This purpose of this article is to show one person’s resourcefulness and courage in the face of adversity. The author is not advocating moving to Costa Rica with little or no money.

About three years ago I met Steve who had lived in Hawaii for many years. He moved here because Hawaii had become very expensive and he wanted to make his early retirement “nest egg” go farther. Steve had always been used to living frugally and in the process amassed a few hundred thousand dollars.

Within a few months of moving here Steve invested his life savings in two high interest -yielding investments with the idea of doubling his money in a few years. This was his game plan but unfortunately both of his investments went “belly up.” Steve was left with only a few thousand dollars to his name. As we mentioned Steve had mastered the art of living on very little money but had never been faced with having no resources and living in a foreign country. He knew that he would not be able to draw his pension for four more years. Steve thought of returning to the States to work and then moving back to Costa Rica when he got back on his feet. However, he became involved with a nice Costa Rican woman and had also fallen in love with the country.
His close friends provided him with a place to live for free, but he still had to find a way to generate and income. Since he was born with the ability to repair almost anything, he did odd jobs in exchange for small sums of money and food.

After a while he figured that the only way he could continue to live in Costa Rica was to start a business. Steve had one big problem; no money with which to start a business. His pride kept him for asking for a loan from friends. He started to look at local small business and do research on the Internet. It did not take him long to come up with a good idea for a small business. He came across a good recipe for banana bread and his business was born.

At present he sells he bread to tourists and his many friends in the city of Heredia where he lives. He has purchased a mixing machine, an oven and his lady friend is helping him.
Steve is a born survivor. All of his friends are sure he will continue to do well and continue to enjoy living in the country he has adopted as his home.

Recently I had the pleasure of leading a group of potential residents on week-long trip around Costa Rica. I would venture to say their ages ranged from 45 to 60 years old. Most came here to explore the country with the goal of eventually relocating. After a week of travelling all over the country, viewing mother nature’s wonders and attending a series of informative seminars, the majority of the participants had decided they wanted to live here for at least part of the year. After reading this you may ask yourself, “What would anyone find attractive aboutliving in another country?”

Let’s look at why a tropical paradise like Costa Rica is so appealing to North Americans . The most obvious reason is the weather. People are tired of freezing winters, scorching summers and the high utility bills that go with them. There are only two seasons in Costa Rica the dry and the rainy. Both times of year are blessed with an abundance of sunshine. According to National Geographic, Grecia – one of the towns in Costa Rica’s Central Valley – purportedly has one of the the best climates in the world.

Even those who are fortunate enough to live in warm weather areas like Florida or Southern California dislike the fast-paced lifestyles of both places. Costa Rica really fits the bill for anyone who is sick of hustle and bustle and wants to live in a country with a more laid-back way of life. One of the participants on our tour remarked, “Costa Rica reminds me of the U.S. about 40 years ago when everything was unspoiled, unhurried and uncrowded.”

Another plus to living south of the border is that you can get more for your money. This seems to be the primary concern and determining factor when contemplating making the move to another country. In Costa Rica, a favorable exchange rate and lack of mega-inflation enable you to stretch your dollars. The cost of medical care, food, utilities and entertainment are substantially lower than in the states. Housing in most areas is a fraction of the cost you are accustomed to paying. A full-time maid may even be hired for for as little as $200 monthly – a luxury reserved for only the wealthy back home.

Equally enticing is the myriad of business opportunities awaiting creative hard-working individuals. It is also relatively easy to run a global business from abroad taking advantage of easy Internet access, fax machines, cell phones and other improved means of communication. Small time entrepreneurs are enamored with the prospect of being able to start a business on a shoestring. They could never dream of doing this back home. There are even tax breaks for U.S. citizens residing in foreign countries. While living outside of the United States those people with proof of permanent residency status are permitted by law to make almost $80,000 tax free. Passive investors can find higher yielding C.D.’s, second mortgages and other lucrative investments that don’t exist in the U.S. or Canada.

Others choose to move outside of the U.S. to start over and seek adventure in an exotic land. Fitting into this category are people tired of being stuck in dead end jobs and the ‘rat race’ who want new challenges, the chance to pursue their dreams and to achieve greater personal growth. Whatever their motives, moving to a another country will afford them these opportunities and much more. People will most certainly make new friends since foreigners tend to gravitate towards one another when living overseas. Expats are also afforded the chance to immerse themselves in a new culture and enjoy the rewards of learning a foreign language.

Initially living in another country can prove be difficult. Ajustment to a new way of life can sometimes take many months for those who are very set in their ways. However, with an open mind , positive attitude and the willingness to seek out new experiences the transition can be relatively painless. Countries like Costa Rica and Mexico have come a long way in the last decade and to a certain extent have become microcosms of U.S. culture. There are cable TV, malls, imported U.S. food products, brand name American clothing and English language movies and bookstores – all of which facilitate living abroad. Improved telephone service, the availability of both satellite and Direct TV, private mail service and the internet make it easier to stay in touch with relatives, close friends and keep up with what is going on back home, virtually eliminating homesickness.

Nevertheless the expatriate lifestyle is not for everyone. It is best to test the waters and try living in the country of your choice for a trial period before you make the big move. If you are the type of person who is used to all of the comforts of home – efficient bureaucracy, first-class service, punctuality , etc. – then living in a country like Costa Rica will probably prove to be a frustrating experience. However, with a little more patience than usual, an understanding of the culture and people of the country and an open mind, you will surely enjoy all of the rewards living abroad has to offer. Wayne Davis, an old friend of ours and 20 year resident of Costa Rica, once remarked when questioned about his lifestyle here, “My days are so jam packed with exciting activities and interesting experiences that each day seems like a whole lifetime . I really feel like I have discovered the fountain of youth here.”

Living abroad will open the door to a new and exciting lifestyle. Unfortunately many of us never consider it as an alternative. Who knows? If you decide to take the plunge you may never want to return home.

The first week of December I visited my home town of Thousand Oaks, California. I had not returned in almost seven years. The first thing I noticed was that a lot had changed dramatically. Due to a construction boom, I could barely recognize some of the areas of town. It seemed like everything had become a great deal more commercial and homogeneous on much larger scale. Everywhere I went there were people driving a whole gamut of Sports Utility Vehicles or as they are more commonly known, SUVS. The streets were filled with gas-guzzling vehicles we rarely see in Costa Rica – the Ford Excursion, the GMC Yukon, the Ford F-250 monster truck and a couple of models of Hummers – to name a few. The latter is similar to military vehicle you see in Iraq which is being blown to pieces by roadside bombs. The version sold in the states is more luxurious with its leather seats, colorful paint and sporty trim. In California it appears that the bigger the vehicle, the better it is and more status a person has. You are defined by what you drive I guess the car’s size reflects the owner’s ego. The interesting thing is that very few of the owners use these mammoth vehicles to go off road but only for commuting at a snail’s pace on the over crowded freeways, for going to the grocery store and to take the kids to soccer practice.

The freeways are also bigger than ever. They usually have four or five lanes in each direction. Rush hour is almost an all day affair. Traffic begins to get bad at 5:30 in the morning and ends around 8:00 at night. Sprawling, massive, slow-moving traffic jams can extend from Ventura Country in the north to the Mexican border just south of San Diego. These are normal conditions. God forbid if there is an accident! The freeways are indeed bigger but not a faster means of transportation than our pot-hole-filled roads in Costa Rica. Costa Rica’s presas or traffic jams are small in comparison.

Everything else is super sized up north. There are 24-hour enormous gyms to keep those perfect bodies in shape. Almost every major shopping center and strip mall has a Starbucks, a Subway sandwich shop, a Home Depot, a Wallmart, a Target, a big chain vitamin store, a Borders or Barnes & Noble bookstore, a branch of Best Buy and almost every other colossal chain store. There are supermarkets that even dwarf our Hipermás. They have a huge selection of every imaginable food. There are the gigantic bags of potato chips, barrrel-sized bottles of soda pop, and a variety of mouth-watering delicacies to stimulate your appetite. No wonder obesity is such a monumental problem in the U.S. Restaurants super sizes everything. There is even a chain of pet stores called Pet Co. Most of their stores are as big or larger than a Costa Rican supermarket. I guess most pets are also overweight in the States. It would not surprise me if there is a Weight Watchers for pets.

Then there are the massive Kinkos copy centers. They basically offer every conceivable type of service from making photo copies to using the Internet. Everything is under one roof and they are conveniently opened 24-hours. These stores are extremely handy for the traveling business person. I accessed my e-mail everyday by using one of their computers. I was going to use the local public library’s computer services at $5 an hour but there was an hour limits. The price at Kinkos proved to be astronomical. I paid $12 per hour to use a state of the art credit card device connected directly to the computer. The cost of the average net café in Costa Rica is about a dollar an hour. However, none of the Internet cafés in Costa Rica that I have seen feature new Dell computers like the ones at Kinkos.

Everything else is geared towards large scale consumption. People seem very happy and caught up in their fast-paced lifestyles of expensive SUVS, the “shop until you drop” mentality and living in their palatial upscale housing tracts which seem like ritzy suburban ghettos where every house looking almost exactly like it had been cut from the same mold.

After a few days of experiencing everything on the large scale, I began to yearn for my simple down-sized lifestyle in petite Costa Rica. People here seem to be a lot happier with much less. The average person here is materially poorer than the average American, but their lives are far more richer. Here people seem to live with gusto (enjoyment) and sabor ( a flavor or spice). In Costa Rica every day can be filled with adventure and exciting activities. Sure we have the malls and a dose of U.S. culture but we also have a lot more little things which truly make life immensely more worthwhile. People up north exist, we live the pure life on a much smaller scale. The phrase, “¡Pura vida!,” says it all.