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Scott, This one is primarily for you. Being you had Wall Street experience and now are living in Costa Rica, you have the knowledge to answer this. My retirement is 5 to 12 years off so I understand things may change in that time. What I would like to know, and I’m sure many other US citizens would also, is where to keep your money safely if you retire to Costa Rica. Leave it in the US or bring it to CR?
Many people new to this site may not have heard of “The Brothers” or similar type investments. Are any of these worth looking into? Are there any offshore investments that can legally be participated in by US citizens? Are bank CD’s a good option and safe? I am familiar with your requirements on investments and have read of some of the people who have done so with you, with good results.
I’m sure this question has come up before and that many of us may leave this decision towards the end of the move process.
I understand you may not be able to answer all of the questions I asked here. Any other members please join in. GringoTico, if you could lend us any of your wisdom here, I would greatly appreciate it as well.Thanks,
AlFive years or so ago, I wrote a book called ‘Costa Rica’s Guide To Making Money Offshore’ which you can see at and as a Wall Street trained international investment advisor for the past 20+ years, I was accustomed to (please note past tense) working with a few of the most knowledgeable US tax experts for international affairs and for the most part, US citizens can not invest offshore any more.
There are very few companies that will do business with US citizens (no matter where they reside) unless they have VERY large sums of money.
I can not do investment advisory business with US citizens or US residents and have never given US tax advice and, unfortunately can not recommend anyone here that does.
Why? Out of the nearly 1,000 offshore hedge funds my clients have access to, NONE of them will do business with US citizens? Zero! Not one!
There are a few international newsletters that ‘sell’ the idea that US citizens can invest offshore and achieve ‘financial privacy’ and have access to funds that they don’t have access to in the US but, it’s only true “if” you have A: US$1 million plus to invest and B: Significant monies to structure your affairs with the help of battalions of tax attorneys, CPAs and offshore insurance companies…
And even then, if they think the authorities don’t know they’re moving their money offshore, they’re fooling themselves! And remember that laws change and attorneys and accountants are regularly ‘persuaded’ to ‘share’ information that used to be considered ‘confidential.’
There is a stock exchange here with very limited amount of stocks listed and limited liquidity unfortunately there are no investment advisors or investment funds that I would recommend in Costa Rica. This is NOT a financially sophisticated place.
There were many ‘Brothers’ like investment programs, which we warned about in my investment book, in fact, when my book came out, someone claiming to be Enrique Villalobos actually telephoned me and we had an interesting chat.
Very few of those programs now exist (thankfully) but tragically 100% of the client ‘investments’ have been lost. I think that gives you enough information to make an educated decision if you are offered one of those “high-yield” programs – Run away!
My advice to my non-US investment clients is to keep six months worth of cash living expenses inside Costa Rica, the rest is safely invested ‘offshore’ in multi-currency investment accounts in London, Dublin, Hong Kong or Zurich.
Most of them have a serious amount of money invested in Costa Rica real estate which must factored into the equation when you look at your overall global asset allocation plan.
I love Costa Rica and it’s people but it’s still a small Central American country that some people call a Less Developed Country (LDC).
I would love to be able to work with US citizens but I can not. As you can see from the comments above, US citizens are already under serious restrictions when it comes to what they can do with their money, the government wants to know where you have stashed every single penny!
Whatever investments you look at here, just please make sure you are comparing apples with apples. A ‘AAA’ rated investment rated by a Costa Rican ratings firm, is NOT the same as a Standard & Poors ‘AAA’ rating..
Scott Oliver – Founder
WeLoveCostaRica.comScott, Thank you once again for an informative post. I thought I knew the answer to some of my questions already and you confirmed the worst of them. I’m not going to do a USA bash here, but I don’t like the idea that money managers are reluctant to deal with US citzens because of your above mentioned concerns. The government already knows what I have, and to limit my options for better returns just gets me a little hot under the collar. The fact that I’m willing to give them every last tax dollar they want should be sufficient. I know this is going to push a hot button for many folks who want to make a total break when they pull up stakes and make the final move. In this global ecomomy you would think things would be different.
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