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After the cooking, cleaning, shopping, gardening, pet care, laundry, bill paying, orchard tending get done, then it’s time for the full-time job i have. i don’t have a bored minute in my life. i am busy from the time i get up in the morning until i fall into bed at night to read. life in this country IS a full-time job.
in the 8 years i’ve been here i’ve seen what happens to people who are not disciplined. i’ve seen them run through whatever savings they had because they couldn’t curb their spending. i know people who spend $100 a week just on gas because they have to go someplace every single day. it would be fine if they could afford that, but they are the ones who are continually complaining that the costs of living here are too high. for me, living well isn’t dictated by how much you spend, but how its spent. i don’t see the point of having all the lights on during the day, owning every electrical appliance made since the industrial revolution and keeping them plugged all the time; i don’t believe in being wasteful, and that is something i see amongst way too many people — whether it’s how they spend their money or the amount of trash they generate. being frugal is hip these days, and i think i have elevated it to an art form! jajaja
everything david said is absolutely true. this is not a welfare state where people can live like kings on a pauper’s income. and it does take discipline to not fall into the trap of living beyond one’s means. i went 7 years without a car, not because i couldn’t afford to buy one, but because i just didn’t want to get into that trap and then spending a fortune on gas because i stopped being organized about my shopping trips. even now, i only go to town 3 times a week because my budget for gas is $20 a week and i refuse to go over that unless it’s absolutely necessary. we eat well, live well, have everything we need and want, and i still save more each month than we spend. that was my goal, and i’m sticking to it. but i know others who can’t live well on any amount of money and that will do you in here.
what was really funny about going to ICE is that my husband had to be the interpreter. He said he was so embarrassed when he started telling the agent that his friend was being charged “gringo rates.” i wish i had a dollar for every time i heard that line. someone once told me that the check-out counters in any store also have a “gringo” button they push so they get charged a higher than posted price. you gotta laugh at such stupidity. another woman i met couldn’t believe that i spent so little on food every week when she was spending $150 a week. i asked her to show me what she routinely buys and to be honest, i was shocked. i didn’t even know some of those food-like products existed, but they all had very expensive price tags. when i suggested eliminating some if not all of those things, she looked at me and said “But what would we eat then?” and i suggested “real food.” and then there are the people who think that if you don’t spend that kind of money that you are eating only rice and beans, and that’s just plain silly. even with the new rate increases for ICE and Caja, my fixed bills every month are about $170 — that includes internet, water, lights, cel, and Caja. in the States, that would be JUST my electricity bill for 8 months a year. it all comes down to lifestyle. if you were wasteful in the States, you’ll be wasteful here, and there is a price to pay for that.
i had a run-in with someone who got his CAJA bill and it was $230 — he said that was outrageous. but he has an income of $2500 a month. i asked him how much he thought he should be paying and he said about $40. jajajajaja Those days are OVER, pal, I told him.
somehow they get it in their heads that things should be really really cheap, like electricity. i know someone whose bill was routinely over $200 a month. some ill-informed person told him he was paying gringo rates, so he went to ICE and complained. ICE just laughed and said no, there were no gringo rates, and he said, But i was told my bill would only be about $14 a month. then she explained that his electricity usage was 6 – 7 times what the average Tico uses. jajajaja that was priceless, i thought. it is real sticker shock when people come here and don’t change their consumptive habits.
the trick is to NOT buy imported fruits and vegetables. if it didn’t grow here, or you can’t grow it yourself, don’t buy it. i buy those apples 2x’s a year but never any fruit that is shipped in.
of course it was irradiated. normal fruit would’ve rotten by then. and there are plenty of people who think this is a good idea!!!
if ever there was a reason for me to leave costa rica, it would be for these two reasons: too many gringos and the americanization of a latin country.
san ramon was a complete zoo yesterday with the black friday hooplah going on in every single store, and then of course, there were the loudspeaker cars announcing black friday. i guess we have wal-mart to thank for this. i find it disgusting. another thing that bugs me is all the people who move here, not to experience a new culture or immerse themselves in it with language skills, etc., but rather to have their same gringo lifestyle for a fraction of the cost. the joke is on them, though, because if you want to live like that, you will pay through the nose.
$2400 a MONTH for taxes? is that true or a typo?
apples don’t grow here (at least not the kind we are used to) so they are all imported either from the States or Chile. I paid $.70 each for granny smith apples to make a tart. if you eat what is local, it’s still pretty cheap — a pineapple costs $1.00 here. Papaya $.80, cas, guanabana, and guavas are all pretty cheap, too. but most gringos have no experience with these tropical fruits so they are reluctant to eat them and then pay through the nose for the other stuff.
i think people in general have an unrealistic vision of what life here SHOULD cost as opposed to what it DOES cost. i am about as frugal as they come and yet, i am starting to feel the pinch of increased prices for nearly everything — compared to just a few years ago. two stellar examples come to mind — the cost of eggs and the cost of milk. 3 years ago i paid C500 (about a dollar) for a kilo of eggs from the local farmer. now they are C1300-1500 for a kilo. i used to pay C350 (about $.70) for two liters of fresh, raw milk. now i pay C500 a liter!! so the price of organic eggs here are the same price as in colorado. but for me to get raw, organic milk there i had to pay $8.00 for a half gallon. like david, i did my feria run yesterday — a whole week’s worth of fruits and vegetables (including a kilo of chicken livers and deboned chicken thighs for the dogs), and a big splurge of a carton of huge strawberries (reputed to be organic at C2000 a carton), still only came to $26.00. Usually i spend about $30 – $34 a week (up from the $25 a week it used to cost three years ago) and that will include fish, shrimp, and dog meat. If i bought those same things where i shop in Colorado, my bill would be way over $75, so even with the increase in prices, i am still better off here. what i have found in talking to people is they think these things should cost pennies instead of a realistic figure. the people i know who spend the most on food are buying packaged junk — chips, crackers, cookies, canned items, imported processed food, etc. — none of which i ever buy. when people complain about the cost of basic living and i make suggestions of where they could cut down, they look at me as though i have three heads. give up $9.00 a bag Oreos? Never! Give up over-priced, GMO soybean oil-laced Jiffy peanut butter? Never again. it is very hard for people to wean off the packaged food teat, but if you want to live cheaply in costa rica, you pretty much have to. i have often lived in places where those packaged food items didn’t exist, and i had to live on only fresh food, as most of the world does if they want to eat at all.
it is NOT just those ten cows that are the issue. This was happening all over India and other places — the scientific evidence is there — excuse me if i don’t have the time to write an entire doctoral thesis to educate you on an issue i have been railing against since the very first introduction of Starlinks corn back in the mid-90s — the GMO crop that was taken off the market when cows and people, and anything that ate it, starting dying or spontaneously aborting. The water buffalo incident i cited is but one of many that led the way for monsanto to be banned in india. gees, david, just do some cursory research — read Vandana Shiva, or Michael Pollan, or Jeffrey Smith. read the statement by Kaiser about why they believe their patients should eshew eating GMOs. you are way behind the curve on this issue, and it’s very typical of the people who argue in favor of GMOs, because they have not done one lick of research. frankly, i don’t care what YOU eat, or what anyone eats, because i’ve discovered long ago that most americans don’t really care as long as they can fill their gullet with cheap food. but i want to know whether some piece of fruit or vegetable i buy has been tinkered with, and asi es.
you’re trying to argue a case and you don’t even know what Bt cotton is???? now that’s rich.
Bt crops are infected — or GM’d — with a bacteria that is supposed to be a natural pesticide, however, it doesn’t work and more and more of monsatans products are needed instead. i have seen at least a dozen documentaries where many farmers have complained that these Bt crops cause death, spontaneous abortions, and other intestinal problems in their animals AND in humans. in all of the instances the animals were fine until they ate the Bt crops — did you watch Genetic Routlette, or are you just arguing for the sake of arguing. sheesh. no wonder this crap is on the market.
while people decry the anecdotal data, it seems to be a no-brainer that there are problems with GE foods. If, as in India, you watch ten of your cows eat Bt cotton, and all ten bloat up and die in a short period of time, i don’t think you need some bogus scientific study to tell you that there is a link between those two events. the creators of frankenfood can tweak the studies any way they want before they are submitted to the FDA which does no independent testing, and is really just a handmaiden to Big Chem and Big Pharma — which is why so many drugs get taken off the market several years after they have been given a stamp of approval. the unwitting patient is really the post-marketing guinea pig. since the introduction of gmo corn into the mainstream food supply, there are myriad gut problems that have arisen such as leaky gut syndrome and a host of others that, when gmo’s are taken out of the diet, the patient’s health improves. even Kaiser Permanente has now issued a statement advising its patients to eshew GMO foods. the big fight now is to keep GMO corn out of Costa Rica, and starting this weekend there will be marches and demonstrations all over the country. nobody wants these things here lest CR goes the way of Mexico with their 7000 year history of maize completely polluted by this frankenfood.
