How To Generate Income In Costa Rica | Remote working | Costa Rica Digital Nomads

[Music] hello welcome back to my latest video um my name is richard lacy at tamarando ridge i've been a costa rican resident for over 20 years now today's video we're going to cover how you can earn money in costa rica which is one of the biggest questions or most popular questions i get so if you like the material we're covering today please subscribe below and click on the bell icon so you get notified when we do our next video and enjoy so one of the most frequent questions i get from people visiting is how can they make money in costa rica so alternatively how can they accelerate their retirement plan most of the buyers i have here are in their 40s and 50s they're on a good trajectory they've got good jobs back home they're buying a second home here in costa rica everybody's trying to accelerate that process and it tends to be people are tied to their home place they have long commutes they're living in expensive cities the weather's not great but they're there because that's where their work is and that's where they're they're generating good good income so how can they still meet their financial goals but in costa rica so i want to touch on a few different options i want to tell you what doesn't work then i want to talk about this really exciting new concept of remote working digital nomads and a really interesting visa that the costa rican government is offering with no taxes and then to talk about business ownership down here and a workaround where you can actually work down here the costa rican laws on working in costa rica are that on a tourist visa which is one you normally get when you come in they just get a three-month tourist visa you're not allowed to work and on a temporary visa so once you've gone through through the visa application process you're giving a temporary visa for two to three years and then after that period of time automatically it becomes a permanent resident as a temporary resident you're not allowed to work here and as a permanent resident as i am you have unrestricted rights to work just the same as if you are a costa rican with a costa rican passport down below there's a couple of links to to good lawyers who have strong residency departments and they can go through the process of which kind of residencies that the best for you if you do work when you shouldn't be you can get deported and barred from the country for 10 years and it's not a pretty process it doesn't happen very often you'll often find foreigners working in bars and restaurants here for cash and it works for a while but then every so often the immigration come in and they do a sweep through the town put everybody in buses with bars take them off to a lock-up somewhere and then ship them off out of the country so that's that's not really an option in fact really working as an employee in costa rica doesn't really make a lot of sense i mean in the capital in san jose you have cisco systems ebay hula packard they've all got very very large operations here but guess why they have large operations here because they only pay their management 25 to 50 percent of what they would earn in in north america and it's a similar thing out here as a manager in a hotel so it really doesn't make sense to come here with the idea of working as an employee also in in san jose where these all these large businesses are based you're not really making a large improvement from home because you're still working in a big city with gnarly traffic problems you know pollution and you're still an hour and a half from the beach so san jose doesn't really make a lot of sense at the beaches all of the activities really tourism-based there are no big big officers out here no big employers so really you're tied to working looking at restaurants hotels tourism businesses but they say the the pay structure is the same so it really doesn't make sense as a foreigner to be working for somebody else down here costa rica is an ideal location for remote working being a digital nomad a very fast internet as fast as you would ever need which is reliable occasionally here at the beach you get sort of blips of power where just goes out for 15 seconds which will knock your wi-fi off but if you got one of those power boxes and a hundred dollars in walmart here and then that solves all your problems pretty much on the same time zone as north america which is very important you have flights to all of the major hubs weather's perfect year round an absolute zero commute from where my office is to the beach is about three minutes walk so you know i'm finished work out of the office hopefully by four and straight to the beach for a cocktail and so really you've got a lot more quality time down here one of my good friends is here in town right now on this same process of looking to transition out as soon as he can he's got a very large high-pressure hands-on business in los angeles and yesterday he was pretty much in the jungle up on a hill doing a conference call with people from around the world and his only real concern was that they might hear the monkeys in the trees above him so really you have all the ingredients here in costa rica to make remote working work the resistance for the last few years has always been employers that like to have you here here in the office with them and now in a post covic world there's a lot more tolerance with people working from home so why shouldn't your home be here in costa rica the costa rican government's recognizing that this is the way forward that they can now be encouraging people with high paid jobs in the country generating and spending their money here that in december they approved a new law which is really going to change this whole concept whereby remote worker or a digital nomad if you meet certain requirements uh can get a one-year visa which is extendable the conditions are that your clients have to be outside of costa rica and you're working online so that covers most people in fact i've got a good friend here who works for a new york bank from here on his new york salary living down here which is a really perfect scenario i've included a link below to just some general information about the requirements for this remote working visa and then the two law firms also that are down below they can handle that for you the most popular option for earning money in costa rica has always been to buy and run your own business and i i said at the start about on the tourist visa and the temporary resident visa that you're not allowed to work but there is a workaround that a lot of people use whereby if you have your own corporation and you're the owner manager of that corporation then you're allowed to manage your business and operate within your business so you can be in your business offering your services and invoicing out and you're covered with social security and you're paying your sales tax and your other taxes so you're completely legal here so that is a workaround that a lot of people use so i have a lot of people here that have businesses small businesses down here so some successful restauranteurs that over the last 15 years they either start a restaurant or they buy a small restaurant build it up sell it on do the same again and that's been very successful for them a guy that in his fort late 40s achieved his dream he bought sport fishing business here which was three old boats all with captains that have been with the boats for many many years which was a really key to the success of the business plus a database of all the past clients and so he was just out in the water fishing every day and uh just loved it and that was that was around about a million i think that he bought in and then another lovely young couple that i'm actually doing some other work with they bought just a little boutique restaurant just a almost like a street food kind of business for a very small money in and they they've moved down here and they're i think 32 33 something like that so depending on whatever your budget is there's always an option you know you could buy a spa business or a tour business restaurants hotels we've got a lot of restaurants for about a million you could get a you know 10 or 15 room small hotel walk to the beach you know own a managed kind of operation so there are a lot of options for earning money for not a lot down um that can really generate money over time and really can be an interesting option if you're looking for low entry costs then instead of buying the bricks and mortar there are also lease transfers here so depending on where you're in the world they call it key money or transfers or whatever so you're not actually buying the property you're just least you're buying a lease for very little money you can get into that with a restaurant or we have a hostel uh for sale on that same sort of basis where you can get a long lease so you have some some security there but you're just paying a monthly rent and a key fee to get in and that makes sense as well and if you can build that up over time sell that on do do the same again so if you found today's talk interesting then please like and subscribe below tell your friends about us check out the other videos i've done in this series yeah i mean please leave me a comment and as soon as i can i'll get back to you and i'm happy to to chat and give us give anybody advice [Music] you

Channel: Tamarindo Rich

Views: 16,925

Keywords: costa rica, costa rica property, costa rica realestate, costa rica condo, costa rica travel, costa rica covid, working in costa rica, making money in costa rica, make a living in costa rica, expat living in costa rica, digital nomad, online working, remote working, costa rica life, working during covid, property in costa rica, tamarindo costa rica, live in tamarindo, coldwell banker tamarindo, tamarindo property, costa rica coldwell banker

Id: nQllY5EghBw

Length: 9min 42sec (582 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 26 2021