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Can anyone tell me if a a married couple has a retirement income from one working spouse that more than covers the required amount for two people to apply for residency be acceptable or does the retirement fund have to be in both of their names??
nomad
It is adequate if any single source of retirement income meets the legal minimum requirement regardless of which spouse in a legally married couple receives that income. What’s more, there is no advantage to declaring more income than necessary to meet that legal minimum.
In our case, we each had a government retirement pension but only documented one when applying for our residence as [i]pensionados[i].
It is my understanding that a couple only needs a total of $1000 per month in retirement income for both of them to qualify for residency. It doesn’t matter if the total only is the result of one person’s retirement income or the combination of both of their retirement incomes adds up to $1000 or more. It could be that one person has reached retirement age and the other one hasn’t. If one person is still working and not receiving retirement benefits such as SS, the couple can not use a combination of employment income and reitement income to qualify.
[quote=”DavidCMurray”]It is adequate if any single source of retirement income meets the legal minimum requirement regardless of which spouse in a legally married couple receives that income. What’s more, there is no advantage to declaring more income than necessary to meet that legal minimum.
In our case, we each had a government retirement pension but only documented one when applying for our residence as [i]pensionados[i].[/quote]
I have been told by a Tico neighbor that the cost of the CAJA medical depends on how much it costs you to live in Costa Rica. Is your the amount of your pension used as a figure to determine this or is some other figure used?
The general rule under the new residency law is that every legal resident must enroll in the CAJA and that they must pay thirteen percent of their income to meet that requirement. If you go directly to the CAJA to enroll, you’ll find that there are some adjustments that will be made based upon your living expenses. So we’re talking about thirteen percent of a somewhat reduced figure.
The Association of Residents of Costa Rica has a long-standing contract with the CAJA under which their members may enroll for a monthly fee of $40US for a family. The latest I’ve heard (directly from ARCR) is that they expect that contract to continue in force but they also expect there to be an increase in the monthly premium.
How do they figure living expenses? We own a farm in Costa Rica outright but we mortgaged our home in Florida to buy it and we pay $900 a month for that mortgage. We also pay for food for ourselves and volunteers; electric; telephone; internet; horse food and supplies; chichen feed; car expenses such as insurance, gas, repairs and maintenance and pay for a local Tico worker3 days a week. We also spend money for farm maintenance and supplies such as fencing and improvements to the property such as building new structures, new electric lines, etc. Some months we spend more than our income and sometimes less. Do you have any idea which of these things might be considerd living expenses.
Also, it sounds like joining The Association of Residents might save some money on the CAJA. Thirteen percent of $1000 per month is $130 per month unless most of our pension income would be considered living expenses. Do we have to pay the CAJA every month even if we are only here 4 months out of the year?they won’t care if you have a deficit every month, they will still want that 13 percent. join ARCR, it will be a whole lot cheaper.
[i]”It doesn’t matter if the total only is the result of one person’s retirement income or the combination of both of their retirement incomes adds up to $1000 or more”. [/i]
This is incorrect.
Only one person pension/SS is applicable, meaning you cannot list/use two different recipients, although you can use two [i]different pensions of the same person.[/i][quote=”maravilla”]they won’t care if you have a deficit every month, they will still want that 13 percent. join ARCR, it will be a whole lot cheaper.[/quote]
Gee, maravilla, I don’t know. When we originally enrolled in the CAJA (although we’d already begun the process via ARCR), the office staff had us declare our monthly expenses and based their calculation of our cost on the net. The same thing has happened to at least two other parties we know.
when i filled out my financial statement for caja at the main office for social security in san ramon, it appeared that i had almost no money left over at the end of the month and they still hit me with the 13%. when i told them they could see by my expenses that there wasn’t that much left over, they said it didn’t matter, it wasn’t based on what was left over but what you started with. so we went in under my husband’s statement and that too was based on his GROSS amount, not what we had left, but it got our premiums down to a more manageable amount. three other friends of mine went to the CAJA SS office and were given bills of anywhere from $100 – $130 a MONTH, so they opted to join ARCR and only pay $40.
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