Moving to Costa Rica from the US: The Honest Guide

We moved from Denver to Costa Rica in March 2020, which turned out to be an interesting week to immigrate anywhere. My husband had been working remotely for two years. Our kids were four and seven. We had visited Costa Rica twice, both times on vacation, and we had done what I thought was a lot of research. Six years in, I can tell you the research I did was not the research I needed.

This is the guide I wish someone had written for me. Not the visa breakdown — there are a hundred of those online. The actual experience of packing up your life in the US and restarting it in a country where the grocery store does not carry the cereal your kid eats and the water gets turned off for eight hours on Tuesdays because a pipe broke up the road.

If you are seriously considering this, what follows is the honest version.

The First Thing to Understand: Why People Leave

Most people I know who moved here and stayed came for one of three reasons: cost of living, climate, or a real, specific dissatisfaction with life in the US that Costa Rica happens to solve. The people who came because they were chasing a feeling they got on a two-week vacation are mostly not here anymore. They lasted eighteen months, sometimes less, and went back.

I am not saying that to be grim. I am saying it because moving here is a big, expensive, disruptive decision and the version of Costa Rica you fall in love with on a week at a beach rental is not the version you will be living in. Your week was a vacation. Your life is still going to be your life, just in Spanish, with different grocery stores and a more humid climate.

The people who do well here arrive with realistic expectations, a plan for income, and enough flexibility to tolerate a year of things going sideways.

The Visa Reality (The Short Version)

I am not a lawyer and rules change, so please verify anything here with an actual immigration attorney before you file. But at a practical level, here is how it works.

You can come to Costa Rica as a tourist for up to 180 days at immigration's discretion. No visa needed. This is how most people start — they come for six months, confirm they actually want to live here, and then file for residency.

The four main residency paths for Americans are Pensionado (retirees with at least $1,000/month in pension income), Rentista (proof of $2,500/month for two years or a $60,000 deposit in a Costa Rican bank), Inversionista ($150,000 investment in approved businesses or real estate), and the Digital Nomad visa (proof of $3,000/month income, $5,000 if bringing family).

We went the Rentista route. The application took about ten months from filing to approval. Expect to pay an immigration attorney somewhere between $2,500 and $5,000 for the whole process, and expect to submit documents more than once because something will be missing or translated wrong or apostilled incorrectly. This is normal.

Do not try to DIY the residency application unless you already speak fluent Spanish and have a high tolerance for bureaucratic paperwork. The attorneys exist for a reason.

What Our First Month Actually Looked Like

I want to describe this because every guide I read before we moved skipped straight from "you have your visa" to "enjoy your new life." There is a gap in there that nobody talks about.

We landed at SJO on a Sunday. We had an Airbnb booked in Escazú for a month while we looked for a longer-term rental. Our four suitcases took up the whole living room. My younger kid spent the first night crying because she could not find her stuffed rabbit, which was actually in the suitcase I had unpacked first, but at that point we were all too tired to problem-solve.

Week one was logistics. We bought local SIM cards at Kölbi. We got a rental car for a month. We opened a preliminary bank account with BAC San José, which took three visits and about six hours total.

Week two I tried to buy groceries at Auto Mercado and spent $340. For groceries. For four people. For a week. I got home, unpacked, and nearly cried. Then I figured out that Auto Mercado is the most expensive grocery chain in Costa Rica because it carries a lot of imported products, and that if I shopped at Maxi Pali or the weekly farmers market (the feria) and bought Costa Rican brands instead of American ones, I could cut our grocery bill roughly in half.

Week three my older kid started at a bilingual school and came home the first day with his head on my shoulder crying that he did not understand anything and he wanted to go home. He meant Denver.

Week four I went to the municipalidad to figure out something about our rental and spent four hours across two visits learning that the paperwork I needed required a document that I did not know existed and could only be issued at a different office across town.

This is what the first month is. If you are going to move here, know this going in. It gets easier. But it starts hard.

The Real Cost of Living in Costa Rica

Every article on cost of living gives you a range — $1,500 to $3,000 a month — and calls it a day. That range is so wide it is useless. Here is what we actually spend as a family of four in the Central Valley, living modestly but not frugally, in 2026.

Rent: $1,800/month for a three-bedroom house in Escazú. A similar house in Santa Ana runs $1,600 to $2,200. In a beach town like Tamarindo or Nosara, the same house is $2,500 to $4,000. In a less expat-heavy town, $900 to $1,400.

Groceries: About $900/month for the four of us, after I learned to shop mostly at Maxi Pali and the feria. Imported products are two to three times US prices. Produce, eggs, chicken, rice, beans, and locally made dairy are cheaper and often better.

Utilities: Electricity $80 to $220/month depending on AC use. Water around $25. Internet (fiber) $55 for 300 mbps.

Health insurance: CAJA (public) at about $180/month for the family. Plus a private international plan through BUPA at $380/month for all of us.

Schooling: Older kid at a bilingual school in Escazú, $680/month. Younger at a Montessori preschool, $450/month. High end runs $13,000 to $22,000 per year. Good bilingual schools exist for $350 to $500/month.

Car: Used Toyota RAV4 for $18,000. Used cars are expensive because of 50 to 80 percent import taxes. Gas about $5.30/gallon. Marchamo (annual vehicle tax) around $450/year.

Eating out: A soda lunch runs $25 to $35 for four. Mid-range restaurant in Escazú $70 to $110 for four.

All in, we spend $4,200 to $4,800 a month. We could do it for $3,000 by moving further out, using cheaper school, and skipping private insurance. We could also spend $8,000 by moving to a beach town. Your number depends on where you live and what kind of lifestyle you are rebuilding.

Where You Live Matters More Than Anything Else

"Costa Rica" is not a single place. Moving to Atenas is a completely different life than moving to Nosara, which is completely different from San José.

The Central Valley (San José, Escazú, Santa Ana, Atenas, Grecia) is where most of the infrastructure lives. Major hospitals, the embassy, the airport, the best private schools. It is also the least tropical part of Costa Rica. Temperatures sit in the 70s most of the year.

The Pacific coast (Guanacaste, Nicoya Peninsula, the central Pacific) is the tropical version. Beaches, heat, surf towns, stronger expat communities. It is also more expensive and the infrastructure is thinner — the nearest full hospital is often 45 minutes to two hours away.

The Caribbean coast (Puerto Viejo, Cahuita) is cheaper, much smaller, and has its own distinct Afro-Caribbean culture. Fewer services, but a loyal community.

Mountain towns (Monteverde, San Isidro del General) are cool, misty, beautiful, and remote.

Spend real time — weeks, not days — in the area you are thinking about before you commit. Rent before you buy. The person who moves to a beach town without ever having lived through a Costa Rican rainy season is in for a long October.

The Culture Shock Nobody Warns You About

I expected the language barrier. I expected the slower pace. What I did not expect was how much of my own cultural programming I was going to have to unlearn.

Things in Costa Rica happen when they happen. The electrician says he will come at 10 a.m. and he shows up at 2 p.m. the next day. Your neighbor invites you to her daughter's quinceañera at 7 p.m. and the party starts around 9.

For my first six months I was furious about this almost daily. I eventually got it. The pace is not about disrespect. It is a genuinely different cultural framework where relationships matter more than schedules, and the American expectation that time equals respect does not map onto it. The adjustment does not happen by being told about it. It happens by living through it and noticing, at some point, that you are not angry anymore and you are having a better time.

Also, customer service is different. In the US, the customer is right. In Costa Rica, the customer is a human interacting with another human, and if you walk in demanding and rude, you will be treated politely but nothing will go your way. Patience and warmth get you everywhere here.

Raising Kids Here

This was the part I was most nervous about and it has ended up being, probably, the best thing about our move.

Costa Rica is genuinely good for children. Kids are welcome everywhere — restaurants, offices, parties. People talk to your children. Strangers pat your baby. The culture is deeply family-oriented in a way that was unfamiliar to us and ended up being one of the reasons we stayed.

Schools are a real mixed bag and you need to visit them in person. The range at bilingual private schools is enormous — some are excellent, some are essentially daycare with a logo. The only way to tell the difference is to tour, ask to see a classroom, and talk to other parents.

Our older kid took about four months to stop crying at dropoff. Around month eight he had his first real friend whose parents only spoke Spanish. By the end of year one, he was translating at restaurants. He is now fully bilingual and indistinguishable at school from the local kids. Our younger one does not even remember Denver.

The hard part for kids is making friends, especially at first. Play dates here are less structured than in the US. Birthday parties often include the whole class. Kids play in the street. Our son is outside every afternoon with neighborhood kids, which was not really happening in Denver.

Healthcare Is Actually Fine

The CAJA system (public healthcare) is universal, and as a legal resident you pay into it based on declared income. The care is real medicine. It is also slow — a non-urgent specialist appointment can be six months out.

Private healthcare is the reason most expats maintain a dual setup. Clínica Bíblica, CIMA, and Hospital Metropolitano are real modern hospitals where the doctors trained at US and European universities, most speak English, and a visit with a specialist costs $80 to $150 out of pocket. An MRI runs $400 to $700.

My husband's appendectomy all-in, including hospital stay, was about $8,400. An ER visit for our younger kid was $180. Both experiences were better than any medical experience we had in the US.

Two caveats: if you live in a remote area, the nearest private hospital may be ninety minutes away. And for a serious, complicated diagnosis, you may want to fly back to the US for treatment.

Making Friends (The Harder Part)

Nobody warns you about this enough. Moving to a new country in your thirties or forties is a social reset. The friends you made through college, your job, your kids' school in the US — all of them are gone. You start from zero.

Making Costa Rican friends takes time. Ticos are warm and welcoming in a surface way but slow to form close friendships, partly because their lives are already deeply structured around extended family.

Expat friendships form faster but are also volatile. People leave. The couple you become close with in year one is gone by year three because their business did not work out, or their visa hit a snag, or they missed their grandchildren.

What worked for us: showing up to the same places consistently. The same gym, the same coffee shop, the same church, the same kids' activities. Give it two years before you decide you have no friends. You will.

What We Gave Up

I miss Target. I miss the ease of being able to buy almost anything I need in one trip. I miss fall. Costa Rica has two seasons and I did not realize how much I built emotional rhythm around the changing seasons until I did not have them anymore. I miss my mother. She has visited once a year since we moved. My kids FaceTime her weekly. It is not the same. I miss being able to say "I will just run out and grab it" and have that take twenty minutes instead of ninety.

None of this is a reason not to move. But it is the picture that is usually missing from the guides.

What We Got

Our days are slower. My kids are outside for hours every afternoon. We have mountains on one side and the ocean ninety minutes away. The food is fresher. We cook more because we want to, not because we should. Our health is better.

I know my neighbors. I know the names of the people who work at the pharmacy and the feria. My kids speak two languages and move between two cultures like they have always done it, because they have.

We live on less money than we spent in Denver, and the life we have is, in almost every measurable way, better. This is not because Costa Rica is magic. It is because the cost of the American middle class was higher than I realized, and most of what it was buying us was not happiness.

If You Are Thinking About It

Come for a month before you commit. Not two weeks, not a vacation at a resort. Rent a house. Buy groceries. Take your kids to the local park. Drive around in rainy season traffic. Sit in a CCSS line. See how you feel after the novelty has worn off.

If after a month you still want to do it, you are the kind of person who will probably do well here. If you are still counting the days until you go home, that is also useful information.

Come because you want a different kind of life and you are willing to do the hard parts of building one. That is the only version of moving to Costa Rica that works.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Laura Whitfield

Laura moved to Costa Rica from the US in 2020 with her husband and two kids. She writes for Build Tropical about the unfiltered realities of expat life in Central America.