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Well, Victoria, this is on your initiative, so let’s hold this conference in Nuevo Arenal and use local resources. Can we meet at your house?
In addition to a couple of U.S. tax specialists (whom we may have to import), some local financial planners, and a tax attorney, we’ll also need a constitutional attorney (if we’re to fight this, we’ll need an entire law firm, actually), an international attorney who can represent us before the World Court, and an international financier to help with the funding unless you’re prepared to carry that ball yourself.
Once our team is assembled, we can forge ahead and, with any luck, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear our case after it’s wended its way through the lower courts and the World Court will consider it. Given the speed at which these things move, we should have some definitive results as soon as 2030.
Of course, if after all that we lose, then we’ll all be liable for whatever penalties are provided by the Act which will resolve any remaining question of what will become of your estate.
Or, as an alternative, we could all agree that there may (may) be some merit in the law and that our own compliance may serve to right a much greater wrong — maybe.
Costa Rican law requires that your rental car be covered by the mandatory minimum public liability insurance. And since that coverage can only be legally extended by a company that’s approved to do business in Costa Rica, your “home” insurance coverage (Allstate, State Farm, AAA, etc) will not suffice despite what the terms of your policy may say. I’ve seen a renter provide the rental agency with a letter from his home company assuring them that the renter would be covered, but it wasn’t acceptable.
So you have no choice. You have to buy the liability insurance.
In addition, the rental car agency can sell you a collision damage waiver. That covers your “deductible” cost should you bang up their vehicle. It’s important to understand that, if your rental car is damaged, you can be held liable for both the repairs and for the time it takes to get the car repaired and while the car is out of commission. So you could end up “renting” the car even after you depart Costa Rica.
You may also have the opportunity to purchase extended public liability or property damage insurance and also travel insurance should your trip be interrupted.
Most (maybe all) “premium” VISA and MasterCard accounts (platinum, titanium, unobtanium, etc) provide some coverage for rental cars. They may include the collision damage waiver as long as you charge the rental to that account. For details on all that, you need to talk to your credit card company.
You make a compelling case for being on-site during the building process, but it sounds like it’s too late for that.
Recovering any of your money already spent will probably be a futile pursuit. The best thing to do is probably to cease any further payments, inform the builder in writing that you expect him to complete all the work that he’s been paid for, and discharge him and the architect. Then you can begin anew.
[quote=”sprite”]Insolvency and inevitable implosion is not just a government and banking problem and fate. Citizens are at the very bottom of that food chain. Self reliance is the only solution but as things begin to fall apart, even that might prove too difficult for even the most adept.[/quote]
Okay, sprite, you’ve made this exact point dozens of times now in this forum alone, so what’s your solution? Or will you just continue to flail away at this same doomsday scenario without contributing anything new or useful to the discussion?
If self reliance is, indeed, the only solution, just what do you recommend? Where do we begin? What’s your game plan?
Or are we to simply stand around wringing our hands with no clear purpose in mind but perhaps to wallow in our (or just your) own sense of dread, anxiety and foreboding.
Hey, maybe that’s it! Let’s all devote ourselves to a sprite-induced obsession with things over which we have no influence and which may never happen anyway. Maybe that’s the plan. Nothing compares to free-floating anxiety for ruining one’s enjoyment of life, eh?
Parsing what sprite writes is never a sure thing, but by writing that moving from the U.S. (with it’s massive debt) to Costa Rica (with its still monumental debt which, nevertheless, does not compare to that of the U.S.) is like jumping from the fire into the frying pan, s/he’s saying that one would be going from worst to very bad — from the fire back into the frying pan.
Yes, it’s a step in the right direction but whatever jeopardy that debt means for us, the situation would be less bad in Costa Rica than in the U.S.
Of course, that presumption is based upon the assumption that Costa Rica is equally able to face its debt as is the U.S. or that the significance of Costa Rica’s debt for its people (or maybe just for us expats) is equal to or less than the significance of the U.S.’s debt for its people.
Or maybe I’m wrong . . .
In any event, since there’s not a damn thing I can do about either country’s debt, I’m not going to overwork my few remaining functional brain cells worrying about it. There are plenty of other things to obsess about.
Andynjen, please scroll up and read what George wrote immediately above. We took his tour in 2005 and found it well worth the investment of time and money. George will show you places and things you’d never find on your own. Maybe the best part is the travel time between stops when you get to pick George’s brain. He’s a wealth of experience and practical information.
And, if you get lucky, George will bring your tour to our home outside Grecia early on Sunday morning!
Do this!
On and off subject . . .
In addition to our attorney’s fees, we paid the government c44,000 to abolish the corporation that held our SUV.
This is a great idea if it can be made to work, and if somebody can find a place to do it. (Not in my back yard, thank you very much.)
The likely approach is to burn garbage to create heat to drive steam turbines but that poses many technical problems including the varying moisture and combustibility of trash from one source and another. Steam generation generally relies upon consistent qualities of the fuel being burned. And then there are the matters of air pollution (Not upwind from me, thank you very much.), and disposal of the resultant ash (Not in my back yard, thank you very much.) with its high concentrations of toxic materials.
And, once somebody has found a place to do this, there will be the matter of collecting the trash from 77 cantons and centralizing it, with the additional pollution and traffic congestion that comes from all those garbage trucks.
Victor, there are two matters you must address. The first is that of legal residency. While some have gotten away with crossing the border every three months to renew their tourist visas (“perpetual tourists”), it appears that Costa Rican Immigration is cracking down on that practice. The safest approach is to apply for that class of legal residency for which you qualify.
In this forum, you are mostly communicating with retirees with government pensions who qualify for residency as [i]pensionados[/i] or else folks who are old enough to have accumulated sufficient wealth to qualify as [i]rentistas[/i]. At age 24, it is unlikely that you will fall into either category.
That said, there are special relationships among Spain and the Latin American nations and it is possible that there is another class of residency for which you, as a Spaniard, could qualify. You’ll probably have to investigate that elsewhere. I could, however, give you contact information for a Costa Rican attorney who specializes in residency matters whom you could consult.
The second matter is that of how you will support yourself here in Costa Rica. You must understand that, in general, a foreigner living in Costa Rican cannot legally compete with a Costa Rican citizen for any job. Not until you have legal Permanent Residency without Restrictions can you work legally. And obtaining Permanent Residency can take five years.
As with legal residency, there may be different rules for Spanish citizens working in Costa Rica, but again you will probably have to explore those possibilities elsewhere. My residency attorney might be able to help.
And, in the matter of employment, you must understand that Costa Rican wages are ridiculously low as compared to wages in North America and (I suspect) in Europe. So finding employment that you regard as suitable may be very difficult. Costa Rica, too, suffers from a chronic lack of employment opportunities for its citizens.
[quote=”bogino”]
So on $6K a month I can live like God? :D:D[/quote]Not exactly . . . If you spend $6,000 per month in your local Costa Rican economy, you will be regarded as a god.
[quote=”costaricafinca”]
You will have to exit CR to renew your tourist visa after 90 days, if you decide to stay longer.[/quote]Hmmm . . . If you decide to stay longer, the best advice would be to begin early to investigate those categories of legal residency for which you qualify. While it’s true that you can leave the country briefly and be given a new tourist visa upon your return, it is not clear that anyone can continue to do so indefinitely.
Immigration is cracking down on “perpetual tourists”. You could be given a very brief visa or even denied reentry altogether.
mollie-o, I don’t know which “real Costa Rica” you live in, but I can tell you from regular personal experience that many Costa Ricans do, in fact, eat plenty of fresh produce.
We shop in the feria in Grecia every Friday afternoon. There, you’ll find fewer than five percent of the shoppers to be identifiably non-Costa Rican, but the amount of produce for sale would overwhelm a Walmart distribution center. It’s likely that not everything sells out every weekend, but the vendors wouldn’t be bringing that much produce to the feria if someone weren’t purchasing it.
Why would one of several broccoli vendors bring a pickup truck overflowing with broccoli if not in expectation of selling most of it? And why would their broccoli-selling competitors, of whom there are a number, do the same? And the same can be said for every other commodity.
How do Costa Ricans afford their food purchases? Well, most of them live in homes they own outright and drive cars which they also own — uninsured cars, for the most part. And with property taxes assessed at 0.25% of the recorded value of the property, they’re not spending much there, either.
So what’s left? Phone service for $7.50 a month, electricity with rates based upon the level of consumption, $5 water bills and no sewage charges, cheap Internet access, low or no heating or cooling costs, locally-sourced wood for cookstoves, lightweight year-round clothing, the CAJA to provide most medical care, and on and on.
Les, we came to Costa Rica looking for one or more reasons not to move here. When we couldn’t find one, we jumped.
“Whether the weather be fine, or whether the weather be not,
Whether the weather be cool, or whether the weather be hot,
Whatever the weather, we’ll weather the weather,
Whether we like it or not!”Can you say that three times fast?
Well, mollie-o, if that’s all you can find that’s inexpensive, you haven’t been looking in the right places. There’s plenty more that’s inexpensive, and the quality of life here, on which no price can be put, more than makes up for the shortcomings.
That said, if Dr. Judith is buying all she says for c1,000, she either has a very small basket or very light fingers.
