Books on Retiring to Costa Rica
18 August 2006This post is the second discussing the option of retiring to Costa Rica. The first post talked about why you might want to consider a cheap retirement in Costa Rica. This post will discuss the first step in your research process: buying a bunch of books.
Yeah, the Internet is a great resource and all - but for a lot of web sites, especially in commercial areas, it can be hard to determine which ones you can trust and which ones you can’t. If you’re looking to retire in a foreign country, you’ve got a unique problem in that many of the web sites talking about it are from companies trying to sell you something - either real estate or a timeshare or a retirement plan or whatever. It’s not a good idea to move to another country based solely on what some salesman put on an Internet site. So you should go buy (or check out from the library) a couple of books on the subject first. Here are a few of your better options for Costa Rican retirement specifically:
Choose Costa Rica for Retirement, 8th Edition - Technically, this one isn’t even out yet. It comes out in November 2006, so you’d have to preorder a copy or be on the watch for it. But if you’re seriously considering this, it’s a good one to get. It’s from a series of books on retiring to Costa Rica, and the most recent one was in 2004. A lot of people have complained that the information about retiring there changes pretty rapidly, and that some of the stuff in any book more than a few years old is going to be outdated. So here’s your chance to get one fresh off the press while it reflects the current situation there.
Frommer’s Costa Rica 2006 - This isn’t really a retirement planning book as much as it is a popular guide book to the country itself. It comes from more of a tourist standpoint - but the big thing going for it is that it’s filled with pictures, maps, and general information about the country that is all recently updated. That means you’ll both get a good idea of what it would be like living there and you can use it as a supplement to the retirement-specific books, many of which unfortunately tend to be older.
The New Golden Door to Retirement and Living in Costa Rica, 14th Edition - This one is from 2005, so a little bit older, but not too bad. It’s generally considered to be one of the best guides out there, and it’s by a long-time resident of Costa Rica who offers tours of his own to Americans who want to come down there for a few days and see the housing they’d live in and the actual conditions they’d be experiencing. Some people who have already moved to Costa Rica actually keep buying this book every year as it gets updated, because it gives you a lot of practical advice on how to get buy once you’re actually living there.
The New Key to Costa Rica - I’m including this even though it’s from 2002 primarily because it’s considered one of the best sources on offbeat, ecotourism activities in Costa Rica. That’s a prime attraction for Americans there - the downside is it’s kind of old and there’s not much specific to retirement. BUT - you can get it used for about a buck or so.
Discuss this on the Free the Drones Retirement Forums.
2 Responses to “Books on Retiring to Costa Rica”
August 20th, 2006 at 8:11 pm
[...] We’ve recently been taking a look at various practical aspects to retiring abroad in a specific country: Costa Rica. We looked at the general reasons why people decide to retire to Costa Rica. Then we took a look at the first step you should take - researching some books about retiring to Costa Rica. Last, we talked about how you need to go to Costa Rica to attend cheap retirement seminars from local expatriate associations. Now, we’ll discuss another thing you can do while you’re down there: go on a guided retirement planning tour. [...]
October 27th, 2006 at 4:25 pm
[...] Following the lead on the previous series on investigating a retirement in Costa Rica, the first thing you should do is look for books on the subject. With Thailand, it turns out to be a little more difficult - because it isn’t as popular a destination, nobody has turned out to be the “guru” on retiring there (if you’re a writer - there’s an opening for you). You can still find some useful information that will help you out, however. First up is Fodor’s Thailand, which is a travel guide, not a retirement guide. There are a couple of other ones, but this is the most recently updated available (2005) and has the most information. Another one is from about the same time period but got mixed reviews - Lonely Planet Thailand. Lots of the stuff in these would be utterly useless to you - but it’s worth a trip to the library if you’re considering this because there are a couple of things you can get out of a travel guide. First, they’ve got a lot of information on the various regions - Bangkok isn’t the only place to live, and from looking at various online real estate sites there are quite a few beachfront property areas targeted to foreigners, and a lot of them sort it by province (with some being sort of like New York - a big city surrounded by an outlying area of the same name). Second, you’ll have to travel there to check it out, probably a few times. So if you’re thinking about retiring there, the first thing to do is to plan a vaction there. [...]