I Packed Up My Life and Moved to Costa Rica at 35 — Here's the Unglamorous Truth

The morning I handed in my resignation, I felt like the main character in a movie about someone brave. By the time I was sitting in my empty apartment surrounded by the things I couldn't sell, couldn't ship, and couldn't leave behind, I felt considerably less cinematic.

I moved to Costa Rica fourteen months ago. I'm still here. That part worked out. But the version of this story I'd constructed in my head — the one built from travel blogs and expat forums and a very selective reading of other people's highlight reels — didn't survive first contact with reality.

Here's the actual account.

Why I Left (And Why That Reason Wasn't Enough)

I'd been a project manager at a mid-sized tech company in Austin for six years. Good salary, good health insurance, the specific kind of exhaustion that comes from doing competent work you don't particularly care about. I was good at my job. My job was slowly making me someone I didn't recognize.

I'd visited Costa Rica twice — once for a week in Manuel Antonio, once for a long weekend in the Osa Peninsula — and both times I'd felt something decompress in my chest that I hadn't realized was clenched. I wanted to chase that feeling. I told myself I also had a plan.

The feeling was real. The plan needed significant revision.

The Visa Situation Nobody Explains Clearly

Let's start here because it's the thing that trips people up most.

Costa Rica does not have a straightforward path for Americans who want to live and work there. The most common option for people in my situation — remote workers with US income — is the Digital Nomad Visa, which Costa Rica launched in 2022. It requires proof of at least $3,000/month in stable income (or $4,000 if you have dependents), health insurance coverage, and a background check. It's valid for one year and renewable for one more.

Alternatively, many expats use perpetual tourism — leaving the country every 90 days to reset their tourist visa. This is technically legal, widely practiced, and increasingly frowned upon by immigration authorities. I started on this track. I don't recommend it as a long-term strategy.

I eventually got my Digital Nomad Visa sorted with help from a Costa Rican immigration attorney (yes, you should hire one; yes, it costs money; yes, it's worth it). The process took about three months and required more certified documents than I thought I owned.

What nobody tells you: The visa application itself is manageable. The mental load of managing your immigration status while also trying to build a new life is its own category of exhausting.

The Cost of Living Myth, Debunked

"Costa Rica is so cheap!" is something people say who have either never lived there or who live in a way that isn't sustainable long-term.

Costa Rica is cheaper than major US cities. It is not cheap. Here's what I actually spend monthly in a mid-sized town in the Central Valley (not a tourist hotspot, not San José proper):

• Rent (one-bedroom apartment, furnished): $700–$850
• Groceries (cooking most meals at home): $250–$300
• Utilities (electric, water, internet): $120–$150
• Health insurance (private, required for visa): $80–$120
• Transportation (combination of bus and occasional Uber): $60–$80
• Eating out, activities, incidentals: $200–$300

Total: somewhere between $1,400 and $1,800 a month, depending on the month. That's not nothing. And it goes up significantly if you live in a beach town, want a car, or have a lifestyle that involves the kinds of imported products you're used to.

Imported goods — certain foods, electronics, specific brands — are often more expensive than in the US due to import taxes. I paid more for a jar of almond butter here than I ever did in Austin.

Building a Life vs. Building a Vacation

This is the gap nobody prepares you for.

Traveling in Costa Rica and living in Costa Rica are completely different experiences. When you travel, novelty fills in the gaps where routine would normally be. When you live somewhere, you need the routine — the grocery store you prefer, the neighbor you wave to, the café where they know your order. Building that infrastructure from scratch, in a country that isn't yours, is slow and sometimes lonely work.

I spent my first two months in a kind of low-grade dissociation. Everything was interesting and nothing was familiar and I kept waiting for it to feel like home and it didn't yet.

I talked to Megan, 38, who moved from Chicago to the Guanacaste coast three years ago. "The first six months I cried probably twice a week," she told me. "Not because anything was wrong exactly. Just because I was so far from everything I knew how to read."

Sarah, 41, who relocated from Seattle to a small mountain town in the Central Valley, described it differently: "I thought I was depressed. Turned out I was just lonely. Those are related but they're not the same thing, and once I figured that out, I could actually do something about it."

What we all eventually did was the same: we found our people. Not by accident, but by actively showing up — language classes, community events, local Facebook groups (yes, really), the kind of regular presence that signals to a community that you're actually trying to belong to it.

Working While Living There

If you're working remotely for a US company, the Digital Nomad Visa is your cleanest path. You're earning in dollars, paying US taxes, and legally residing in Costa Rica. That setup works.

If you want to work for a Costa Rican company or do any paid work within the local economy, you need a different visa category and a work permit. This is a longer, more complicated process. Most women I know who've made the move stick to remote US income for the first few years while they figure out what permanent residency might look like.

Tax note: US citizens are taxed on worldwide income regardless of where they live. A tax professional who specializes in expats is not optional. Get one.

What Actually Got Better

Here's the part I don't want to bury under caveats: a lot got genuinely, meaningfully better.

My relationship with time changed. Not in a "pura vida" cliché way — in a concrete, measurable way. I work the same number of hours I did in Austin. I feel less depleted by them. Whether that's the climate, the pace of the surrounding culture, the absence of a commute, or some combination — I don't know. But it's real.

My social life is smaller and more intentional. I have fewer friends here than I had in Austin, but I know them more completely. There's something about building community from scratch that strips away the casual acquaintanceships and leaves only the people who actually showed up.

I spend more time outside than I have since childhood. That sounds small. It isn't.

The Honest Assessment at Month Fourteen

I'm staying. Not because everything is perfect — the visa bureaucracy still makes me tired, I miss my sister more than I expected, and I've had to recalibrate my income expectations twice — but because the life I'm building here is one I actually want to be living.

The women I've met who made this move and stayed share a few things in common: they were honest with themselves about what they were running toward (not just away from), they gave themselves a real timeline before deciding it wasn't working, and they invested in community even when it felt awkward.

The ones who left — and some did — mostly say the same thing: they thought the place would do the work that was actually theirs to do.

Costa Rica is not a solution. It's a context. What you do inside that context is still entirely up to you.

But for the right person, in the right season of life, with realistic expectations and a decent immigration attorney? It might be exactly the context you needed.