Interview with Micheal Allan from travelcostaricanow - moving to Costa Rica questions answered

hi and welcome to another edition of jay in costa rica onomoto today i'm together with my fiance tuesday and a special guest uh michael allen from java costa ricanow.com thanks for being with us stay tuned to the end cause i'm going to ask michael allen the top five recommendations for moving here you know what you should do before moving here so with that let's have tuesday ask our first question oh okay so my first question to you is um and just if you are not familiar which probably you are we've been for about here for about 14 months now it's been here over a year so michael island what is your biggest misconception for new people moving here once they've actually arrived if you could think of you mean what do they think what do you think their biggest misconception is in the people that you've met if there is anything oh no there is [Laughter] maybe the in their mind is they still think it could be cheap here and it's not necessarily so they can be very expensive here i mean i live cheap but most people don't live like me i understand that but i think they get uh i think it's a money thing i think they might they're going to probably spend a little bit more money than they thought they initially would um do you feel that so far uh i think there there's a really valid point to what he's making like it's all about the choices you make when you go to the stores i mean if you're gonna buy all the products that are from the united states then it's gonna be which is kind of what i'm saying i'm just kind of saying it kind of sneaks up on you okay like on a monthly basis how much you actually did spend yeah right not that you know i don't know and we've kind of gotten it down to a more simpler life anyway yeah i'm not saying you guys no i know it's in general in general to the people you've met i mean i probably would have probably could come up with maybe even a better answer i just have to think about i didn't you know i'm getting older and i have to process the process well if it comes up while we're doing it to say hey i gotta i got a comment to the first question because i guess the only reason i kind of say that is because a lot of people's almost their basic reason to come to costa rica or to consider costa rica is because they do think they're gonna replicate their lifestyle from the united states to here right so it kind of even though i don't i mean i don't agree with that i think you know your mindset needs to be right to live in costa rica but most people's first thing i'd like to live exactly how i am here in wherever i am in costa rica that'll never happen so how long have you lived here you know man in november it's going to be 15 wow years wow wow and what brought you here 15 years ago uh it's a it's an extremely long story i was just in a um a place in my life you know i was married before but i'm gay so that whole thing kind of had to work itself out i had a family but what kind of how it all happened when i got on a reality show and we won a house in fiji i don't know if anybody knows that story yeah whatever we want a house in fiji on a reality show so my wife and my kids went down to that house when we were living in vegas and it was just kind of this kind of a perfect opportunity just to kind of move forward i i don't know they were doing their thing the gay thing wasn't a total surprise to my family in a sense you know so it wasn't like i just said hey i'm leaving right it just was just weird we've been together 19 20 years it just was this weird way it how it kind of almost like the perfect storm in a good way in a sense it led you here yes okay so and you you've known us since you know us looking at your videos we visited you and we came to visit this place where we moved here um so how do you think we have adapted to life since you've known us in the 14 months we've been here just in observation in the experiences we've talked to you about uh i don't see you in your daily workings right i mean you're you're still here and the fact that you're plugging away and trying to adjust and to adapt to this kind of new way of life is kind of showing that you're trying to you know assimilate to a new country you know you're not and the biggest thing you're not like bitching about it necessarily you know if you were just you know there's a lot of people come down here and they just you know i can't believe you know they do this and you know and and we think that i'm not saying that doesn't happen because you're kind of going really we have an easier way you can do that you just become kind of one with your patients and the fact that you're doing those things i think and kind of trying to assimilate to a new country is obviously you know good right a lot of people can't do that sorry trying to shut the dog up not our dog neighbor dog michael are you a resident now and how long did you live here as a non-resident i was here about uh 12 years as as a perpetual tourist a perpetual taurus is somebody that needs to leave every three months get their passport stamped and return yes i was doing that almost exclusively and i put in for my residency about uh five years ago i don't it was a while back but i i wasn't really concerned about it because once they give you your paper that says you're trying to get your residency i was fine with that that's nice you don't have to cross the board right but i didn't officially get my residency to until uh almost two years ago in april okay so that would make since i'm almost been here 15 years it's about 12 12 and a half years i was doing the perpetual tourist thing okay after all these years what do you recommend for new expats moving here and considering residency should they apply right away or how long would you recommend for them to wait well the marketing ploy on the internet is they scare you into thinking you need to your residency as soon as you get here which is not obviously not true but people people it works the marketing of that does work because the emails i get most people haven't even been here and they're like how do i get my residency and they've never visited they may even if they let's say they will i'll even give them the benefit let's say they were here for vacation or something my point is a lot of times they haven't lived in country for nine months a year a year and a half they're getting their res thinking about the residency way too quick and you don't need to that's the biggest thing you don't you don't need to do that but they do scare you on the internet of their marketing ploy and that people that that do the residency the programs for you get to help you get your residency their marketing is such that it scares you into thinking you need to apply oh they're changing the laws in costa rica you can't i mean uh don't have the long lines don't be stressed out don't leave you know i mean they kind of scare you into thinking that costa rica has changed the laws you know that okay they're working on you know and that there's huge lines when you cross the border yeah all that stuff is is crap the people that have problems crossing the borders are people that aren't ready with their paperwork that's who usually has the problems costa rica has a worse bark than their bite they might give you a hard time but even if they give you a hard time or let's say they don't give you 90 days they give you 60. so what it does it doesn't mean anything yeah really so what is entailed with uh getting your residency i know we've talked uh we've recently found out you have to get vaccines to get be right to be resident is that true no that's not true or at least it wasn't true for me and i haven't heard that so what you're doing what they do is uh depending on the type of residency you're getting because there's like five or six different types the most popular here is is probably at least one of the most popular is the retired one where you're you're just putting your social security check as you know a guarantee of money coming in and that's what oh they're molding even people that are millionaires that's the one they're using usually okay you know there's there's six yes right so now rentista you you need to prove that you're bringing in more money a month so that's like 2500 you have to prove that so the first couple things you need to do is you would have to prove your income like for me i had to take uh screenshots of three months of my income to show that i had at least 2500 coming in they also do a uh uh sheriff's like background check like they would do in the united states now i i had no part of that so whoever you know whoever got my residency the people that worked with me they got that okay i i didn't do it okay okay like the lawyer yes the lawyer so they did call me and they said mike we'll meet you in san jose we have to go get your fingerprints this is prior kind of prior part of this thing and then you just sit basically and wait i really didn't do much of anything to be honest with you okay really but that piece of paper that they give you allows you to not cross the border every three months yeah but there's a problem with that and they haven't fixed this so yes it does and you do not have to leave but to keep your driver's license current from the states it's only current as long as your passport stamp is current so if you have if you have so you still kind of need to cross if you want to drive yes you know and you're not a driver so that didn't bother you well i am a driver but and i mean i'm not saying do what i do because i wouldn't but that that's kind of stuff doesn't bother me if i'm gonna drive i'm driving because i i'm saying you don't own a car right but yes so you have to to keep your driver's license current yours you need to to cross basically okay so okay but other than that yes that stamp is good for everything else what percentage of expats don't make it here and why and why and after how many years uh do they leave on average i think i i don't have scientific proof man but i i've got a lot of experience i know a lot of people talk to a lot of people and that number is pretty high okay average what do you think i think it's going to be it's got to be upwards to 70 percent okay i really believe that maybe maybe even more and people most excuse most people will tell you when they leave when they didn't make it in costa rica it was either a money thing they came down here to do you know to make money and that rarely works kind of like that because the big joke here is you need two million dollars to make a million dollars and that's that's kind of true uh the other thing is so let's say you have money you know your the money's not the issue right you know you come down like a retiree or whatever the problem is kind of almost be careful what you wish for because now you've got too much you have a lot of time on your hands and i think people can't deal with that crazy but the thing is they don't tell you that so what they like to do is they like to go back home and they go man costa rica is expensive costa rica's this costa rica's that they take almost zero responsibility for the fact that they didn't make it here because it's too hard to go i didn't make it because i didn't do what i said i was going to do i said i was going to write a novel i said if i had time i was going to go back to sculpting i said i was going to do organic you know now you got time you have no excuses anymore right you know so this is very true my personal opinion is that's what it is because i've seen it a lot i've seen that a lot people get bored because they don't know what to do it's just you know and you know this kind of happened to me and people i'm around you know drinking you got every day is a friday night here if you guys would have came if you guys would have came 14 years ago and we did you would see that our days although we worked pretty hard there was a lot the party was almost every day wow almost every day people comment tourists come in you're meeting all of a sudden lunches into dinner 19 beers in and it was like almost a daily kind of occurrence because it's like a perpetual vacation especially for the first year and a half because you're kind of the first year and maybe you guys don't know it but it's still kind of a honeymoon period really the everyday living here doesn't really start setting into a year and a half two years here because right now you're doing you know you've changed your house you're looking for where you want to be you're getting things established you're saying once you settle into like one resident where you're gonna be for a long time that's when they're gonna leave so once they start realizing that the time frame people leave and don't make it is usually probably between two and three years because the all that you know you're getting here you're buying buying a car you're starting this you're doing that go wait in line over there get go work on my residency you know all that stuff you're busy you're busy you're busy you're doing it but then all of a sudden you're sitting there and you're like yeah those drinks let me think about this for a minute and that's that's that is an issue because if you were somewhat of a drinker which a lot you know whatever's just wine at night or whatever yeah this place can turn you know five o'clock wine to you know 12 o'clock yeah exactly pretty amazing new mine yeah exactly so if you live most of your time in for tuna and if not or just in your observations what is it like in the other parts of the country in your opinion as even as well as even the climate if you can talk about well i've lived i've been here the whole time i've been opportunity for the whole 15 years for a number of reasons one since i do run kind of a tourist agency type of thing this is kind of a a you know la platoon is arguably one of the number one destinations so i get to meet a lot of people coming in my you know i sell tours and things so that um the climate here i don't think the you know there's a reason there's not a lot of gringos here in fortuna i don't know if you know that but i would say the numbers probably less than 60. we tried to count them one time oh really yeah you can't you can't come up with them and if they are they're you know they most of the gringos here kind of keep to themselves if you notice you think that most of them gravitate to the larger cities like see a dot and no not there no no no no no they go into main places like the vegas you've got a tennis you've got gracia you've got san ramon is the place not cedar casanas most of them aren't more in that area uh you get and you just go up and down the line the tamarindo area nosara samara right um yeah but here a lot for two is really not a big and and i'm sorry i didn't always say it's kind of humid here you know it's a little hotter than sometimes most people's liking it can rain here sometimes it's like have we seen the sun in the last but then we've had these last three glorious days well yeah and then when it's beautiful i just i mean i never get sick of a tuna i never get sick of the urinal volcano so to me i i feel very comfortable here although i could do what i do anywhere in the country but i'm i i like it i like and i think it's a good hub to venture out in there you know well it's like san jose it's kind of centrally located so you can kind of get to any part of the country fairly quickly like it's not a very long drive yeah most people are gravitate especially if they're older gravitate towards the central valley you're there and ask because they're in that area they're closer to san jose because of hospitals exactly you know they're closer they they i'm not saying they're usually replicating their life more than they are changing their truth that was one thing we went out today and we rode to um aguazarkas and cia da quesada and i was thinking i was like you know i keep every day or every week i start thinking though do i love this life is this great you know and i keep finding something to say that i really enjoy it and i'm not much of a rural girl and i'm here i'm living a more rural life than i was before i said you know it's it is nice it's peaceful and it's beautiful and just as long as i have that a little bit of modern technology it's fine like the internet you know it's a very calming you know life if you can do calming true you know that's the problem a lot of people and no you know city people have a very difficult time with the candidates the lights and no for me that was for me that was the huge change that i wanted you know uh i was kind of just over having to deal with people every time i walk out of my apartment building and and i just it just for many other reasons too but it was just like too many people like we were living in long beach california it was just well you're on it you know in the states you're pretty much on the hamster wheel i mean you can't it's hard to get away from it yeah even when you try you know it's everyone's on a schedule i'm going you know right here here and here picking up the kids do this you know marketing pretty much pretty much i wouldn't say exactly my life is like the heart of dixie if people have seen the show the hard dixie or doc hollywood it's kind of like you pick someone from the city and put them in a small town i kind of feel like that it's just different and it's you know i'm adapting and things are working out green acres but yeah the transition was it has been a hard transition in the beginning it's not as harder now every day a little easier but in the beginning it was a harder transition to to do but i'm enjoying it i lived in vermont for over 10 years so i could do more rural than this so me do you recommend buying or renting a home before coming to the country well i i mean i'm i'm legendary in my thinking of this i i just don't see any reason to buy anything down here again unless you've got money or less do people buy yes and i'm not saying they necessarily okay can i ask you a sub question do you own property or a house here in college i do own property but not do you know that actually i don't even know that no i own property because it came with my uh deal when i came down here all the places i mean i got ripped off but i did it came with a a thousand square foot piece of property next to the volcano i mean it's beautiful i'm up over by nara okay oh yeah i own a lot of land up there okay uh i'm not sure yeah that's a whole nother thing i think renting is just the way to go just for so many reasons a if you're kind of working off a budget you can find cheap rentals not just because of what's going on now but in general you can you can leave when you want to you're not tied to anything and maybe costa rica is not for you man so why i mean how many people because they write me this is why i know some of these answers because people are writing me mike i'm leaving back to the states mike i'm leaving back to canada i got a farm you know it's like why did you come yeah well you know i mean i guess you know mom could be sick or something i don't really know the reasons i just know when you rent it's easier to do whatever pick up and go anything yeah so i'm just big on renting i think you should you should be here in country living a life at least two years until you kind of go hey i would like to start an organic farm right i'd like to start growing teak whatever it is that you want to do honestly i just think like there are so many different areas of costa rica that i mean while you know you say la fortuna's great and you've always lived here i mean there are lots of people you talk to them they say oh yeah you know the the you know yeah the nikoi peninsula that's the best or you know our friend wes just moved to puerto vienna look what he's doing so he's he he was i met him he he saw my videos a long time ago and we he we hooked up for dinner here and we became pretty good friends and to me he's kind of doing it right so he's down here he stayed here for how long a year about a year he's like hey i want to go down to puerto vallarta so what's he doing he's going down the corner and if he likes it he can stay there and he can you know whatever or if he doesn't he's like hey man let me go let me go uh go on the east coast or something i mean the west coast that's kind of nice it gives you a lot of freedom and then after you kind of know what's going on you you cause you've decided that costa rica might be in your carts for a longer period of time hey man you knock yourself out right i just i just see no reason why see that's what i mean getting residency buying a property you don't have to do these things no i think you know even if you've been to the country and you've visited areas living here is a totally different experience well there's no correlation and and uh you know after you spend like eight or nine months in one area after we spent one month in new york we i mean we recognized that you know that that was 29 days too many kind of i mean you know we we didn't have a couple more months i like to put digs into the way the house that we lived in was really nice it was a gringo style home so it was really comfortable it was hot water in every sink and we could flush whatever we wanted down the toilet and you know there were all those kind of comforts but you know honestly we had zero pretty much zero kind of like social interaction like peer interaction and uh community yeah and it just for us they go to bed at 3 30 but for us you know what bam it wasn't until we lived there that we recognized that you know what that wasn't for us now we moved to el castillo we love it there we'd love to live there but after living there for a month we recognized that the internet wasn't fast enough yeah there's you know and those are good things and what if you would have you know been roped you know you got you're caught up in the romance of it and i bought property yeah so yeah okay now i can't work online yeah and a lot of times unfortunately people do get caught up in the romance of it and that's why like you just said a vacation is not living here not even actually there is no correlation no no it's not no and and i know you don't know everybody that comes here and i'm some people do follow up with you do you know the percentage of relationships that last that come as a couple has that ever come up with to you or have you ever heard that or do you find it to be like stressful that you find see couples break up a lot or just curious i've seen both um i you know that's going to be the coin toss well it kind of is a coin toss because you know where where's the couple that are they is it kind of like-minded thinking like when i was i was surprised he even wanted to move here because he was so young i was like why is he want to uproot his you know right whereas in his age most people go no let me i want to live my life a little bit i don't want to just but you know he kind of came and you know obviously he's still here so yeah but other people it you know maybe they felt a little dragged into it a little bit or uh like the one partner dragged the other one and again a lot of people may not break up but they leave okay yeah so who knows what those reasons are right you know so yeah no we're we're still pretty strong that can change it so i know i've asked you some questions and we might have you know touched on you know some of the answers to the question i'm about to ask so what do you think are the top three mistakes you see new expats make moving here to costa rica um well we have kind of touched on him buying is buying something right right off the gate the number one mistake that everybody makes that everyone kind of has to make is they get gringo price right out the gate everybody i mean that's just like even when you know better i don't know why it happens but it does okay usually people get gringo price right from the very beginning so that's kind of a mistake but you learn that one fairly quickly right you know and you kind of can regroup on that you know fairly quickly um and the mistake of their you know being careful what you wish for about the time you know or or the one about that you're going to that you can change anything that's going on here or or the statistics aren't going to apply to you yes you're special and all these things they're not going to apply to you you're the exception to you're the exception to the rule and or you're going to make money down here if you're if you're coming down here for the sole purpose of a money thing you're already off on the wrong track or if you're coming down here to think you're going to live a cheaper lifestyle but you merely want to what you did say to replicate your life right so you're looking like i want what i want i just want it cheaper that's not going to work either matter of fact you're actually probably going to spend more here in the long run if that's kind of your thinking so true as long as you don't have that thinking things are affordable and you can still have some comforts here if you're not trying to replicate i can't you know i've i've had so many videos about i live here cheap i don't know what to tell you you know people go well you're just a minimalist i'm having what i i'm not i don't think i'm shorting myself from anything so somebody made the comment well yeah anybody could live like you you do if you eat beans and rice you know what well then you don't get it life is literally a series of choices yeah and you know what we all make them all the time so you know your choice is to live your lifestyle and for you it works at that price range you know we don't you know we're not going out and spending tons of money on crazy things either you know we live on a on a budget but you know there are some things that we you know that we that we treat ourselves well you are a couple and you're younger too you know i mean i was i've i've done all this right so i'm at a different part of my life so i'm just saying it is possible to live here more cheaply than people yeah absolutely yeah you know it's just i think you have to change i think you should be personally i mean just from a personal i think if you're thinking about moving down to costa rica i think it's a mind thing i think you should be looking for a change lifestyle change i agree yeah i think you should be looking to live a more simpler life with some simpler people in a simpler time and totally it's a mindset thing i don't think the reasons you know what's everybody it is everybody's first reason is oh i wouldn't go to costa rica because it's too expensive but that's that's that might be a criteria but that's like saying okay well then live in bangladesh there's other there's other reasons right you know is the government good where is it about the infrastructure is medical goods so you have to play all these things it's not just about money if you show me a place that's a lot cheaper i'll show you a place that might have some other serious issues agreed like let's say nicaragua right go to nicaragua much cheaper and it's and you know what just as beautiful right it's the state it's pretty much the same landscape it's the same landscape if you like ortega and you trust that government go for it i know i have i know personal stories that have happened to people in nicaragua and they are not good okay and you got think you got rights you say you know so i just when people go oh i would never go to costa rica it's too expensive well you were already on the wrong track right i i can't even talk to you because it's like you're not even thinking about this bigger picture of you know that shouldn't be a reason it shouldn't really it plays but it's not the it shouldn't be the main reason like the only reason i came to costa rica was because i need to save money it's like no that's not the good and then you know the making money and then people thinking that they can do like if somebody's going to run a business here you can't sell to ticos you're not going to make money somewhere locals it's got to be something geared towards other gringos not just tourism but anything yeah you know you're not going to make money because they don't you know it's a whole different thing people think they're going to come down here and start something and they don't they don't have the same monetary income on an average that even those who live on a budget do you know they just they don't you know they for instance we have a friend who's a kiko who just got a job with amazon they work for amazon here in costa rica and they in their mind believe they make a lot of money a month but they're only taking home i think seven or seven hundred fifty dollars hey man it's all about deception it's all about perception you know and it's all about a lifestyle you know he's grown up with a certain level of lifestyle so to him that's a lot of money because his family lived on 400 a month right so so he's making a lot of money for them i think perception is a huge factor in i think what we're talking about yep definitely i forgot two questions my apologies um so what are your views on having insurance or medical um and your views of the professional industry as far as like doctors or dentists and other having insurance what is your well you're going to hate this answer and anybody listen is going to hate this answer because i just i it's honest answer it's not it's not good i i live a different life and my mind is maybe in a different place than most peoples well my time i have never i just the only reason i have insurance now is because i'm a resident exactly which you have to put into the cajon i didn't have insurance for 12 13 years i mean when you had when you had businesses or jobs that facilitated you obviously i i was ahead of family of course yeah i mean you know i had made a lot of money back then this whole different i lived a whole different lifestyle but now i'm kind of more animal-like if i get hurt i go in a corner and i sit and make your own wait until it either does what needs to do or if it doesn't work and i you know you never hear from me again kind of so be it so i know michael he's crawling in the corner look in his wounds i'll be honest i've kind of always been the person that you know what i'm gonna curl up in that corner and if it doesn't get better depending on what the issue is if it doesn't get better after a certain amount of time i'm gonna be like okay maybe i need to see a doctor see i'm not a lingerer so i mean this again this is probably not good for this interview if like if they found out i had cancer okay i got cancer i'm not what am i gonna i'm not i'm done man i don't you're not a chemo kind of guy no i'm definitely not matter of fact i just heard some sad news one of my good friends here i don't know if you i don't think you ever met her she does have cancer she's back in the states right now dealing with this and she's kind of me and her kind of got the same sort of mindset i just i i'm not sure if i'd really go for anything medical on anything not even the cannabis yeah well maybe yeah that but i'm just saying if i got a serious issue i would just either can take control of my end of days right or i would just go you know i don't know i just think with my i keep myself as healthy as i can you know so we'll see how long that goes and but to me all every day is is sugar on cereal so okay so how about the other the other part oh wait let me answer the other part okay uh you said that what was it's insurance how do you think what do you think of the medical professional no no you have doctors do you think it's do you think it's good well you you know they got they got how many they got hospitals exactly like the states just as doing the same things if not better you know sema hospital you can go there and be pretty confident that you're going to get the same level of care and actually for a lot of things it's going to be cheaper that's good but the reason most people in don't usually do like big like they get let's say cancer for instance they go back to the states a lot of times because they've kept their insurance you know okay and they go back that way and they do they want to be around family most people when it gets serious although a place like sema could do it see if they're paying into the kaha and they got cancer or there's a big issue this is socialized medicine right so it's all gonna be covered yeah but you're you're not getting in you know what i mean so you're not getting in you might not get in for six months oh okay that's what happened here next door that's his father okay oh okay i know yeah we know you have a problem but uh we'll look at that in four months oh that's unfortunate you know what kind of thing because they only have so many so so obviously when it's something major you're not probably going to do the car like that you know the socialized medicine here so you could go to the hospital and it probably would be a little cheaper but it's going to be never ending cash out of pocket and i just think most people most people keep the older set the ones that are there on the uh pencil and autos and stuff tend to keep their keeps keep some ties at home usually that's just enough um the other one i want to ask is about people trying that live here wanting to get mail in how easy do you think it is for them to get mail sent here as well as things from amazon what's your experience well mail is you know a po box but but it's not this simple like that anymore we used to get sent boxes and i could get them uh and and the big thing now is to send it through like florida so you know they'll do that like that or or they'll somebody you'll pay a pretty big fee and it will come to your door but you're paying you know they're paying the import taxes on it and that because everyone gets sick of the same thing everything gets stuck in san jose and you got to go back and get it nobody likes to do that yeah but me and d'angelo for instance have just been and most people people bring us our stuff in i mean we don't really you know whatever we need there's try to avoid it there's always somebody coming in if we need a new computer need a new phone anything tag anything that's dangerous we've even since i run it you know the travel agency i mean i'll have people that i don't even really know that about packages from me and they'll ask me do you have anything you know i can bring you right okay yes he has people bringing his stuff in all the time so people that live here at least my friends maybe somewhere else different no waiver aaron all probably does it different but here we have people come in we have friends coming in you're running like like for instance you've gone back to the states yeah obviously when you come back you should be loading up on whatever yeah and it kind of ends up working itself out like that right so we we always had a p.o box obviously the mail pretty much stops we're not getting a whole lot of stuff but we had it for things like uh you know a debit card right but even those things we have people bring in right you know all the stuff we have people bring it in that to me that's the easy is that other route of the where the that company pays the import taxes all that stuff uh is pretty expensive yeah and it's just i don't have to do it so i just don't and you won't either you know when you hear about somebody's going back or you're going back you'll exactly you'll man your cart to step back true do you have any more questions okay so what are your top five last question top five recommendations for people considering to move here check out the videos that travel costa rica now no i think that's a good idea that it's good link is in the description absolutely well my thing my thing is i think you have to be in a position to where you're trying to change your life i think that's number one i think you have to look at your personality can you adjust and adapt are you highly strong you know or do you get upset easy is it my way or the highway type of thinking you have to look at yourself and see if if you're even ready for a place like costa rica who's on a whole different wavelength of living so if you're like hey where's that guy at he was supposed to be here so i think a lot of it is almost the person and where they are in their life i think that's probably the biggest thing they should be looking that's why i kind of said my videos not because i'm promoting myself but i've always kind of there's a lot of people that make videos here and they show their lives on the beach and they do their atvs and stuff i i try to inform on a whole a little bit more different level maybe more a personal approach like things you really need to look out for you know the cultural things things that might that that the culture you may not be able to you don't like right you know it might really be irritating to you yeah you know and you're coming again you're coming into another country it's a whole different thing and i so i just think you need to be ready to move down here yeah your mindset needs to be on the right track or close to okay and most people to be honest aren't there yeah no they're not i mean that's why they they leave for a lot of reasons but it is hard it's got to be higher than 50 it's got to be okay it's got to be i mean am i i mean i've known a lot of people i've talked to a lot of people actually i wanted to make a video of the people i've actually interviewed over the years who are not here in the army yes i want to say i want to put like an ex on and not not because not it's not a it's not a mark against them because it could have been mom got sick or whatever you know but it just shows though over all those like you have over 500 videos and how many people you've interviewed and then how many of those people have actually are still here yeah and then the people i talk to and just different experiences and costa rica's changing it is you know it is getting there's no doubt that it's getting more expensive if you don't watch yourself and that's what i mean if you're not ready to live a simpler life if your wants outpace your needs and i you know i want my my seven tvs i want what i want you're good you might be it may not be ready for because you're gonna be uh stressed out with how much it actually costs right so exactly just think my thing is more based on those kind of things okay more personal you know are you ready to go that was one that was one i know but i think they all pretty much encompass that kind of stuff i think i just really think people need to do their homework a lot of people don't some people get caught up uh thinking that the vacation is living down here you know and and who doesn't yeah i mean you're here you're going to have a good time you're going to have a good time you are going to fall in love with it it is less stressful to live here it's the exact it's one of the reasons when i'm talking about giving doing an informational video where i think it's an informational video it's why i'm in my kitchen because i don't want to give you eye candy we already know costa rica is beautiful i don't want to create these images to make you to try to get you two cons outside your window and this kind of thing i want to give you straight information so you're not you're not distracted by eye candy like if you need a spoonful of sugar to help the medicine go down right so that's why you know i think you need to do your research and homework you need to be coming down here for the right reasons it can't most of the things can't be money-oriented right uh whether it's even start a business that's fine but if you're not talking about starting a business make a million dollars a million dollars that whole better bring two million because that kind of is is true and it is realistic that you can start a business and and live off of it i mean that can't exist if you open the right business and you spend a lot of time researching to know where and what you need to open yeah yeah but you know i've seen some pretty bad marketing uh mishaps here i mean almost laughable on a scale of this my favorite my favorite example from you is the uh uh sex head shop in la fortuna well there's a reason that guy went missing and he is dead so seriously that's a whole nother story well i want to thank michael allen for joining us here today and uh i think we gave some pretty good information uh to share with people yeah if we hadn't stopped people from coming to costa rica i don't know what happened come on come to costa rica look if any of us are trying to tell you that costa rica is horrible and you should never move here then you're i think misreading the whole video because obviously we love it here or else we wouldn't have moved if you're coming and you're coming for your reasons then we hope we can give you share this information to give you some good insight because michael allen's videos helped us we're just trying to pay it forward for all of you coming up exactly you know uh a realistic view sometimes i think can maybe like you said sometimes there's too much reality for some people you know it's like here's the other thing so a lot of people and this is traveling and living here i get the same kind of question okay you know we want to travel here we want to be off the beaten path we want we don't want to be in the tourist areas well you know what that really means they want to be off the beaten path but it needs to be next to a freeway right you know what i mean and that doesn't really exist mo it doesn't actually you know so if people really wanted to change their life and come to costa rica to live why don't they go to agua circus right it would be cheap you know what i mean yeah but they don't they want to be they want to say they want to be there and they still want to be in the kitchen they because all the gringos go there but why don't you go 20 miles that way into some bum town you know a nice town but a very quaint little town you could live a very inexpensive life exactly but you know what nobody does that so anyway well again so thanks for joining us and honestly i got more to say honestly we loved his videos because of how informational and educational they were and they just opened our eyes to real things we had to consider before moving down here not just like he said the eye candy and all the positive things there you know anywhere you go the united states china costa rica there are good and bad things and i i wanted to hear some of the negative things that some people who lived here knew about so that i could consider those things and how i may or may not you know be able to fit in and i've been like i was a fish out of water coming here i i was ready to go i was ready to come you know start this brand new chapter of my life here and was totally i don't know if i was terrified but i really was nervous but i was open and ready to come and um every day has been an adventure it's been ups and downs but it's been more more goods and then bads so more positives than negatives so i am happy here and that's the attitude you need to have because that's what it is that's life man this is yeah there are no limits you're still living life positive the negatives next week there may not be that's not that's not the point is how do you deal with them how do you you know and that's the kind of thing that i i think is maybe more important about living here yeah because we got the beauty man yeah we got the beauty and it's a you know tranquilo it's a tranquil kind of place and relaxing very reduced stress place so yeah it has all of those amazing things that's i mean that's what brought me here i'm pretty sure that's part of what video is during covid i really miss the hot springs it's closed because it's public but if you watch this when it's over we really miss the hot springs so much the free ones yeah yeah well again hope you enjoyed check out one of the videos popping up catch you guys next time

Channel: J in Costa Rica on a Moto

Views: 482

Keywords: michael alan, living in costa rica, moving to costa rica, la fortuna costa rica blog, rental property, travel costa rica now, la fortuna, gringo pricing, buying property in costa rica, renting in costa rica, top 5, costa rica, travelcostaricanow.com

Id: FwP8-P5SViI

Length: 45min 16sec (2716 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 13 2020