This is part of an ongoing series where we highlight things that we love about Costa Rica. Despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Costa Rica has become the first country in Central America to allow same-sex marriage. This process has been a long time coming - it was back in January 2018 that Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled that all of it's signatory countries (which includes Costa Rica) must grant [...]
We are not financial advisors so nothing in this post should be construed as specific financial advice. However, with $3 million being the new recommended retirement target, I was intrigued by a reader’s retirement plans. Stephanie, currently a US resident in her early 50’s, wrote to us with questions about Costa Rica, as she is investigating possibly retiring there and on much less than millions of dollars: We own our [...]
I have never been a fan of budgets. I don’t like budgets because I already am risk averse and hard on myself. Budgeting plays into scarcity thinking -- no, thank you, I can do that so well on my own! It helps that I’m naturally attuned to looking for deals – e.g., waiting for sales, aware of discount policies – so I didn’t need a budget to save money. My [...]
This post is inspired by a back-and-forth I had with Accidental FIRE about his post on Earning More and Spending Less. Accidental Fire wrote about the tendency to spend more as income rises, which causes a surprising amount of credit card debt among high-net-worth households. I then commented about how dual-career couples with kids often experience increased costs, not just because of lifestyle inflation, but also the steep costs associated [...]
If you don’t know about Jeff Bezos’ take on decision-making – specifically what he calls Type 1 v. Type 2 decisions – it is definitely worth checking out. There are good summaries in Inc, Business Insider and Forbes. To quote Bezos directly from a letter to Amazon shareholders: Some decisions are consequential and irreversible or nearly irreversible – one-way doors – and these decisions must be made methodically, carefully, slowly, [...]
