Retirement To Costa Rica – Persuading your wife to move. Part II
My wife and I had visited Costa Rica several times while we were dating and more after we were married.
She had been coming to Costa Rica her whole life because her mother is Tica and after several visits here we decided to buy property because we knew, one day, this would be the place where we would want to spend the majority of our time. Who would have known it would be so soon?
After one of our visits here to close on a lot we were purchasing, I thought to myself, “how could I get here now instead of later in life?” and that’s where it all began.
To make the move meant one thing; I had to convince my wife, Becky that we could do this and make it work. She was a successful Realtor and I was a Physical Therapist. She was 28 and Iw as 36 so we were both fairly young, so it was a little risky because of where we were in our lives.
Fortunately it couldn’t have happened at a better time. We sold all of our rental properties, our primary residence at the perfect time before the real estate market stumbled and moved to Costa Rica.
The main factor that I used to convince my wife to move here was “time”. In the US we both worked a lot. I was up and out the door for my commute to work where I worked from 8am-6pm. My wife was an independent agent, but was working from the time she woke up until the time she finally turned off her Blackberry and closed the laptop.
We both made good money, we had a comfortable lifestyle, but it seemed as though there was no time to enjoy life, unless we scheduled it.
My case was that we would have more time to enjoy life. Living in Costa Rica we would be able to spend more time at the beach, we could just be together, or go diving or hike the way we would when we visited. Just the time not spent driving to and from work would give me the flexibility to do these things is what I used as part of my sales pitch.
Family was another big factor.
My wife’s mother is Tica and the majority of her family live here in Costa Rica. I explained to her that she would be able to see them more often and become closer to them as she had wanted. At the time we didn’t have children and I honestly didn’t see myself ever having them because I didn’t know when we would be able to take care of them.
After living here for four years, maybe we’ve had a little too much time together because I now am the proud father of two boys and I’m very thankful that we’re able to spend as much time with them as we do.
The one sticking point was money. What were we going to do about money? We were young and even though we had made some serious money buying and selling our properties, at our young age, we knew it wouldn’t last a lifetime. And so, once again it came back to time and, we’ve all heard the expression that “time is money”!
Whether this had anything to do with convincing her or not is up for debate, but my rationalization was with all this extra time we would have, it was like money in the bank. My time is worth money and any moment I was not working and able to enjoy life, it was like paying myself with time.
We’ve know many people who work hard their entire lives, watching and waiting for that moment when they can retire. For some it never comes. Things happen. Markets crash, real estate goes up and down, 401k’s don’t pan out, people lose their life savings to scams and sadly some people die before they reach the time for them to finally relax and enjoy everything they were hoping to for all their lives.
It hasn’t been “life at the beach” everyday since we moved here, but we absolutely do more of things we love to do more often than we ever did while living in the US.
I still have to work and do legally work here in Costa Rica and with what we do, we may never have multi-millions of dollars in the bank, but if you count time as money, we’re almost there!
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Retirement To Costa Rica – Persuading your wife to move. Part II
Article/Property ID Number 2574
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Andrew Makarik
to@welovecostarica.comAndrew Makarik is the main editor of WeLoveCostaRica, a fan of this sunny country. He is also a loving husband and a has a lovely daughter. By being a devoted family man and the biggest Costa Rica fan, he wants to make more people feel at home there. WeLoveCostaRica unites people and helps them find new home or a new travel destination. This website is a friendly community where everyone can find not only information, but also new friends and travel pals. Andrew is also passionate about IT and programming, so he himself maintains a friendly atmosphere in this cozy environment of WeLoveCostaRica.com.
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