I want to thank you. I read your book [Living Abroad in Costa Rica]  in December of 09. At the time I was going through some rough times (death and divorce), and I decided to travel to Costa Rica to just get some relief. I was dazzled by it. I was there seven days, the Central Valley (San José and the Arenal area), and the mid-Pacific area (Jacó, Quepos, Manual Antonio), and you’re right, it’s a little bit of paradise.

I truly want to live there or try it. I live in Minnesota and except for summer cannot stand it. At present I work as a metal worker. I am a shop foreman in a steel/aluminum plant with 30 men under me. I have always been a man of the left (social democrat, democratic socialist, trade union type). I want to simplify my life, I am done with the rat race, and I just cannot do it any more. I want to live intentionally. If you know any community or communal style living, like a religious or spiritual group, I may be interested.

I am 58, and have about 4 years before I can get Social Security, but have a bit of money in my 401k plan (I lost a fair amount in the stock exchange). How much would I need a year to live, renting a house somewhere in a town outside San Jose or around La Fortuna? I have in mind a smaller two-bedroom home with a small yard for my Collies. Could I find something for $500 – $600 a month? I would also need to buy into the national health insurance; would that be about $60.00 a month? I own two motorcycles–I would ship both to Costa Rica, also mountain and racing bicycles.

Could I do it all on $1,600 a month, or about $20,000 a year?

Thanks,

Dan

To read my detailed answer to Dan, and to see the added suggestions of many expats living in Costa Rica, head on over to my Costa Rica blog.

Photo of footbridge on Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula by David W. Smith.

“First, if you already have a pensionado visa granting you residency in Panama, you may import US$10,000 worth of used household goods duty-free. If you don’t have residency, you’ll have to pay customs duty on everything. Basically it’s 5% as far as I know. It depends, however, on the discretion of the customs guys to appraise the value of the goods, so it’s an open field (and subject to how much you’re willing to bribe). It doesn’t help to show receipts from where you bought the stuff; they are free to appraise whatever they want.”

Heading for Chiriqui? Arrange for customs clearance in David

“Try to avoid having customs clearance done in Balboa harbor (that’s the harbor at the Pacific end of the Panama Canal) or in Colon (at the Caribbean end of the canal). If you’re intending to live anywhere in the province of Chiriqui [like the expat haven of Boquete], ask the shipping agent to have the container dispatched to David [after it goes through the canal] for customs clearance. To achieve this it is very important to have the destination in the Bill of Loading read: “To____(the place where you’re going to live) via David” Insist on this with your U.S. shipping agent and/or the local agent contracted by the U.S. shipper.

“There’s a very small customs office near the David airport, and it’s much easier to get the stuff through customs here. There’s a lady named Juana who’s in charge of imports (Spanish speaking only), and a small “regalo” (gift) passed discretely via handshake helps smooth the procedure considerably.”

Don’t sit on your hands

“It is also very important and helpful to be present in person a couple of days before the shipment is due to arrive in port [Balboa or Colon], and to contact the local agent directly. Get involved — don’t leave it to the discretion of your agent! There may be many kinds of problems showing up anytime…and for every day the container stays in the harbor they’ll charge you an additional $125. Again, having the container shipped to David for customs clearance avoids this possible storage problem since the container will only stay in port for the minimum required time before going on to David. Also, David customs most likely won’t charge you exotic fees like “Quarantine exemption fee for wooden furniture” or “Fee for unusually extensive customs inspection” that might (and did, for people I know) occur at those other customs offices. It goes without saying that one should be also present at the customs office where clearance will take place.”

(Not) importing cars into Panama

Our Man in Boquete strongly advises not importing cars to Panama. “From everything I’ve heard,” he writes, “it’s a nerve-wracking and costly procedure. There’s the appraisal problem, where they don’t give a damn about what you paid for your car in the U.S. They will also keep your car(s) in custody for as long as all the necessary paperwork needs to be finished, and that can take months!

“And they’ll charge you storage costs for each and every day.

“If you’re willing to cough up a couple of grand it may speed up the procedure but why do this? Cars in Panama are reasonably priced and readily available, so unless you’ve hung your heart on a very special car it really doesn’t make sense to import a car here.

“One more note: Although by law you’re entitled to import a car duty-free every two years if you’ve got a pensionado visa, hardly anybody is doing it. Why not? Well, although you won’t have to pay customs duty, they’ll charge you a 5% “sales tax” based (again) on their free-ranging appraisal of the car’s value, plus storage fees and the whole shebang.”

Parting advice

“Basically, I’d advise to scale down the amount of stuff to be shipped. Moving to another country also is some kind of a new beginning, so why carry all that old baggage with you?”

Miss Move Abroad agrees.

Lifehacker has a short article on how to leave a job gracefully, with an interesting thread of comments from people who’ve left jobs well and (more commonly) with some clumsiness. I know I’ve been guilty of clumsiness and bridge-burning—it seems to go hand-in-hand with being a serial relocator. Most of us tend towards one of two poles: the smoother-over, who never wants to make any kind of break or change, and the bridge burner, who’s always itching to strike that match.

Over the years I could have used some of the following tips, adapted from Sandra Naiman’s book “The High Achiever’s Secret Codebook: The Unwritten Rules for Success at Work”:

1. Give two weeks’ notice. Both your past and future employer will consider it a plus.
2. Explain that you are leaving because of growth opportunities, not due to dissatisfaction, even if it’s not true.
3. On your last day, write your boss and colleagues a thank you note about how much you enjoyed working with them.
4. Offer to train your replacement, and if possible, be available after you leave to answer questions.
5. Make sure your work is caught up before you leave and write notes, when relevant, to guide and inform your replacement.
6. If you have external customers or colleagues outside of your company or organization, work with your boss on how to transition them to your replacement.
7. When telling customers or external colleagues you are leaving, say only good things about the company and your experience there.
8. Let people know you only want to leave the job, not the relationships you have built.

If you seriously consider what it would be like to stay behind every time you travel, you may be a closet expatriate for whom a week at the beach or 10 days in Europe just don’t cut it anymore.

You find yourself dreaming longer-term dreams: a top-floor apartment in an old-world capital. An open-ended stay in a ramshackle village on some forgotten coast. Opening a bed-and-breakfast in a mountain town.

More and more of us are doing it. Between 1966 and 1996, the number of Americans living abroad grew from 70,000 to 4 million, according to the U.S. State Department. By 2006, the number was an estimated 6.6 million. And those are the official counts. Other expats are living under the radar, having dropped off the map.

If you’re past the dreaming stage and want to check out a place for its long-term potential, here are some tips on how to do it.

Stay put. If you’re thinking of moving to a particular place, you’ve probably been there at least once or twice. This time, choose the town or city you liked best and stay there. Rent a villa, find a cheap hotel with a kitchenette or stay with friends.

If you dash around too much you’ll never get a sense of the country’s rhythm. And rhythm is all. It may be love at first sight, but if the beat of the place doesn’t move you, this affair won’t last.

Do everyday things. Forget the monuments, the guided tours or running those Class IV rapids. Instead, get a haircut. Do your laundry. Go with the woman next door to pay her electric bill. Shop for food and make dinner. Gossip with the man selling fennel root. Take in a church service or go to the all-you-can-eat fundraiser for the town’s fire department.

If these activities are difficult because you don’t speak the language, that tells you what you would be up against if you moved there without some language study.

Sit and watch. Find a good perch at the center of it all, and stay there. Have some props — a drink and a book — to make you feel less conspicuous. Practice the lost art of noticing. Does everything shut down between 2 and 5 p.m.? Does the town consist mostly of older women, the men and younger people having fled to the city in search of work? Is it so hot that people work the edges of the day, leaving the midday for naps in the shade?

Take photos of mundane things. The state of the roads. Highway signage (or the lack of it). The prices on menus. What’s available at the local market. The lines at the bank. The cleanliness of the beaches or streets or fields. The smiles or scowls on locals’ faces. The wildlife and insect populations.

Back home, these shots will remind you of the quality of everyday life in your dream destination. Memory plays tricks on us, and once you get home the trip will soon be shrouded in a fog of generalization. We tell friends the trip was life-altering, but we have forgotten (or altered) the particulars. This will help.

Talk to other expatriates. Find them in the market, at Internet cafes and on that traditional expat perch, the bar stool. Ask them when and why they came to be there and how it’s turning out for them. And then listen.

Try not to let your own excitement amplify their positive comments or mute their complaints. Nod when they say making the move was the best decision they have ever made. But also really hear it when they tell you it has taken three years to get permission to renovate the old castle they bought for a song. Or that they’re so starved for English they go out of their way to use the one bilingual ATM in town, just to savor the words, “Would you like a receipt?”

Wherever you go, do some of the very non-vacationy things listed above and you may come back knowing that, yes, you really do want to make the big move and soon. Or you may return with a newfound appreciation of home. Sometimes all it takes to value what you have is to seriously think about giving it up.

And consider what author Alain de Botton discovered on a trip to Barbados. “A momentous but until then overlooked fact was making itself apparent,” he wrote in “The Art of Travel.” “I had inadvertently brought myself with me to the island.”

This article by Erin Van Rheenen first appeared in the Los Angeles Time.

Photo by Robert Doisneau, 1966

Travel Alerts
U.S. State Department Travel Alerts refer to short-term conditions (like flu epidemics) that pose risks to the security of U.S. citizens (and others, of course, but the State Department concerns itself with U.S. citizens). Their web site clarifies the Travel Alert designation further:

“Natural disasters, terrorist attacks, coups, anniversaries of terrorist events, election-related demonstrations or violence, and high-profile events such as international conferences or regional sports events are examples of conditions that might generate a Travel Alert.”

The Alerts have expiration dates. For example, a Mexico alert, which centered around crime and violence (especially along the U.S.-Mexico border), expired August 20, 2009 (though alerts may be renewed at their expiration dates, as this one was).

Just because there’s a Travel Alert in place doesn’t mean you should necessarily cancel your trip. In the case of Mexico, for instance, even the Alert itself allows that

“Millions of U.S. citizens safely visit Mexico each year (including thousands who cross the land border every day for study, tourism or business),” but “violence in the country has increased recently. It is imperative that travelers understand the risks of travel to Mexico, how best to avoid dangerous situations, and whom to contact if one becomes a crime victim.”

In early 2010,  these countries were on the State Department’s Travel Alert list: India, the Philippines, Malaysia, Niger, Germany, Tanzania, and Mexico.

Travel Warnings

Travel Warnings, on the other hand, are more serious, and of special interest to those considering moving to that country. Warnings  “describe long-term, protracted conditions that make a country dangerous or unstable,” according the State Department. The Warning can also mean that the U.S. Government is hindered in helping Americans living or traveling in that country due to the closure of an embassy or consulate or because of a reduction of its staff.

The Warnings are useful in that they often give very specific information about problems and potential problems. In the case of Pakistan, for instance, we learn that

“Since 2007, several American citizens throughout Pakistan have been kidnapped for ransom or for personal reasons. Kidnappings of foreigners are particularly common in the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) and Baluchistan. In 2008, one Iranian and two Afghan diplomats, two Chinese engineers, and a Polish engineer were kidnapped in NWFP. In February 2009, an American UNHCR official was kidnapped in Baluchistan. Kidnappings of Pakistanis also increased dramatically across the country, usually for ransom.”

Still, a country being on the Travel Warnings list doesn’t mean that you should never in a million years consider going there. Independent travelers will use the warnings and alerts as starting points, seeking more information from a variety of sources. For example, I was planning a trip to Nepal a year ago (there have been Travel Warnings for Nepal for several years now). I read the State Department’s warning (paying close attention to which parts of the country were highlighted as problematic), sought out books and articles about the country and its politics, and spoke with people who’d been there recently. After all my research I concluded that I still wanted to go. Health problems made me cancel that trip, but I would have gone and still hope to go, Travel Warning or not.

And the director who recently made a movie about Surfing Gaza obviously didn’t let the Gaza and West Bank Travel Warning deter him.

Travel Warnings have no expiration dates—presumably the State Department monitors the situation and removes the warning when conditions improve.

As of early 2010, these countries were on the State Department’s Travel Warning list: Haiti, Pakistan, Sudan, Somalia, Mauritania, Chad, Mali, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Algeria, Colombia, Guinea, Lebanon, Cote d’Ivoire, Philippines, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eritrea, Central African Republic, Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, Kenya, Afghanistan, Burundi, Nigeria, Haiti, Iran, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Iraq, Georgia, and Syria.

Albuquerque made it onto US News' Top 10 Places to Live list; photo by Helen Vanderbeck

Sometimes a move across the country can be as energizing (and feel almost as exotic) as a move across the world.

US News & World Report, the master of lists—top colleges, top doctors, top places to get bacon ice cream—just released their Top 10 places to live in the US. Their choices often make you go “huh?” but at least they make you think about how you’d compile your own list.

They say they “looked for affordable communities that have strong economies and plenty of fun things to do.” Here’s their list:

1. Albuquerque, N.M.
2. Auburn, Ala.
3. Austin, Texas
4. Boise, Idaho
5. Durham, N.C.
6. La Crosse, Wis.
7. Loveland, Colo.
8. San Luis Obispo, Calif.
9. St. Augustine, Fla.
10. Upper St. Clair, Pa.