I have been wondering this same question for the whole month I have been here. I moved here, not really by choice, but for a Family situation..... It just seems as if you don't have thousands in your account prior to coming here......you're screwed. Jobs....I have a hard time registering in my head.....that when I do gain employment......it will be....at best..... a few hundred a month. I dont really get it.....the cost of living is the same as back home....ie food, shopping, necessities......but things are so much harder here. I definitely need a stroke of good luck, this is rough for me. Unlike your friend though.......I have a huge interest in gambling 
Everywhere is warm.....the inexpensive part......nothing is inexpensive when you dont have an income......and all the places I seen are pretty small, but Im sure there are nice homes for $$$$$$
Everywhere is warm.....the inexpensive part......nothing is inexpensive when you dont have an income......and all the places I seen are pretty small, but Im sure there are nice homes for $$$$$$The Philipenes is very poor and very dangerous. There would be no demand for the services of an American (assuming your friend has no particular skills) as English is an official language. Really the only demand for services of an American in Costa Rica would be in a call center environment. These jobs pay only a few hundred dollars a week. $500 a week would be considered a very good salary for an American working in this environment. You really would not be able to live a great life in Costa Rica on $2000/month and that would be a high end salary. To start you are looking at more like $1000/month salary if you can get a job. And these days immigration is alot tougher on companies that hire undocumented workers (particularly call centers), and also the locals are speaking more and better english and consider $200 a week to be a very good salary, so your friend has alot going against him. I personally would only recommend Costa Rica to somebody who can work from anywhere online for themselves. If you like warm weather and cheap living but decent job prospects, I would suggest Florida over anywhere foreign.
I have been wondering this same question for the whole month I have been here. I moved here, not really by choice, but for a Family situation..... It just seems as if you don't have thousands in your account prior to coming here......you're screwed. Jobs....I have a hard time registering in my head.....that when I do gain employment......it will be....at best..... a few hundred a month. I dont really get it.....the cost of living is the same as back home....ie food, shopping, necessities......but things are so much harder here. I definitely need a stroke of good luck, this is rough for me. Unlike your friend though.......I have a huge interest in gambling
Well, you can certainly live cheap but it would be a huge wake up call, and you wouldn't be comfortable I'm sure living in the ghetto. To live at American standards, you are looking at a cost of living near some of the more expensive US states. Alot of things are alot cheaper, like property taxes that make up for alot of the very expensive things, like American name brand household and food products. You save alot of money shopping at Price Mart and buying local brands of food. Really most of the local brands are the same thing and made in the same factory, just private labelled.
It is pretty hard being illegal in CR these days, gaming jobs are getting rarer and new guys in town generally arent considered desirable. As far as normal jobs go they are also hard to find if you don't have the proper paperwork, especially in tourist areas as the cops are dicks and the people in those areas are envious pieces of shit and will rat on you in a second. I once worked as a bartender making like 350 bucks a month or some shit for nearly a year. If I hadn't been drinking half the stock I imagine I would have been really depressed. If it's family tying you down here I recommend getting a start on your paperwork, if you are running from something I recommend keep running because you are about a decade late too late to cash in on the gringo job boom.
the cost of living is the same as back home....ie food, shopping, necessities......but things are so much harder here. I definitely need a stroke of good luck, this is rough for me. Unlike your friend though.......I have a huge interest in gambling
In fact I will say cost of living here is MORE EXPENSIVE than in my places of the US, energy costs (to produce things) are higher (we dont have oil or coal for example) , many things have to be imported and our economy is of course MUCH smaller than the US so you dont get the benefits of 'economy of scale' (if that term doesnt exist what I mean is, Coca Cola in CR doesnt sell THE GAZILLION gallons of product they sell in the US so the fixed costs are proportionally higher)
There are only two things in here still significantly cheaper, 1 being sick (cost of medical care....its increasing but of course its still not the ridiculous cost that an uninsured person would pay in the US)
The other thing is , education.
If you are healthy and not studying ....I dont see why an American would be here , thats why most people want to do the opposite thing
could try Panama (Bocas) or Nicaragua (San Juan del Sur) both places full of tourists yet still cheap places to live
the cost of living in CR skyrocketed when the dollar pretty much stayed at 500 colones/dollar (meaning all the ones earning in dollars dont have an auto-raise all the time and make the same amount of colones while inflation continues ....) and also when lots of 1000 dollars/month jobs came in the form of callcenters
A lot of call centers are downsizing or just leaving CR. (Stream???) We have had tons of new resumes coming in from those that have worked at books. Average pay $1,200 for an old school, well learned and top quality clerk, sales or cs supervisor. Unfortunately, call centers are not paying that much unless it is a sales campaign with commission. Cracking a grand here is good in today's job market and things are not as cheap as it was when I arrived back in 2000.
