Cost of living
I hesitate to write on this topic because your cost of living in Costa Rica is going to depend on how YOU want to live. But I was recently reading some of the websites on Costa Rica and saw something very disconcerting at www.costarica.com/Home/Retirement/Cost_of_Living. This site claims that you can have a 3 bedroom house for $260.00 per month and food for one person at $44.00 a month. In my experience this could not be further from the truth.
If you come from North America and you want to live in the same manner of which you have been living it is not cheap to live in Costa Rica as a matter of fact it is the most expensive country to live in within Central America. It is the safest and has the most modern conveniences, dry cleaners, meat markets, book stores abound. We have year round spring like temperatures, definate advantages to living in Costa Rica but cheap is not one of them.
There are people that live on $1,000/month, it can be done but not if you have kids in school. Private school is our biggest expense living here and public school is not an option.
The government says that a family of 4 must have an income of $3,000 per month to qualify for a visa to live here legally.
As each family differs in what their expectations are, so does the cost of living for those families. To get a real idea of what it will cost for YOUR family to live in Costa Rica contact Guardian Angels CR at info@relocationcr.com.