By Paul in Blog Car repairs are a real bargain in Costa Rica. I know I write about cars a lot — should you buy or not buy a car? Should you ship a car or get one here? For us expats, a car also acts like a barrier to integration, even though it’s very convenient. And plenty […]
By Paul in Blog One of the great deals in Costa Rica is buying fresh flowers. I’ve always liked fresh flowers in my house. In Baltimore, we would generally buy flowers weekly or every other week at Trader Joe’s. They were a good deal there as well. A beautiful bunch, suitable for a vase on our dining room […]
By Paul in Blog Communication is very important for expats today. Why, without it, I think we’d have fewer expats. The ability to communicate with those back home via Skype, Vonage, or MagicJack is the big difference between expats of 20+ years ago and today. All three – Skype,Vonage, and MagicJack – can save you lots of money over traditional phone services. […]
By Paul & Gloria in Blog This article was written by Laura Alvarado on November 15, 2017 and was originally published by The Costa Rica Star newspaper. You can read the original article at this link. Used with permission from the publisher. Note: photos added by Gloria Yeatman. Starting a new life in a different country is certainly challenging, initially […]
By Paul & Gloria in Blog If you’ve been reading our newsletters, you know we’ve been taking Spanish lessons for a while now at CPI Immersion Spanish School in Heredia. After living in Costa Rica for four and a half years, we are still working at learning the Spanish language, poco a poco. And yes, sometimes I feel frustrated. […]
By Paul & Gloria in Blog, Featured Welcome to our Retire For Less In Costa Rica Newsletter Paul and Gloria In This Issue: What’s Up with the Yeatmans? It’s the End of an Era. Our Final Cost of Living Update and Some Closing Thoughts from Paul Costa Rica in the Time of Covid-19 The Top 10 Qualities of Successful […]
By Paul in Blog San Ramon Post Office (Updated with 2020 prices) A great way to save hundreds of dollars a year is to have a post office box in Costa Rica, versus using a delivery service like Aerocasillas. I would say Aerocasillas is more efficient, and certainly faster than the post office, but you pay for that service. Our P.O. […]
By Gloria in Blog, Resources We’ve been living in Costa Rica full-time for more than two years now, and our Costa Rica drivers licenses came up for renewal on May 15th. We both got our drivers licenses a month or so after we moved here in April 2009, using our U.S. Passports and Maryland Drivers Licenses for identification, and […]
By Paul & Gloria in Blog Revised 12/4/16 This is the flip side of one of my other money-saving tips, “Take the Bus.” Naturally, if you don’t have a car, you will in fact take the bus, cab or walk more frequently. Elaine St. James, in her book, Simplify Your Life, classifies “get rid of your car” as “Hard-Core Simplicity” […]