Moving to Costa Rica: See the Exclusive May Update

It’s been a very busy month and we’ve accomplished a lot on our to-do list. Right now, we are happy to give you an update on where we are on moving to Costa Rica from the United States.

We are closing on the sale of our last investment property. It was listed in April and by the end of the first week, we had 18 good offers.

We ended up accepting an offer of about 20% over the asking price. After closing on this property, we should see over a thousand percent return on our initial $6,000 cash investment. 

Something else we can cross off our to-do lists is setting up our bank account in Costa Rica.

This actually took a little bit longer than expected. We ran into a few technical difficulties with the website.

Also, Costa Rica has more national holidays than we do here in the states so the bank was closed and our banker couldn’t work with us for a couple of days.

It just took longer than expected to get this squared away. Luckily for us, we have an awesome lawyer, Andres, that really knocked it out of the park for us.

This month, we’ve also worked on getting rid of more things in our home. Getting rid of a lot of things takes more than just picking things up and sending them to the goodwill or selling them.

It takes a lot of mental convincing to decide what needs to go, what can stay, and really make some good decisions on what will we actually use in Costa Rica. 

One of the big things we need to think about are things that we haven’t used in a while and evaluate why haven’t we used them. Is it because it’s not useful or is it because we don’t need it.

Or maybe it’s something we just don’t use often. There are things we probably won’t use for a long time but it’s something we may want to keep. So, it’s definitely been a journey when it comes to getting rid of things. 

On the other hand, we need to look at getting rid of stuff from a number’s perspective. For anything we bring with us, we either have to pay shipping and/or import tax.

So basically, you’re paying for something twice when you could probably find something comparable to that item in Costa Rica. 

Another update from us is that it’s Chris’ last week of work in the States. We have about a month and a half until we actually move to Costa Rica. We going to dedicate this last month to tie up any loose ends we have here in the States. 

Some of the things we’ll be concentrating on are changing over our address on our IDs, on our bank accounts, and whatever else requires an updated address. We’ll also be listing large items that we haven’t sold yet like our furniture and our vehicles, and prepping our house to sell. 

Another item on our list is canceling subscriptions we have such as lawn care and pest control. So, everything is really about tying up all the loose ends and getting ready to move to Costa Rica. 

We’re also very excited about having a good time working on Blogging Money Life and getting ready to launch the blog portion of our business.

The item that we checked off our list this month that we’re most excited about is that we put a deposit down on our first place in Costa Rica. Our first place in Costa Rica will be a container home.

Container homes are pretty popular there. We are actually interested in investing in these types of homes for Airbnb in the future. So, when we had the opportunity to live in one, we jumped on it just so we can see what it’s like. 

Our new home has an open living area, two bedrooms, and one bathroom. It’s fully furnished, has fiber optic internet, and AC. The air conditioning part of this is a big deal. About half of the units that we looked at did not have air conditioning.

Another cool part about our new place is that it’s within walking distance of a farmers’ market downtown and a five-minute drive from the beach. 

And the best part? It is only $437 a month, including utilities! That super affordable price is awesome because it’s about half of what we budgeted for rent. That’s going to leave us even more money for travel.

Our last update for you guys is another exciting one. We have an appointment with immigration in June. Probably, we won’t be ready to move by the time of the appointment. We may be making a trip down to Costa Rica before we’re actually ready to move just so we can get our fingerprints and final paperwork taken care of.

The good side of this is that this gives us a little bit more time to tie up any loose ends we have here in the States before our big move. Our new projected moving date is early July, as opposed to the end of June. 

That’s about all for our Moving to Costa Rica Update for the month of May. Things are definitely getting more exciting. Let’s walk this journey together. Stick around.