Costa Rica Retirement Tours
20 August 2006We’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.
There are a couple of different people who offer reputable tours of the country specifically designed for older people who are thinking about moving down there permanently. Most respected of these is probably the one by Christopher Howard, who wrote the seminal book on the subject: the Golden Door to Retirement and Living in Costa Rica. He has a web site promoting his tours that you can go visit here. I recommend reading through his blog particularly, as it’s got a variety of updated observations. There are two separate tours for different regions of the country – the Inland Valley and the Central Pacific. You spend about a week in a guided tour of retirement locations, dinner and entertainment spots, and the local infrastructure and shopping areas. It’s a good idea to do something like this because you will actually see the different expatriate retirement communities that are out there, rather than trying to buy long distance. The tours range from $1300 a person to $2400 – so a little expensive, but probably worth it if you’re actually planning on moving out there. My advice is to treat it like your annual vacation. If you decide not to retire there, then too bad – you didn’t waste the money, you went on a vacation that involved a little bit of house hunting and financial planning. That will help you avoid the desire to commit to retire there to “avoid wasting money” that you already spent on your planning trip. If you go and don’t like it – well, you saved yourself an unhappy retirement.
A little lower down on the price scale, you could take a look at tours with George Lundquist. He’s a retiree from Texas who lives in Costa Rica and gives three to four day economy tours that only cost about $1,000 for a couple. While I’ve only heard about him from his web site, he offers contact information for a number of people who have taken the tour and were willing to be listed as references, so it’s not to hard to check him out. The much lower price makes it well worth it to investigate. He did get a good review in this article as well. George has a bus tour that goes through rural areas of Costa Rica where it can be cheaper to buy real estate. He takes people through the medical care available and shows you what the local health care system is like. He drives you out to see various different properties that are for sale. He also takes you to see all the various services you would need in a small town – from banks to dentists to the post office.
Other than that, it is kind of hard to find tours specifically geared towards retirement. There is, however, a giant and comprehensive list here of tours to Costa Rica that includes a bunch of regular vacation tours (some of which are much cheaper). My guess is that you would be much better served by a tour with a specific goal of giving you advice on how to retire there – but you might want to do a vacation tour as well for added perspective.
Discuss this on the Free the Drones Retirement Forums.
Comments are closed.