Living in Costa Rica Retirement Relocation Tours.

Are U.S. Products available in Costa Rica?

I must have been asked this question hundreds of times by the participants on my monthly relocation/retirement tours. The answer is, yes.

Hipermas and another supermarket offer a wide selection of foods and other items from the United States.

Every day you can find more and more products from the States and Canada in Costa Rica. When I first came here there were very few U.S. products in the country. Each time I visited the States I would pack my suitcases with the things that I couldn’t get here.

If you go to Pricemart (like Costco), Hipermás (like Walmart) or the Automercado you will see a wide selection of foods and other items from the United States. Everything from Welch’s Grape Juice to the full line of Rubbermaid products can be purchased at any of these stores. You may even get stuffing for your turkey, cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie filling and instant mashed potatoes for your Thanksgiving dinner. In addition, we have stores like Payless Shoes, General Nutrition Centers, the Apple Store, Cinnabuns, Radio Shack and Hallmark Cards to name a few.

On my retirement tours we visit a couple of supermarkets and shopping centers to give my clients a first-hand look at what products are sold here. They were amazed to see what was available.

If you cant’ find what you are looking for, it is easy to order through the Internet through one of the private mail services like Aerocasillas. Over the last 13 years I have ordered hundreds of products of all sizes and shapes on line using this convenient mail service. For example, if I need sundries I can’t find I go to www.drugstore.com and order whatever I want. Within a week the product is here in Costa Rica. This makes it unnecessary to travel to the United States to get the items you need. You will end up saving a lot of money on airfare and lodging this way.

A college education is cheap in Costa Rica

The prohibitive cost of a university education in the United States, make that many send their children to more affordable junior colleges to save money.

If you are thinking about retiring here and have children or grandchildren of college age, you might consider enrolling them in a Costa Rican private or public university.

The other night I was watching the CBS Evening News on satellite and there was a story about the prohibitive cost of a university education in the United States. Apparently fifty percent of the families in the U.S. are having to limit their choices of universities for their children due to a combination of the current financial crisis and the high cost of college tuition. Many are sending their children to more affordable junior colleges to save money during the first two years.

If you choose Costa Rica for living or retirement you can save a lot of money on a college education. The University of Costa Rica, the nation’s best public university, charges less than a couple of hundred dollars a year for tuition. Yes, you heard right.

My son goes to one of the best private universities here and pays a little less the $3000 a year for tuition.

All you have to do is compare the costs of what they charge here with those of the States and you will see the obvious bargain. You can save tens of thousands of dollars a year here.

Furthermore, the quality of education is excellent. Since Costa Rican universities are recognized internationally for their academic excellence, Costa Rican students are admitted to major U.S. universities for graduate school.

Another plus is that studying a specific career in a Costa Rican university takes less time which equates to saving a lot of money on a college education. For example,  students can enter law or medical school straight out of high school. They don’t have to waste time spending four years as an undergraduate.

Floridas Promoting Costa Rica for Retirement, I made the news again…

Rudy Matthews of Costa Rica Retirement Vacation Properties shows an Atenas hillside home site to Lanna Mingo, a Colorado woman who is considering making the move to Costa Rica.

THE NEW WORLD

Christopher Howard may be the Christopher Columbus of the Americans-to-Costa Rica movement. He discovered his new world and moved to the Western Hemisphere’s second oldest democracy in the late 1980s from San Francisco.

He began his guru career by writing “The Golden Door to Retirement and Living in Costa Rica” in the early 1990s. “In those days, it attracted a lot of eccentric-type expatriates,” he said of his earlier efforts.

Howard has been updating his book ever since, and using it as a springboard for tours. Seven gringos, including a reporter and the Lynches, participated in one of Howard’s more recent relocation and retirement tours.

Guests spend a couple of days in intensive seminar sessions, learning about everything from containerized shipping to BUPA, a health care plan aimed at expats.

They get a whirlwind tour of sample residential properties ranging from the $750-per-month rental home that the Lynches took to high-rise condos in the ritzy Escuzu enclave that go for $500,000-plus.

Both Costa Rica and Panama have gradually acquired a safe-haven status in the minds of a growing number of Americans, even though both have a higher rate of petty theft and break-ins than most Americans are accustomed to.

The fact is that it would be tough to travel through Costa Rica for even a few days without meeting a few Norte Americanos.

While Mexico has more U.S. retirees than any foreign other country, Howard notes that it is a nation of 100 million. The Association of Residents of Costa Rica, a nonprofit expat group, estimates that there are at least 50,000 U.S. citizens — or about 1.2 percent of the Costa Rica’s population — living there, many of them from Florida.

Howard hooked up with a real estate firm specializing in selling property to Americans: Costa Rica Retirement Vacation Properties. One of its key agents is Rudy Matthews, who hails from Tampa.

“Most people who come here, they are looking for a less expensive style of living, which is still here,” Matthews said. “What is driving people out of Florida are the property taxes and the insurance, whether they are going to the Carolinas or to Costa Rica.”

While it was once true that a beachfront home for $40,000 could be had in Costa Rica, only countries like Ecuador or Nicaragua could provide those prices today.

“Those days are long gone, but if you are selected and give yourself time to look around, you can still get a reasonable value,” said Matthews, the Tampa Realtor.

Read a complete version of this article: http://www.heraldtribune.com

Living for less in Costa Rica

Living in the right country outside the United States can make all the difference in the world.

Those living below the poverty line in the United States will also find Costa Rica to their liking. Like most other countries in Latin America you should be able to live in moderate luxury on a modest retirement or investment income in Costa Rica.

Most citizens of the United States and Canada feel comfortable living where they have always resided. Some are lucky enough to have invested in property and have good retirement programs, affordable health insurance, stocks, bonds or IRAs to ensure a good quality of life during their retirement years.

Others  may not have been as fortunate. They realize that they may have not planned well and may be a little short on money to maintain their present lifestyle. A simple solution is to try to lower their standard of living and be more frugal in their own country to compensate for poor financial planning and/or bad investments. They can downsize to a smaller home, move to a more affordable but less suitable area, give up their yearly vacations, fire the gardener and cut back on other areas of their life to just scrape by. But what if they could move to another country with the same amount of income and improve their lifestyle dramatically instead of reducing it?

Living in the right country outside the United States can make all the difference in the world  between just subsisting and maintaining the lifestyle to which you are accustomed. Costa Rica offers a viable alternative.

The idea of living overseas is not new. The huge number of Americans due to retire is staggering.  Currently almost 40 percent of the population of the United States is over 50. By 2020, half the U.S. population will be over 50. Most Americans ages 41 to 59 say they will move when they retire.

Where else in the World can you get medical coverage with pre-existing conditions?

Costa Rica can provide cradle to grave health care for its citizens and legal foreign residents.

Costa Rica’s low cost health care system continues to attract retirees with medical issues. Most of the people on my monthly relocation/retirement tours have told me that one of the main reasons they are exploring Costa Rica for retirement is the affordability of its public health care system. You can insure yourself for under $60 per month depending on your income. Many Costa Ricans pay under $20 dollars monthly for full medical coverage.

One of the real advantages is that the Caja (public health care system) will not exclude you for pre-existing conditions. They cover everything. People in the U.S. have been lost all of their life savings because of medical conditions that are not covered by their insurance or because they are uninsured. This is not the case in Costa Rica. It seems unbelievable that a small country with a little over four million people can provide cradle to grave health care for its citizens and legal foreign residents who join the health care system.