The Golden Door to Retirement and Living in Costa Rica
By Christopher Howard

FOREWORD

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This all-encompassing book is the most complete work available on retirement and living in beautiful Costa Rica. It is intended to orient and familiarize everyone, not just those who are ready to retire, with the "Little Switzerland of America" - Costa Rica. This book is designed to guide people of all ages seeking to change their lives by moving to a new and exotic land outside of the United States.

Reading this easy-to-understand guidebook will help save you time, money and hassles. You will learn how to live and survive in Costa Rica from all the insider information and thousands of valuable tips we have included.

Use our book for reference while you live in comfort for less than you ever dreamed possible. Many Americans living below the poverty level in the United States can live in moderate luxury on a modest retirement income in Costa Rica.

They can enjoy one of the best year-round climates in the world (72 degree average in the Central Valley) and live with the generally polite Costa Rican People who actually like Americans. The U.S. system and culture are admired and often imitated and English is virtually the second language.

All this and only two and one-half hours by air from the United States via Miami and even accessible by car.

Costa Rica is a tranquil, safe and relatively crime-free country. Because of this peaceful atmosphere, many compare it to the United States of 30 years ago, when life was unhurried, unspoiled and uncrowded. Costa Rica is also the healthiest country south of Canada and has a higher life expectancy rate -- rumored to be the third longest in the world -- than the United States.

All things considered, Costa Rica is one of the best places on earth to live because of the excellent quality of life.

Inexpensive medical care, affordable housing, excellent transportation and communication's network, tax incentives, every imaginable activity to stay busy, a government that goes to great lengths to make retirement and living as easy as possible and encourages investment, combine to make Costa Rica tops in the list of retirement havens.

According to a survey of potential foreign retirement areas in the Robb Report, Costa Rica surpasses all countries including Mexico, Puerto Rico, Spain, Portugal, Australia, the Caribbean Islands and Greece.

No wonder at least 25,000 - as many as 40,000 by some estimates - U.S. and Canadian citizens call Costa Rica home. Around two thousand of these residents are official retirees or pensionados. Even by a conservative count, Americans make up a larger percentage of the Costa Rican population than they do in just about any country, including Mexico and Germany.

In short, this beautiful country has the warmth and flavor of Mexico, without the anti-Americanism, the physical beauty of Guatemala without a large military presence, the sophistication of Brazil without abject poverty or violent crime and more winter sunshine than Hawaii or Florida and less people to share it with.

It's not too late to join others for what living was made for ... PLEASURE. Enjoy this book and thank you for considering and selecting Costa Rica as your place to live. We hope you will find this book interesting, and an impetus to discovering new things, as we open the "GOLDEN DOOR" to the best of retirement and living, on a budget everyone can afford NOW!