How Much Does it Actually Cost to Live in Costa Rica? 💰 🇨🇷

[Music] [Music] [Music] you [Music] hello everyone thanks for tuning into this video if you're new to the channel my name is Chris my name is Shana we are the difference we are the owners and operators of C castle a vacation rentals here in Samara Costa Rica we're actually coming to you from our house seeing how this is a video about the cost of living in Costa Rica and our house is on the same property as our vacation rentals it's a 10-minute walk to the beach if you do want a book just go to see Casa samara calm or go to the links below if you are signed up to Airbnb and yeah so today we're going to talk about what it costs us to live in Costa Rica so lots of people ask us this question this is one of the main questions actually that we get asked almost on a weekly basis it is a bit of a loaded question I guess I it's like are you going to come down here and use one ply or two-ply toilet paper [Music] [Applause] [Music] are you going to live in a house that doesn't have air conditioning or one that has air conditioning and also how cold do you want it there's a lot of houses down here that people can rent and I mean it's got most of the amenities and things that you need but not lots of the things that we're used to in North America of course like things like a dishwasher or there'll be a washing machine but no dryer because everybody seems to paying their clothes outside here to dry and that's just how they do it down here that's just the way that lifestyle is and it saves a lot on utility costs that way but if you are used to having those kinds of things then you specifically want to look for a place that you know it's gonna cost a little bit more that's gonna have those kind of amenities that you're used to yeah so we're just gonna break down all the costs we have as a family of four living here and with a vehicle which I'll put up the kind of the end of the list and then stay tuned for near the end of the video or at the end of the video I'm gonna do a breakdown on each cost I'm going to put it in US Dollars and canadian dollars because we do have viewers from both countries but yeah let's get into it all right so the first two things that I'm going to get started with are a couple of the annual costs that you'll have living here so a corporation tax is it's an annual tax that you pay if you put your property in a corporation it used to be more beneficial from what I've read recently that to do it as a corporation because if like for us if you did a personal can only go one person's name and then say if I passed away it'd be harder for her to get everything into into her name and then so a corporation that Shane and I are both on the corporation so if something happens to me it automatically defaults to her they have changed some of the rules now so it is a little bit harder so if you are moving down just talk to your lawyer and ask them what they suggest that you do for that with the corporation your vehicle and stuff goes another corporation a number as well but that tax is do gets paid I think it gets paid in January yeah yeah so it's it's paid at the beginning of the year and that one is $120 u.s. annually and they have some other things that are coming in as far as digital signature and things like that so yeah just talk to your lawyer when you're moving down and they'll just direct you in the right path as far as that goes the other one is a property tax that's an annual one that's due between January and April I think is what it was last year I don't know if that changes but it should be the same roughly $500 on most properties with a house if it's just a property then it's about two hundred dollars or something like that so it just depends on the value of your property in your house and stuff like that but just use five hundred dollars as an average as an annual cost on that yeah this is just bare land our absolute biggest expense down here is electricity we were actually really surprised we thought it would be a lot cheaper than in Canada but I would say it's about the same a little bit more they do the tiered system like they do in Canada I don't know if they do it in the United States but in British Columbia they at least they did the tiered system there so they do the same thing here yeah ours is usually on average I would say about 300 a month and that's with mostly just our house maybe the odd guests that stayin in high season when we have guests using the rentals or just other months that we're more busy it can be as close to about 450 a month actually we do have a full-sized washer and dryer which of course we need for our rentals it's really important that we keep all of our sheets towels really nice and soft we also have a dishwasher that we use everyday as well but the majority of the expense would be the AC unit in our house and then the AC is being used in the rentals whenever they're occupied yeah and again this is in US dollars at the end Oh we'll have the breakdown on the side of the video u.s. to Canadians so that everybody can understand what it would cost to live down here [Music] we are on the town water and in the rainy season of course we don't have to water the plants so our bill is about twenty one dollars us and in the dry season it's about doubles so 42 all right internets so a lot of people think that there isn't good internet in Costa Rica but there is there is fiber optic internet in Samara now and that's when we have we do have the highest available and that is 70 megabits per second in each rental going through the extenders our package is 100 megabits per second and that one through Cabo tika is $60 us a month rarely ever cuts down with your cuts out which is good so it's pretty reliable as far as I go so yeah if anybody is staying with us and they're working on the road at least they know that they have here it's definitely better than what we had before it was would always go out and it was I mean about the same price and definitely not as reliable before so we're very very grateful to have the new service provider in town now all right and for phones so if you are traveling to Costa Rica you can buy the prepaid SIM cards there's a few companies that do offer it we just went with Colby because they have the best coverage from what we had read and they're easy to get so that one you can buy the SIM card at ESA or there's some little electronic shops around that'll do that there's a couple in town and that I don't know what the SIM card costing it was like 1500 colonias or something like that which is like $3.00 and then all you do is you go into one of the stores that actually has the colby sign and then you can add on as much as you want the only thing with that is it does get expensive when you're outside of Wi-Fi and you're having to use mobile data so you'll be loading it all the time we did that for what was it a year now for some reason I don't know why we did and we decided finally let's just go in and get plans so we did a two year plan two year plan they don't really do a contract because you can leave the country and they're not as long as your bills pay that's fine if not they just cancel it but we did it a two-year plan and they had a promotion on at that time so it went from five gigabytes to ten gigabytes of data free whatsapp 300 minutes and 300 text messages and we paid $32 u.s. for that for each phone so a lot cheaper than we used to pay in Canada Canada we got ripped off as far as cell phones go yeah yeah so yeah that's that's a nice thing is at least you know that that's pretty inexpensive here if you are planning on moving down it's good to have a phone and be able to use it everywhere most people use whatsapp here and if you're in Wi-Fi it's just you can call people for free as long as they have whatsapp we budget about a hundred two hundred fifty dollars a week on groceries for us as a family of four and that includes I guess splurging a little bit on our fancy coffee creamer that we like to get that we are used to that way you always have back in Canada there is a store here the one the market that's closest to our property actually carries some of those kind of things and the cheese jeez yeah that's a big block of like an actual sharp cheddar cheese and it's just I don't know it just tastes better than somebody's here it's more what we're used to some of the grocery prices are definitely similar to Canada we're actually gonna do a whole entire separate video on its own about groceries in Costa Rica and all the different costs and how they compare yeah we're gonna try to do that as the next video we just got to get a hold of a couple of the store owners and see if it's okay with we film in there but yeah the plan is to do that as a next video all right so yeah we get this question a lot - how much does alcohol cost here everybody's an alcoholic that message is I don't know I put down five thousand a month I'm just kidding though a lot of people come and visit and you're gonna end up spending that time with them having wine beer and spirits and so we wanted to include that in here if you don't drink alcohol obviously this isn't gonna affect you at all a six-pack of Imperial or pills in which is the national beer here is about 5,000 colones for a six-pack which works out to what was it $8.75 four four six beer in a can you can get like the big 40s no brown bag they're cheaper but you have to pay a deposit on the bottle and that's actually I think it's two dollars or something like that for that deposit I can't remember where was but then you gotta member to take the bottle back and it honestly just doesn't taste the same either it tastes a little more flat you can't get things like corona i'm akin and moose head for those Canadians but you're gonna end up paying a little bit more for that I've seen red stripe here and then there's also some craft breweries that are now bottling stuff in Costa Rica you can buy those at some of the stores as well so it's not as accessible as far as stuff outside of the country but if you are looking for beer there's a little bit of choice wine you can definitely be more expensive down here given the fact that a lot of the wines or most of the wines are all imported the best deal that we've found is to buy the big one and a half liter bottles there's a really good Chilean wine or a couple different ones that we like they're about 10 to 14 dollars a bottle so that's not bad at all I mean it's nothing fancy but they still taste good and there's just not as much selection here as what we're used to in British Columbia Canada at some of the liquor stores that we had there of course so from the shopping around we've done we found that the Iguana Verde market which is just down the road from our property as well as the super new China Samara market in town it has the best selection alright as for hard alcohol there's a wide selection here we were surprised at how cheap it is as well I'm leaving the Gray Goose vodka is a lot cheaper than what we paid in Canada but then again Canada this alcohols tax like crazy but for a it's a one litre of smirnoff vodka is $14 a US for like the big one and you can also get like the Florida Kayne rum from Nicaragua if you do go to the border you can get four bottles for $40 so it's $10 a bottle for that it's not much more at the grocery stores in town so yeah there's definitely a large selection for that stuff it's yeah it's crazy the price dip it was a such a surprise because it's all a lot of it's important so we didn't expect it to be that cheap we thought we would pay we thought we'd pay more than what we paid in Canada or about the same but yeah it's significantly cheaper for sure and for our Canadian viewers collabo is more expensive here but you save on the vodka so it actually works up to the same as making a Caesar at home so a lot of people ask us about the costs of rent that is a very open-ended question it honestly it just really really comes down to your comfort levels you know some people need to have AC some people are okay with out and just keeping all the windows open and they're used to it being more hot and humid in the house some people have to have a washer and dryer and other people are okay with just having a washing machine and drying their clothes upside on a line some people absolutely have to have an ocean view and other people want to be you know five minute or two minute walk to town so it just depends on your comfort levels it's when I first moved down here we rented a house up at the top of the mountain is about 15 minutes from town in an area called Santo Domingo really really really nice place but because it was low season when we rented we were able to get it for $850 us a month so of course it was a bit out of the way we had to do a lot more we did get back and forth and that kind of thing in the day but we had a full-on ocean jungle view we had infinity pool it was the newer house two bedrooms ac in the rooms washer/dryer that kind of stuff so that was a really good deal for us but once again it was location of course being further away of course it cost less but that same house actually in high season will rank for about 15 at 1500 a week a week is what our property manager told us so it does depend on the time of year high season it is very very very difficult to find long-term rentals in Samara so it's always best to kind of know ahead when you're coming talk to a property manager see what's available out there ask other people that you know that might know of somebody but you have to get your foot in the door with the high season rental definitely ahead of time if you come down here in October November and think that you can find you know a long-term rental from December till you know halfway through the next year at a good reasonable or cheaper price it's pretty much impossible so it's definitely good to start looking looking ahead see as much as we'd like to be able to be more accurate and give you like an exact rental cost which is impossible because really how much does it cost to rent to anywhere in the world it can range as low as like little small houses in like a very very Costa Rican neighborhood for $300 for a room up to you know $500 for a two-bedroom smaller house or up to something that has all your amenities and a little bit more luxury for 2,000 a month so it's I don't know even higher thank you even yeah we have seen higher - so depends on time of year - depends on exactly what you need for you or yourself and your family it just it really varies so in our opinion the best thing to do is just contact a property manager and they will help you plan ahead let them know exactly what your budget is and what all you need to wants are in a rental property yeah and definitely do it a few months older and you're out if you can not like in a month from now because there won't be anything available and I was gonna say - is that's an idea another idea for someone who wants to come down and invest Costa Rica and have something that makes some money is to buy a larger piece of property hire us to build single unit shipping containers and rent them out long term just strictly long term you would have a booked out all year every year probably yeah there's a huge demand for it yeah you're not gonna make as much monthly as a short-term rental but you're gonna make your money back in the long run if you could do like five of them or something like that and just directly do it like that especially because we do have a few schools in town with a lot of people come down to go to those schools all right so if you do move down and you are purchasing a car there is some expenses there as well so there's some annual expenses and then there's some monthly expenses so I'm just going to go over those with you right now so Bertie Bay is a annual or biannual inspection depending on how new your vehicle is if it's within a couple years you only have to do it every two years and then older vehicles is once a year and all that is is an annual inspection just to make sure your vehicle is up to par as far as being Road worthy some of the cars we question how they get through the inspection but we're not gonna go there so that is it's $27 for the inspection annually and then we have our local mechanic drive it to Nicoya to get the inspection done that way if there is anything he can either get it fixed right away or they're not gonna lie to him as well and say oh it needs this when he's already looked it over so it's just we pay a little bit extra pay $35 for him and take it but it is an hour away he's got a drive is gonna hang out a while they do inspection so it's actually a pretty good deal to have that done and I do have the link below to the website so you can see the different pricing for vehicles because there's like your personal vehicles motorbikes and bigger likes enemies and stuff like that so go to the link below it'll tell you all that stuff so yeah the March mo is the annual registration and liability insurance that you have to put on your vehicle every year it's due in December we have a 2001 rav4 and it cost us 330 US dollars for March amo you can buy extra insurance as well through a private company called IMS they have different packages and different pricing again depending on what your vehicle is what year and something we haven't done yet we do need to do that so we can't really share how much that is some people have got it yeah so all you have to do to pay or much amo is just going to the bank with your registration and your passport or your send you law if you you have residency and then they can bring up how much it costs for that year and they'll give you a little sticker that you put up in the window so gas prices this is another thing we were surprised with is it's actually pretty similar to what we paid in Kelowna and Costa Rica doesn't pull any fuel out of their grounds much thing I guess because it's a it's a wool but at the moment the current fuel price I'm just going to look on here is for regular which they call regular here is actually 91 octane they don't have an 87 like we used to have in Canada that one is 616 colones per litre so it's a dollar seven US per liter or a dollar forty Canadian per liter and then four gallon for a u.s. viewers is four dollars and eight cents per gallon so a little more expensive for our US viewers I know a fuel is cheaper in the US than in Canada even though you buy it from Canada sometimes that works well yeah we usually fill up twice a month so we end up paying eighty dollars a month and fuel obviously if you do more road trips it's gonna rise but just be prepared to spend about 80 bucks or so you'll per month oil changes we have a mechanic that's just outside of Samara he charges what was it fifty dollars for non synthetic oil and then it's eighty dollars for synthetic oil and that's in our raft war which uses I think it's yeah four liters of oil and we do that twice a year with the amount of driving we do so again it's a hundred dollars a year for oil changes on our car all right so I have to bring the laptop a little closer because there's a lot of numbers to memorize what I'm going to do is on the side here going to have all the numbers pop up so that you have an actual visual of what everything costs and it's going to be in US and Canadian dollars so for annual of stuff property tax five hundred US dollars or six hundred and fifty seven Canadian corporation tax 120 us or 158 Canadian and then if you have a car you have your TV 27 US or 36 Canadian March amo 330 dollars u.s. 434 dollars Canadian oil changes to a year $100 u.s. 131 the Canadian so your monthly you have your fuel which is $80 u.s. 105 dollars Canadian electricity I'm just going to do it on what our lowest one is is $300 u.s. $394 Canadian we have had lower electricity bills when we stayed in the other house but we you do have lights it run all night and we are gonna be switching those to LEDs so that might drop it down a bit water $30.00 us or 3950 Canadian internet $60 u.s. or $79 Canadian cell phones for two phones sixty four dollars u.s. eighty four dollars Canadian groceries budgeted $150 a week so of $600 a month us seven hundred eighty eight dollars Canadian so we do have two boys and we have to pay school for them so that's $850 u.s. or eleven hundred and seventeen dollars Canadian and then miscellaneous if you want to eat out if you want to go do tours that kind of stuff that's gonna vary depending on what you do rent five hundred to two thousand US and Beyond or six hundred fifty seven Canadian or twenty-six twenty-seven Canadian and beyond alright so I'm just gonna jump in right here we didn't talk about the caja which is the Costa Rican medical because we're not on it we're not residents yet so we don't know all the ins and outs of that but we have heard of people saying it costs as low as $50 a month up to one hundred and seventy-five I think it depends on how much pension you get or something like that but yeah we just don't have the details on that so that's why we didn't include it in this list also there is medical insurance you can get through i ns and then a few other companies as well I think Blue Cross or something again we don't have that yet we just pay out of pocket right now because we are still somewhat healthy and if we have to go to the hospital or go see doctor Freddie then we just pay cash for that so we did leave that out of the list unfortunately we just don't have the answers to that all right so that's it for this video I hope this helps people understand what to expect moving to Costa Rica whether it's a long-term thing or you just doing it for a year or two years or something like that again these are questions that people had asked us and yeah we tried to get it as accurate as we could sorry yeah just we're just basing it on on things that we know but then some things that are just a little you know up in the air but that's that's anywhere you live everything there's never ever a set amount for every single thing so we're just trying to get it as close as possible yeah if someone was asked how much does it cost to live in Kelowna it'd be the same thing we can't live in Tokyo you know but at least this way you have an idea of what it cost us as a family of four with some modern amenities like they see the dishwasher Kachina would have killed me if we didn't have a dishwasher but yeah thanks for watching this video I hope you guys liked it if you really liked it leave a thumbs up if you're new to the channel hit the subscribe button and the little fella I guess it's about just to get notified when the videos come up we are trying to do these videos every Sunday until we run out of questions to answer we do also have our patreon so thanks to those of you that have signed up and are helping us make these videos if you can and haven't signed up yet the link is below it's just a monthly charge it can be as little as one dollar again it just helps us with buy an equipment and fuel and all that stuff to make these videos and go and show you what Costa Rica has to offer so in our next video we're going to take you around to a couple local grocery stores we're going to show you the cost of the groceries here in Costa Rica and you can see how they compare to some other places so there's a cow coming down they use it right now they are they chase it away always entertaining her out of here trying to get home behind us so rent is 500 us to 2,000 us and beyond which is 657 Canadian or 2627 dollars I did Kate again yes alright us any another coffee all right

Channel: The Dufresnes

Views: 134,113

Keywords: costa rica, pura vida, moving to costa rica, how to move to costa rica, central america, food of costa rica, travel, adventure, traveling family, travel with kids, roam the planet, lost, ben brown cos, cost of living in costa rica, costa rica travel guide, costa rica travel, costa rica vlog

Id: 7OxRUr8DF8E

Length: 25min 31sec (1531 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 20 2019