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I’m sure you’re right, Elisabeth. There is plenty to recommend Australia. I was being facetious.
You make a good point about the salt water crocs and Costa Rican drivers, but have you ever driven in Honduras? It’s been reported to me by a native Honduran who’d recently spent some time there that the drivers there make Costa Ricans look like good drivers. And have you ever driven in Boston, or the “ditches” around Detroit?
Costa Rican drivers? Piffle!
Well, Elisabeth, one could argue that the heat, the wildfires, the floods, the difficulty and expense of obtaining and maintaining legal residency, the jackrabbits, the funny way they talk, the salt water crocodiles, the dingos that’ll steal your baby, and Australia’s record [i]vis a vis[/i] its indigenous population, among other things, might make Australia less than totally attractive.
That said, we looked into Australia as a retirement destination in 2005 but there was no way on earth they’d have granted us residency as retirees. So here we are in far less discriminating Costa Rica.
A Notary in the U.S. can only practice within the confines of the state which confers that standing, so even if someone here still retains his or her standing as a Notary, they cannot legally notarize a document in Costa Rica.
Your only options are either to make an appointment at the U.S. Embassy (bring cash) or to see if the recipient of the document in the U.S. will accept notarization by a Costa Rican Notary. We found ourselves in a similar situation a while back. The U.S. life insurance company did, in fact, accept notarization by a local Notary.
[quote=”kwhite1″]
David……I seemed to have switched over to Kolbi ICE? Does the other one shut down for the weekend? Yesterday I was on a different network…..interesting.[/quote]I’d guess that your Verizon international service will connect to any network it can reach. None of Costa Rica’s cellular systems covers the country completely.
During World War II, my parents and I had neighbors who were attached to the British Embassy in Washington. Marjorie spoke Cockney; Robin spoke Liverpudlian. No one had a clue (including maybe them).
[quote=”jmcbuilder”]David, My friends in Costa Rica have been making returns above 15% for years with bridge loans. [/quote]
jmc, you’ve mentioned bridge loans before, but don’t they require a substantial fistfull of colones? And isn’t there a significant legal process in setting one up? I can’t imagine that the small amount of cash I have to invest would bridge anything larger than a commodious chicken coop.
By investing in CDs at Coopenae, there is no “process” whatsoever save for transferring the money to them and e-mailing Sr. Zamora my wishes regarding the terms of the investment. No attorney is required. No action in the National Registry is needed. And there is no matter of the credit quality of the borrower or the property in question.
Of course, all the preceding is based on the pre-condition that one is already a member of Coopenae. That required an hour of printing out or copying bank records, a utility bill, and our cedulas, a trip to San Ramon (in our case), a pleasant hour getting acquainted with Sr. Zamora, and a c5,000 deposit to our new savings account there. Once all that’s done, however, you’re done with it. Then it’s just a matter of making the transactions like any other banking activity.
[quote=”aguirrewar”]I would go with the 9 month @ 10.50% . . .
AND in 9 months I get 10.50% and redeposit it again for another 9 months @ 10.50% . . .
that is 21.00% in 18 months
NO????[/quote]
Actually, [b]NO![/b]
The rates are [i]per annum[/i], not “per term”.
In nine months, you won’t earn 10.5% (the [u]annual[/u] rate) because your money won’t have been on deposit for a full year. You’ll earn 7.875% (three quarters of 10.5%).
So if you invest for nine months at 10.5% [i]per annum[/i] twice (assuming you get 10.5% [i]per annum[/i] for the second investment), your return for eighteen months will be 15.75% for the 18 months. (I’m purposely ignoring the matter of reinvesting the interest earned in the first nine months (which you might or might not do) for simplicity’s sake.)
By contrast, my two-year investment at 12.35% will net me 24.70% at the end of the (longer by six months) term.
Your “9 months + 9 months” strategy nets you only 63.76% of what my “24 months once” strategy nets me although I’ll have to wait the full 24 months to reap my benefit while you’ll have your principal and your earnings six months sooner.
_________
Regardless which term you choose, there is a 3% early withdrawal penalty, so if you let your nine month CD run its course, you’ll earn 7.875% whereas if I cancel my twenty-four month CD at the end of nine months, I’ll net 9.35%.
[quote=”VictoriaLST”]. . .trapping a couple feathered rats might benefit the community…..
[/quote]
Victoria, the scientific term is “sky rats”.
[quote=”bogino”]An “infusion” of cash would not be a good sign. An “investment” by the Chines [b]would[/b] be a good sign.[/quote]
All right . . . all right. Split a hair! I don’t know if the cash is an infusion, an investment, an infiltration, an infestation or an intravenous. What I think I know is that some Chinese entity has made some cash available to Coopenae to use in its business.
Geeez!
In addition to playing the spread between loan rates and deposit interest rates, it’s my understanding that Coopenae has recently received an infusion of cash from the Chinese. Remember, too, that they’re a non-profit and interest on deposits is non-taxable.
[quote=”Lotus123″]Curious how they are able to pay such high rates? Generally speaking high rate of return=higher rate of risk. Do they offer an explanation?[/quote]
I think there are three explanations. First, they are a non-profit institution.
Second, they charge (by U.S. standards) very high interest rates on their loans. Their CD rates are “discounted” from their loan rates.
And third, interest paid by Costa Rican non-profit financial institutions is not taxable by Costa Rica. Commercial, profitmaking, banks withhold 8% of the interest on CDs in taxes.
You know, people here whine about the bureaucracy but, in my opinion, it’s no worse than anywhere else. It’s just different and that takes some getting used to.
Be careful, however, how you pass around those twenties. A person could make a lot of mistakes that wouldn’t be as bad as getting caught up in the Costa Rican legal system for trying to bribe someone.
Enjoy the Pacific coast. It’s all good!
(Is this your first visit here??)
kw, I’ll bet that, if you delved into the technical details, you’d learn that Verizon’s international plan goes through some system that converts their CDMA signal to GSM in order to be compatible with the rest of the world. If you haven’t asked, let me be the first to tell ya that Verizon’s international service ain’t gonna come cheap. That, of course, is not to say it won’t work; obviously it does.
As to the traffic in San Jose, do you want to experience the full richness of the Costa Rica experience or do you not? If you’re daunted by a little traffic, just wait ’til you try to deal with the bureaucracy.
Wuss!
