Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Citibank in the US does charge for wire transfers. The last I checked it was $40. Anyone who gets this for free as a perk for a high balance accoount is very lucky especially if transfers need to be done frequently. Many US banks have reduced perks such as this with the onset of the economic crash. I kept my online Citi account expressly to be able to transfer money online back and forth between our US and Costa Rican accounts only to find out that this was not possible even after Citi took over Banco Cuscatlan and I have online access to both accounts. Citi in San Isidro has implied that this could change in the future with no details as to when this might happen.
Here is the web page for the Citibank, formerly Banco Cuscatlan, in Costa Rica.
https://www.latinamerica.citibank.com/costarica/index.html
I am not sure if this is the same company mentioned in the previous post.Citi bank is in Costa Rica. We have an account in San Isidro. They bought Banco Cuscatlan and changed the name last year. Citi also has a huge corporate office in San Jose. I see their sign high in the air off the Pan American highway on the left on the way to the airport. However, I am not able to transfer money between my Citibank account in Costa Rica and my Citibank online account from the US. So far we still have to use wire transfer to add money to our Costa Rican account from the states. At the bank they tell me the reason is that the Citibank in Costa Rica is part of Global Citi and that Citibank in the US is a somewhat separate corporation. They may be sub corporations of a larger corporation.
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?[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?
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.
This last post is a pretty good rundown of the difference between Medicare and Medicaid. I think there are some differences in between states. We live in Florida and people who are poor and who have assets below $2000 do not have to have a qualifying condition to qualify for Medicaid although I think adults only qualify if they have at least one dependent.
As far as my husband goes, he does not need to qualify for residency with another $1000 per month in income because I already make more than that in Social Security income. Since my residency application already contains our marriage license, he will automatically income qualify if my application is accepted.
I have never heard of Medicaide that only pays 80%. It is Medicare that only pays 80% in the states. If someone qualifies for Medicaide in the US due to low income and low assets, they cover all medical expenses. My daughter age 27 recently had treatment for Grave’s disease including a very expensive radioactive iodine thyroid ablation. Her daughter, my grandaughter, age 9 was diagnosed with juvenile diabetis at the same time, spent 5 days in All Children’s Hospital in ST Petersburg, Florida and just recently got a $6000 insulin pump. They paid nothing for any of this and the government is picking up the tab for all of their medications, insulin and insulin pump supplies. I am glad this was available because all of these procedures, treatments and medications are life-saving. They would both be dead by now without them. My point is that medical care is available for the rich and the poor but a person in the middle class could be finacially devastated by either of these events whether thay had insurance or not. Lets hope the US fixes this for it’s own citizens. If US citizens move to Costa Rica only to receive adequate and affordable medical care, the CAJA system may soon become overwhelmed. I have applied for residency here and have been working to get this for 2 years. If my application is approved, I will happily join the CAJA system and hope that I won’t have to use it. But it will bring peace of mind that I have health care coverage whether I am in the states or in Costa Rica. Also, I understand that if I qualify for the CAJA system, that my husband will be able to be covered also. My husband did not apply for residency when I did because he is having trouble obtaining a document pertaining to a name change in Hawaii and we live in Florida.
The criollo lemons are not the same as key limes. The criollos are the “limons” to which I was referring in my previous post. And, yes, they grow all over Costa Rica. They are technically a green lemon (green outside, yellow inside) but I think they have a flavor that is between a lemon and a lime. Key lime is a true lime, Citrus aurantifolia. They are green on the outside and a light green on the inside. They are smaller than the “limons” prevalent in Costa Rica and their flavor is definately lime with no lemon undertones. There is also the bumpy lemon that we have on Earth Rose Farm. It is about the size and shape of a Meyer lemon but the skin is very bumpy. Its flavor is all lemon. In the absence of the seasonal lemons or limes, there is also the ubiquitous mandarina acidica or sour mandarina. These trees are all over our farm and there is fruit present on the trees almost all year. It is a thorny tree and it will grow true from seed. If you ask for limon in a restaurant for tea, or fish or to use as a very low calorie salad dressing, this is most likely what you will be given. The sour mandarina also makes great madarina-ade (a little goes a long way) if you use lots of sugar. This is a popular beverage on our farm. Rosie
We have a few lemon trees on our farm outside of San Isidro at about 2400 feet elevation. They are very strange looking –very lumpy on the outside but they made great lemonade. The trees are not nearly as big or as productive as the orange trees on our farm. Maybe the lemons do not grow as well or at all at lower elevations. I am bringing seeds of key limes (the kind used to make Key Lime pie) from Florida in a few days. Key limes are more tropical in nature since they originate from Key West. I will try to germinate them at the farm. I have tried this before but the seeds did not sprout. I think these seeds are short lived and so this time I collected and dried them only about a week ago. We have a couple of small key lime trees from our next door neighbor’s key lime trees that we started from seeds last year so I know the seeds were viable at some point. I saw many native trees the locals called “limon” when we were looking for a farm to buy 4 years ago. Elevations were from about 800 feet to about 6500 feet. This fruit was green on the outside and it smelled like a lime but it was yellow on the inside and had a flavor somewhere between a lemon and a lime. The trees were very productive and they had big thorns – typical of non-grafted citrus trees. So if anyone says that lemons don’t grow in Costa Rica except maybe at the beach, it is just not true.
[quote=”tpb”]Can anyone in the western Central Valley recommend an English speaking Costa Rican CPA? We are a SUTEL approved telecommunications company and we are desperately looking for some professional help asap. Thank you in advance. -tom[/quote]
I know an English speaking Tico CPA in San Isidro. Is that too far away?
[quote=”Roark”]Turns out people have been afraid of running out of oil for the last 100 years. Well fear not, there is plenty of oil down there in the earth, and with the latest climate change e-mail theft, you need not to fear that man is causing the planet to warm to a dangerous level. This is all great news for you who have been worried. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/20/AR2009112002619.html%5B/quote%5D
Let’s say for the sake of arguement that we aren’t in danger of running out of oil. Our country’s and other country’s political decisions are increasingly driven by oil. This is very scary. Why not use the remaining oil to make sustainable systems that will give us free energy (solar, wind, hydro) where ever we can. This will reduce our dependence on oil and we will then have oil for an even longer time.
Lets say also that there is no such thing as human induced global warming. I am more concerned with global toxicity. I think this is a more pressing problem. What will it matter if the earth warms up if we kill off ourselves and other species in the world by poisoning our environment? If we take action to reduce the polution of our environment, these same actions should reduce greenhouse gases as well.
[quote=”tpverde”]Sorry to ‘pop in’ rather late to this interesting thread.
As someone who shares the concern for peak oil and has a strong interest in permaculture and small scale local food production–plus 16 years on the land here in Guanacaste, I’d like to share a few observations.
1. Depending on where you are in CR, your entire site AND your plantings should be designed into a water conservation/erosion prevention layout. This includes roof runoff and septic water. Harvest the water first and the plants will respond in kind.
2. If you plan to subsist on a diet of fruit and vegetables, fine, but if you fancy some starches and protein you might consider traditional, low maintenance crops, like tubers, cooking bananas, the highly productive aerial yam (ñyame) and for long term, the mayan breadnut, ojoche, which has 4X the protein of corn. Perennial greens like quelite, moringa and katuk are also easy to grow, high nutrient value and good fodder for chickens and goats. (This is a short list)
3. Bamboo deserves consideration as a quick source of material for all manner of garden and farm structures from trellises to gates, chicken coops. It also provides abundant leaf litter for compost and can be incorporated into erosion control and landslide prevention plantings.
4. Don’t forget the advantages of living near, and cultivating relationships with, people who still know how to live off the land. For more on this approach, see:
http://campfire.theoildrum.com/node/5714
For more information on sustainable land use and food production in the wet-dry tropics you can check out:
For those looking to see how a concern for future trends are being incorporated into an ‘eco-village’ design and construction please visit us.
http://www.puebloverde.org[/quote%5D
This is a very interesting post. I would really like to find plants of the aerial yam, myan breadnut and perennial greens. We are growing Moringa and I have been trying to start Katuk. If you want something that produces fruit all year, plant lots of banana trees and plantains. We bought a 45 acre farm in the mountains at 2400 feet elevation about 12 miles outside San Isidro 4 years ago. It had over 500 banana plants and we never run out of bananas. I think there are at least 6 to 8 different varieties. Bananas don’t seem to have a “season”. They produce all year long. If we collected one bunch of bananas every day, we still would not pick all of them. The great thing about bananas and platains is that they make 1 to 6 new plants (hijos) every year to replace the plant that dies after fruiting. You can dig up the extra hijos (children) to plant in other places since usually only one hijo will win the race to replace the mother plant. We eat bananas fresh, in smoothies, make ice cream, make banana bread, sauté them for a yummy dessert, use green ones as a starchy vegetable and make banana vinegar to name a few uses. The extras are enjoyed by the worms, the chickens, the horses and the cows. The bunches that don’t get picked in time get eaten by birds, parrots and an unknown number and variety of critters. A banana never goes to waste. We use pulverized, dried banana leaves as mulch and as litter for our composting toilet. The leaves and stems are great additions to the compost pile adding potassium. We use banana trunks as birmming material to hold the soil and the water shed and as surrounds for the little bags growing tree seedlings or for raised garden beds. We are bringing mushroom plugs (think Shitakes and Oysters) to the farm this year and we are going to try to grow some of them in cut banana trunks as an experiment. Banana plants are self fertilizing, need little weeding and they store their own water for the dry season.
Another crop we have year round is yucca root. Even though the wild pigs living in the woods on our farm gorge themselves on it, we always have tons of it growing. One yucca stem has the potential to make dozens of new plants that make edible roots in 12 to 18 months. Yucca does not need cultivation, fertilizer or water beyond natural rain water.
We find that becoming and running a sustainable farm is both time consuming and a lot of work especially for a “retired” couple. However, we thoroughly enjoy eating fresh food that we have grown ourselves and this keeps us going. We are so thankful for volunteers who come to our farm to help us and who also enjoy all that we enjoy on the farm. We plant local seeds and we bring heirloom seeds from the states. Growing newly imported seeds is mostly trial and error. Our goal is to acclimate as many of the imported seeds to our tropical climate as we can to increase the variety of foods we have available to eat and also to create our own seed lines to plant new crops and to share with others.
We also have fruit trees in abundance. A variety of citrus extends the season quite a bit. Costa Rica has 2 crops per year (as in Hawaii) whereas the southern states of the US, Florida and Texas, only have one. There is nothing like having fresh squeezed orange juice every morning for breakfast as long as the oranges last. Citrus fruits also tolerate being left on the tree awhile until we are ready to pick them. We also have many mango trees. The mango season is way too short but, oh, so delicious.
The mountainous areas surrounding San Isidro seem to be a Mecca for environmentally conscious people. Many of these people are young. They have purchased farms (which are still reasonably priced in this area) using every penny they could save or borrow. In some cases, several people have combined resources to come up with the money to buy a farm. They don’t make much money – certainly not enough to qualify under Costa Rica’s residency standards – but they are the ones creating most of the organic farms in Costa Rica as they learn to live on the land and create a balance with nature. Most of these farms range from 10 to 60 acres. Crops occupy a small percentage of the land. It is nearly impossible to plant more than a couple of acres in food without big machinery and/or lots of people. A typical farm might include low cost houses, organic gardens, a greenhouse, chickens, fruit trees, forest and pasture with cows or horses.
I don’t know if the USA and/or the world are headed for economic collapse. I just know that right now I am not comfortable with the quality of our food supply and the sustainability our lifestyle in the states. We think of our farm as Plan “B” in case life in the US becomes unbearable. It is large enough to be a future haven for friends and family if the worst happens. In the meantime, it is a place where we can breathe fresh air, drink spring water that is better than bottled, grow our own food, get plenty of exercise and live in a serene environment free from air and noise pollution. I would love to here from other organic farmers in our area and exchange plants and seeds at the feria on Thursdays. Rosie of Earth Rose FarmThis is my advice regarding snakes. We live in the mountains on a farm south of San Isidro PZ. When we walk through the tall grassy pastures on our way down the mountain to the river, we always wear hiking boots and long pants. I also carry a walking stick and I make sure to make plenty of noise with it as I walk — hitting the grass and tapping the ground. That way, if any snakes are in my intended path, they will surely hear me and run for their lives before I get there. That is one reason the locals always wear and carry a machete. When we walk with locals, they are constantly “blazing a trail” by swinging their machetes. This not only partially clears the path but any snakes hiding in the area will hear them from far off and flee. By using these measures, one could go for years and never see a snake of any kind, poisonous or otherwise. I am always aware of where I put my feet even in short grass or walking on a dirt road. This not only prevents me from stepping on snakes but also lizards, baby birds, etc. By the way, Machetes are easy to buy in Costa Rica. Just visit any hardware store and you will find a large selection.
