waiting for shipping and getting a temporary tourist visa for the car. Then we had it 3 months. Then it went into lala land customs another three months.
Furniture is hand made here and very reasonable in price. Butter dishes- not so much- $12, and not even a good one. We get things like that when we return to the States for work or to visit ($6 and a way better lid).
Another frustration is getting mail- we don’t get mail. Our address in English is 800 meters west of a local cemetery with a town name that is down the road and then our real town name. DHL never finds us so we gave up on direct shipping to us- even as we made a giant sign with our names on it.
We get things sent to an address in Miami which then ships to Grecia, a town half an hour away. Another problem is that customs taxes everything that comes in. My Avon order was held up THREE MONTHS because avon sent me something for free and the authorities did not know how to tax that. Oh brother!!!!! Now I just have my visiting people bring me clarins, probiotics from my chiropractor, biolage shampoo, and avon.
Other Expenses and Issues from Moving
It cost us about $10,000 to move our furniture and personal items left after we sold the house and vehicles and gave nearly everything else away — 45 boxes of books, bookcases, desks, lamps, furniture galore. It was quite a task to give our things away. Who knew no one would want a free piano?
I spent $60 just to mail my law school leather bound books from legal greats for their annual auction. We gave the remaining books to the East St. Louis Literacy Program (shout out to Linda Mitchell) and to Sierra Club (thank you Sandy Loftus) and all blankets and bedding went to the women’s shelter through a collection my chiropractor does (Osborne Family Chiropractic).
The most fun thing to give away was blooming orchids to people like my banker, who served me so well! My mom has our dog, Gem, to keep her company. Too many dogs are in Costa Rica as it is although most are friendly to people. I doubt their receptivity to other dogs- especially a Boston terrier who thinks she can take on the bigger dogs. Our nearest neighbor where we are now has four dogs on the other side of our fence. I prefer them to the roosters that crow before 3AM! No roosters where we are moving.
I should also mention that since we moved here, flights have nearly doubled and we are committed to paying for our kids and my mom to visit. We put it in our budget but wow is it a lot more now. When we came, it was around $400 per person round trip and now it is about $700 to $850. Hopefully the flights to Liberia, which is closure to the US, will be less than the flights to San Jose. We will be closure to the smaller easier Liberia airport for our family and friends to fly into. Gasoline is about the same here as the states and we get pretty good gas mileage in our mazda.
The Coffee and other produce
The coffee is delicious here. We get Honey Coffee- literally grown in our neighborhood of Naranjo. Honey Coffee is especially drank on the Nicoya Coast- a blue zone in Costa Rica where folks regularly live to be over a hundred. Because this home grown coffee is sun dried instead of roasted, we get more micro-nutrients and it is naturally sweeter. I am up to three cups a day from one in Illinois!
The fresh baked bread found everywhere is wonderful and without preservatives. A loaf runs about a dollar a loaf-even cheesy bread. The Tutto chocolate is quite good as well. Good gum is harder to come by so we get it in the US and bring it back. Clorets and stick gum are available and halls cough drops are at the checkout most places.
We have to buy ice cream at little ice cream shops (we have two in our town of about 15,000) as the grocers have not figured out how to get their truckers to not let the ice cream melt and re-freeze. Ice cream containers always looks gross in the grocery store freezers. I don’t know how they get anyone to buy them. Still, the parlor-bought ice cream is a wonderful occasional treat.
Our fresh fruit and vegetables include lettuce, tomatoes, avocados, peppers, mango, papaya, bananas, plantain, pineapple, cantaloupe, watermelon, apples, limes, oranges, cabbage, grapes, and on and on. Blueberries are hard to find but good when you do find them. We get them in Palmares ten miles away.
Strawberries and black berries are mostly ok but not as good as the US. Eggs are everywhere and always fresh. We don’t eat a lot of meat but the bacon- I call meat candy- cooks up good. Cheese also is harder to come by but rich in variety and flavor when you find the right store. The locally made cheese is kind of weird and not that good. Milk we buy is sold on shelves without refrigeration and without lactose. It has 3.5% fat to be used as cream in coffee. Very cheap too.
My Appreciation for Illinois- the Land of Lincoln
Illinois has modern cities and towns, good schools with good teachers and lesson plans, good roadways and bridges most places, stores of every kind to buy anything you want, and loads of interesting people. Why leave? Illinois has four seasons- two of them include cold days below zero and one of them includes lots of days over 90.
Illinois is full of delight bringing wildlife, grand trees with divine personalities, beautiful sunsets, good jobs, good people, and variety everywhere. Liberals and conservatives live together in peace in Illinois, even as there surely are divisions. I even like our Governor for the first time in a long time and I don’t think this one will go to jail like three previous ones did.
I love Illinois and went to school there until I was 25, getting a law degree from Northern Illinois University- at a reasonable cost back then in the late 80's- $1600 per semester for law school. Can you imagine? Books were a lot (more than a hundred dollars a piece) but wow to get a law degree for under ten grand in tuition and a good education at that. I appreciate my home state!
I do not personally know about the education system in Costa Rica but it seems you can go as long as you wish if you get good grades, including university and professional education. Lots of dentists and eye doctors in every town. Lots of English speakers too although many more in the tourist areas than where we live now. We use our translator application a lot and we practice. Language is coming slower than I wish but we can communicate. Understanding the responses is hardest. We get the translator out for those too.
The Climate
Illinois gets very cold and very hot. It has tornadoes and snow storms. It has sun and clouds -pretty middle of the road in the middle of the country. Still, it gets really cold and really hot. All seasons have beauty but you must have both heat and air conditioning to be comfortable. We do not have air conditioning or heat in Costa Rica. We did use a de-humidifier daily for four months last year.
Costa Rica gets really hot (90 degrees) at the ocean- which we visit every few months for its calming effect and beauty. The beaches are so cool with sand designs that seem like art from God. Everywhere else has more mild temperatures. Where we live in the mountains, the temperature variation is between 58 and 88 degrees; I am not kidding- all year long.
It rains a lot for 9 months. The Costa Ricans and ex-pats alike say it rains half the year but that is just not true. In fact, October was so rainy that we started looking at Guanacaste province (we live in Alajuela province) just to get less rain in October. Fortunately, we found a place with less rain!
The central valley is surrounded by mountains with blooming trees and dynamic plant and bird life everywhere. The views are spectacular and the flowers are really interesting, with a kind of divine complexity. That rain tho- it’s a lot. The roads are hairpin curvy and steep and crazy in places but paved for the most part. Driving at night and in the rain is a bad idea in my view and we really try to avoid it. The drop offs into deep ravines are downright unnerving from the passenger side.
After enduring rain every single day for 3 months, about two hours a day and then sunlight galore, we hit the rainiest months of September to October and even into November. Likely the fact that we had to walk to town while our car was held hostage at customs contributed to my dislike of that much rain. The rain was constant and chilly for days and days and it was, frankly, too much for me. I will be vacationing elsewhere or returning to Illinois in October from now on.
Recently, we started looking for less rainy places to live here. We found that about an hour to an hour and a half from La Fortuna, around Lake Arenal, the rain is 40% less during October- a dozen inches less. Also the rain is distributed more evenly throughout the year and the night time temperatures are warmer at night with lows of 65 to 68. The temperature variation near the lake is 65 to 85 with a nice breeze. That is a better temperature range to me as I do not like the least bit of cold.
We are in dry season right now in March and much of our ground flowers have faded and died. We have big cracks in the yard. One of our banana trees fell over from the high winds that lasted two weeks. We have not used the pool we have- it is too cold here in Naranjo for that! We should be swimming at the new place as that pool has a real heater beyond solar and we will have higher temperatures at night.
Financial Considerations and Renting
Renting has less to offer than buying in terms of variety of wonderful homes and properties here yet finding the right place is about looking around. We did a lot of looking in Atenas before we decided it was too warm and muggy- 85 and higher about four hours a day. As we have now learned, you can find a dream place to live with utilities included for $2200 a month or less. Or if you live in a regular Tico neighborhood, $1500, like where we are now. The new place has a full one bedroom apartment in the walk out basement for guests too for that $2200 a month.
Now that we have a nest egg from the sale of our Illinois home and property, I would rather earn money on that money and use income to pay rent than to plunk the money down on another house- in a foreign country too. We have the income so this is perfect. Also the income is earned with the ability to do much of it here with visits back to the states when needed. Even on social security we could afford to live here in a super nice house.
Residency
Residency is a whole other subject but we have applied so that we do not have to leave the country and get our passport stamped every three months. Both Nicaragua and Panama were interesting experiences but I prefer to not need to leave the country to stay legal. We hired a specialized lawyer through ARCR, an organization that helps people move here. We took their two day class and it was quite worthwhile.
Applying for residency cost us about $3500. We had to get birth certificates apostilled. Even as a lawyer for 34 years, I never heard of such but it is real- similar to a notary but by a state official. You have to go to the Secretary of State where you were born and married to get needed documentation certified in this way. To get residency, you have to buy a house ($120,000, I think) or do what we did and prove you have income of at least $2500 per month from an account or by putting $60k in a Costa Rican account that allows taking out that much per month. We used our house money account as proof with a spanish and english document signed by our financial guy at Crystal Lake tax showing we can access a monthly sum whenever we want.
Other Issues
Language barriers and all the newness keep us on our toes. TV is in Spanish but we get Apple, Amazon, Netflix, etc. We have never felt afraid- although one iguana did run after us once at a park for a little while. No guns, no military, lax traffic law enforcement, fences that deter and make good neighbors, so fear for your safety is just not found here. Even the occasional mud slide is fairly limited- you just drive around it til it is removed- although a bus did go over a cliff last year and people died.
We have not taken any buses. The buses are painted and say things like Jesus Loves You. Very odd mixing these public buses with acknowledgments of the significance of the Christ which we would prefer to have separated from public endorsement, as citizens under our great US Constitution. Still the hot pink buses are endearing even if annoying in traffic. Lots of trucks too, not all without pollution that gags you. So many use those jake brakes so they are sources of noise too.
I have to mention that the friendly pezote (coati-mondi), the monkeys, sloths, butterflies, and toucans and other birds that are so exotic to us; we love experiences with them. Our photo gallery is so enhanced. Did I mention the German bakery, the hole in the wall Italian place, or the Gingerbread house? The restaurant food and pizza here are excellent.
We are off to have more adventure and new learning in a different place that we are very excited about. This move three hours away that we are doing in three weeks will cost under $500 to move all of our stuff including a new desk we are having made in Sarchi, the furniture capital of Costa Rica that is just down the road from us right now. That low price of about $450 includes the truck and workers moving all of the furniture and boxes. The L-shaped desk with four drawers will also cost a mere $800 to make from hand to my husband’s specifications.
Every day since we got here, we feel like very lucky, healthy, well-fed, content, rich people- except when pleadings are filed or due in my last legal case or when I have occasionally gotten a sinus or stomach bug now that my immune system is still recovering from six months of chemo. Medical both times cost $40 for a fast visit at the clinic ten minutes from home (translator in hand); maybe $10 for the meds prescribed that I got across the street at the Maxi Pali- owned by Walmart.
The Only Real Stress is the Stress You Bring with You
Many of the Ivo blogs on moving here warn you that your biggest problem will be that you bring yourself with you. I agree. The legal matter I brought with me as it did not settle through mediation when people are addicted to the fight and doing wrong, is with dishonest people who shifted funds to avoid judgement (and who have lost in the appellate court 4 times now with a fifth appeal pending while we continue to duke it out in the trial court as well). Why not just comply with the law? Man! I miss being a government lawyer on this one as this would be done if I were the government, for sure.
This work I brought with me from Illinois along with occasionally having to moderate parent/teenage disputes are my only real stressors here in Costa Rica (other than October rain!). I cannot stop my commitment to my family or to justice that still guides my actions. My health is improving as well.
Final Remarks
I just got up and wrote this essay this morning when I asked myself why I came to live in Costa Rica. I hope I sparked some “outside the box thinking” for someone reading or that you enjoyed learning about this bold move we made. Living in the tropics in the rainforest with friendly, accepting people has been a wonderful recovering experience. I suspect we will stay here several more years before figuring out exactly where to land for our old age.
For now, we are affordably enjoying what youth we have left, surrounded by beauty, and excited about daily life.
