Nothing beats a great vacation.\u00a0 Whether your idea of the perfect vacation is sun worshipping on a white sand beach or scotch tasting in the rolling hills of Ireland, it\u2019s always hard to return to your normal life.\u00a0 But what if your \u201cnormal\u201d life was your destination choice?\u00a0 Thousands of people every year make the leap to live permanently in their favorite place in the world and you could be joining them.<\/p>\n
Jackie Hopper needed a vacation from the United States.\u00a0 Her job was stressing her out and she had recently heard from an old friend who had moved to Costa Rica.\u00a0 On a whim, she went to visit her friend in Dominical, Costa Rica for 10 days and instantly she fell in love with the pristine beaches, the relaxed atmosphere, and the simple jungle surroundings.<\/p>\n
Upon returning to the States, she felt a total paradigm shift in her life.\u00a0 As she sat in her stuffy windowless cubicle she thought, \u201cCould I really make the transition to live there permanently?\u00a0 What about my job and my friends?\u201d<\/p>\n
Jackie did in fact move back permanently.\u00a0 After six months of big decisions and research, she sold most of her possessions and she is now a successful hair dresser (a career she had enjoyed earlier in life) in Dominical with a little cabina by the beach.<\/p>\n
While everyone can\u2019t make the transition happen quite as quickly as Jackie, her story isn\u2019t a new one.\u00a0 Luckily for her, she had the advantage of a friend who was able to offer realistic advice on specifics of living in Costa Rica, so she knew that living in paradise was going to be a lot different than being there for a couple weeks.\u00a0 Even if you don\u2019t have this advantage, just remember, people still need to pay bills, do laundry and run errands no matter where they live.<\/p>\n
However, if you\u2019ve ever gone on vacation and thought, \u201cI could totally live here,\u201d maybe it\u2019s time to start doing some in-depth research.\u00a0 By already visiting the place you want to live and having this feeling, you\u2019ve already completed the first crucial step.<\/p>\n
Next, you\u2019ll need to take some time to learn about visa requirements, cost of living, banking systems, year-around climate, transportation, and safety to name a few.\u00a0 You\u2019ll also need to consider your feelings on leaving everything that is familiar to you \u2013 friends, places, and possibly your first language \u2013 to pursue your dream.<\/p>\n
Once you\u2019ve done some serious soul searching and the answer is still yes, then with a little work you too can join the ranks of millions of expats living abroad in their dream location.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When Vacation Becomes Your Permanent Reality Nothing beats a great vacation.\u00a0 Whether your idea of the perfect vacation is sun worshipping on a white sand beach or scotch tasting in the rolling hills of Ireland, it\u2019s always hard to return to your normal life.\u00a0 But what if your \u201cnormal\u201d life was your destination choice?\u00a0 Thousands […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":135,"featured_media":1376,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[327],"yst_prominent_words":[2475,2346,2340,20539,2590,7492,20538,6737,2022,1738,1768,20536,1793,20537,1916,2350,2409,7371,20540,4283],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/Costa-Rica-1024x768-1110x400.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1375"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/135"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1375"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1375\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6424,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1375\/revisions\/6424"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1375"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=1375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}