8 Reasons Why Americans LEAVE Costa Rica [Why I Left]

Why do so many people move to Costa Rica only to

leave

a few years later? I have been helping people move to Costa Rica since 2005 and one of the things I have noticed is that sometimes people spend more time planning their move to Costa Rica than living there, so in this video I am going to explain the

reasons

. main

reasons

why people

leave

Costa Rica and at the end of the video I will tell you why I chose to leave the country after living there. For eight years, how many expats live in Costa Rica? Anyway, the US State Department estimates that there could be over a hundred and twenty thousand Ame

rica

ns living in Costa Rica and I would say that's probably the largest expat population that can be followed by Canada, perhaps.

In some countries in Europe, but we are mainly talking about Ame

rica

n citizens, there are all kinds of reasons why people choose to retire or live abroad in Costa Rica, but there are also quite a few reasons why they leave, so first thing What people responded was that The cost of living is actually not that low, so they were basically saying that they moved to Costa Rica under the impression that they would have a lower cost of living and save money, but the reality was that they spent the same amount and that's how it was. It doesn't surprise me much because there has been a lot of talk since the early days of the internet about how cheap the cost of living is and that's exactly the problem is that a lot of this information was published a long time ago, probably 10 years ago.

It's been years or more and that narrative that Costa Rica is a cheap place to live has continued since then, but in reality the last time I checked Costa Rica it was the second most expensive country to live in Latin America, but suffice it to say that Costa Rica en It is more expensive than people think and the reasons for this are multiple. The number of foreigners moving to the country in recent years has really driven up house prices. The construction price per square meter has increased, but that's not the only reason I don't want to do it.

Blame everything on foreigners, it's also because Costa Rica has very high import taxes on goods, so especially e-cars are expensive. Specialty foods are very expensive, so when you combine all of these things, the cost of living ends up being higher than people think. but you can get a low cost of living in Costa Rica, you just have to be frugal and plan, if you live in a long term rental or live outside the main tourist areas or if you don't own a car and if you shop at the local markets in Instead of the more expensive grocery stores, you can reduce your cost of living quite a bit.

It also helps if you live in the central valley instead of living on the beach because electricity costs in Costa Rica are very high, so if you want to live there beachfront you will probably spend a few hundred dollars a month on air alone. conditioning, not to mention paying maximum property prices. The other thing, of course, is that the cost of living is relative, so if you move from somewhere like Manhattan or California to Costa Rica, your cost of living can probably be lower, but if you move from somewhere of the central United States with an average cost of living, could be the same or even higher.

The second thing is probably the most important factor is a combination of having unrealistic and misaligned expectations about what your life will be like and also the inability to adapt to the culture of that country, so if you move from a country like the United States , which is a developed country, you know that you live in the rat race and then you move to a place like Costa Rica, which is quieter. You know things are going at a slower pace. There will be a bigger difference in a bigger culture shock than if you moved from a neighboring country. like Panama to Costa Rica, where the culture is quite similar and the biggest mistake that people make regarding this is not staying in the country long enough to be able to adapt and adjust to the culture, which is why there is something called the curve of cultural adaptation. and it's very similar to what you may have heard people talk about in business or entrepreneurship or learning a new skill.

This is what Seth Godin refers to as the dip, so whenever you're doing something difficult like studying a New Year's resolution, for example, we'll start out with a lot of motivation, but eventually that motivation wanes and collapses and you basically lose momentum, but if you keep at it, you can usually build that business, learn that new skill, or in the case of moving to a new country, you can. learn to adapt to that culture, but if you quit at the bottom of the curve, let's say you moved to Costa Rica and the first few months are going great, you're in the honeymoon phase of your relocation, then things change, They get bad and you don't.

I don't know how long you're going to be in that fall, so sometimes that fall can last a few months, sometimes it can last a few years and it's different for everyone, so if you give up at some point in that fall that you're in you are not happy, you will never be able to get out of that hole and get to the process or stage of adaptation and real integration with the culture, so basically, if you give up too soon, you will never adapt because you haven't given yourself enough time to do so, so that is one of the big problems;

The other big problem relates to the first aspect of cost of living, where people have unrealistic expectations, so they could have turned Costa Rica into this perfect place that They will move to the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow where it will solve all your problems and life will be wonderful, it will be cheaper, it will be more beautiful, it will be more fun. more adventurous and then when you get there you realize it's just another country full of normal people like any other place in the world and you're still you and if anything you might have new problems to face that you haven't faced before in life and then, when you have built this perception of the country based on Internet forums or that time you went on vacation there or what your friend who retired at that time said that collides with reality, things simply go wrong because It is life then that causes The people recanted and changed their minds and returned home.

Now the fourth thing that people mentioned was health issues and this really surprised me because Costa Rica is known for having first class healthcare, it has a very strong medical tourism economy and this is part of the country's brand image and I was surprised that people mentioned health issues as the reason they were returning to the US and then the fifth thing that people mentioned and this made me quite sad, was actually the family aspect. I indicate that people waited until a certain stage in their life, maybe they retired in Costa Rica and then once they did, they realized that they actually wanted to spend more quality time with their families, people especially mention to his grandchildren and although I don't have children, I could really relate to this because last year was the first year since I was a teenager that I spent a full year in the United States and after traveling to over 60 countries during the last 15 or 20 years, I really felt identified. spending a lot of quality time with my family, I can definitely relate to that feeling of being out of the country and being thousands of miles from your loved ones and then having to come to terms with what's most important: being in this beautiful place. beach alone or being back in Kansas with your grandchildren and I don't know the answer, I think each person has to decide for themselves, but this was something that came up a lot and then the sixth thing was the crime rate, so Costa Rica It actually ranks 32nd on the global peace index compared to the United States which is 121st, so Costa Rica overall is a pretty safe country compared to many countries in the world and a pretty peaceful place, but that doesn't mean that there is no crime and that there are no problems and what I have noticed living in Latin America for a long time is that not all crimes are reported correctly, so whether intentional or not, a lot of things have happened in the expat community I have had.

I have not personally seen it published in the English-language newspaper Teco Times or the largest Spanish-language newspaper, La Nación. There is probably a higher volume of crime affecting expats more than in public conversation, like if you personally know people who have been victims. of carjackings or home invasions, so I can't really say that in the US, as I don't know many people who have been affected by violent crimes at the rate that I have in the expat community and Maybe it's because it's a lower population. there and it's a smaller tight knit community so the stories travel very fast over the coconut wire but there are quite a few horror stories and I think sometimes people get scared when they come down or sometimes they themselves have that experience.

It's definitely a very serious concern and something that Costa Rica seems to be taking seriously because they know this is bad for their image as an ecotourism destination, but also as a destination for retired expats. It is very common to have to live in a closed place. community or live behind bars on their windows or have a security guard who can sometimes be corrupted by criminals and I have personally seen a woman get assaulted outside my door in romosar. She used to drive with a fake wallet in the console of my car. My car was broken into several times on the beach.

I also know a surfer who hid her keys outside her Toyota Prado and someone was looking at where he hid her keys and they actually stole her car, so you just have to be very careful. In Costa Rica, don't leave anything out and about at the game site, don't leave anything on your car seat, keep your valuables at home and yes, just be careful. The next thing people said was talking about all the negativity from other expats. and also on forums, so it made me sad to think that expats who once really wanted to move to Costa Rica are living in Costa Rica right now and are not happy, but are also negative about living there with other expats who want to move. to Costa Rica or who just moved, so if you are facing that kind of negativity, keep in mind that these people who are being negative are probably still living there and therefore could be complaining about something, but sometimes They have chosen to stay anyway.

It's definitely justified, but there will always be people saying why you can't do this, whether it's moving to another country, starting a business, or inventing something that's going to change the world, so definitely keep that in mind. The eighth reason is really a collection of small reasons that I have put together as one of the reasons why people leave Costa Rica because I don't think it's always one thing, I think it's the accumulation and synergy of many small things sprinkled together. of some really big problems. that makes people leave, so some of the other things people mentioned included scams and getting scammed, which of course could happen anywhere, but one guy mentioned that he

left

because his lawyer stole his property , I mean, that could happen, there are actually more properties registered.

In the national property registry of Costa Rica there are more square kilometers of land available, so you are right, but it could also be that incredible climate that also comes with a rainy season and a dry season, there will be extreme dryness, extreme heat. rain, floods, risk of tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, there are things like that to think about, there are insects, there is dengue, there are language barriers, there are relationship problems, there are all the other things that happen in life that sometimes can feel magnified when you're in a new environment, so it really could be a combination of things, it could be an invasion of bugs on a day your car got stuck in the river on a week you got dengue fever and cut yourself the electricity, that is another thing, the infrastructure, your internet is cut off, the electricity is cut off.

The water goes off, you're waiting in line at the bank, someone tells you for the hundredth time that they can't help you, or someone gives you wrong directions to get somewhere, as if there really are a lot of things that can go wrong, and sometimes, a sequence of things that people just get fed up with and say I'm done, I'm gone, I've had enough and that's understandable. I've been there only in Costa Rica. Does it take me two and a half hours? Going 25 miles can be frustrating coming from a different culture, but you have to remember that you move to that country, that country doesn't have to change for you, every country has its problems, every country has its pros and cons, so It becomes this decision for you if you want to adjust and adapt to that way of life or if it's too much for you and you just want to leave and that's okay too, we have to receive this package today, we have the mailman's cell phone number.

He will meet us here at 6:00 p.m. m. in the parking lot of the post office because this closes at five, so we're going to do a trade in the parking lot just for some contact lenses and a credit card. If thatdo you think? our chances are jamie, I mean, I think it's probably 60 percent that it shows up, but thirty percent that it's at six in the evening, right, it's definitely going to be late, but I think we'll do it, we order this, we order this about a month and a half ago we will see what happens and it continues, so I will tell you why I decided to leave Costa Rica in just a minute, but first it is important to keep in mind that even though there are many bad things that people reported about why they

left

costa

rica there was also a large portion of people who said they didn't leave that they had been there for seven years or 11 or 17 years and that they still loved the country for every expat that left Costa Rica, probably There are one or two or more people who stayed and really loved it there.

I'm just mentioning all these reasons why people leave so you know what to expect and have more context if you start facing this kind of thing when you get there and then why did I choose to leave Costa Rica even though I still help the people to move there? That's because I still think Costa Rica is a great place to live and most of the reasons I personally left, had to do with me and my life, actually had nothing to do with Costa Rica, so I moved. for the first time to Costa Rica in 2002 and 10 years later I decided, you know what I need, to buy a house and commit to living here. like getting permanent residency, getting on the path to citizenship, putting down roots here or do I need to leave or do something else and I didn't necessarily have to be so polarized, but in the end I decided to leave because I wanted to see more of the world that I had spent almost the entire decade of my 20s in Costa Rica and I just wanted to have a different experience and also technology had advanced to the point where I could take my business with me, so when I moved to Costa Rica it was working. in real estate, but when I left Costa Rica it was as the owner of a fully distributed online remote relocation company where I was helping people move to 35 different countries even though I lived in Costa Rica, so it was actually a benefit to me and for the benefit of my business model to go live in other countries so I could work more effectively there and be able to learn the ins and outs of living in these other countries where I was helping people move, so it was a combination of I was just growing in a different phase of my life, having the technology to be able to work from anywhere and wanting to travel and see the world more and there was also a day where one day I was in Dominical on a surf trip and I met this guy who I hadn't seen since I was 20 and I had this flash and like this moment I was here 10 years ago on this beach as a study abroad student having a really similar experience and I just felt like I wasn't growing enough and I really wanted to see more of the world and I would be lying if I didn't mention the safety factor and I also mentioned that I would drive with a fake wallet in the console of my car where my house was broken into my car was broken into several times and that was also a concern for me, that was not It was the reason I left like I said, it was more my personal reasons, but I'm very happy about it.

I lived in Costa Rica. I think it's a great place for a lot of people. It just depends on what you're looking for and your goals. What phase of life are you in? Since I have lived in Costa Rica, I have traveled. Throughout Europe, Southeast Asia, I returned to Australia where I used to live previously, but living in Costa Rica opened my eyes to what it would be like to live in a foreign country. It's the country I've spent the most time in besides the US and it was a big part of my expat journey, so do you think any of these things surprised you?

Why or why not? Let me know in the comments below, like this video if you liked it or learned something new and click away. in one of these thumbnails to see more videos that will help you work online and travel the world, okay Mr. Postman, hello, thank you, okay, this is the back, it's two months of waiting here, yeah.