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Picking a Town, Finding a Home, & Creating a Budget in Costa Rica

By | 2019-11-01T20:04:13-04:00 November 1st, 2019|Categories: books, Cost of Living, Press|Tags: , , , , |

Costa Rica Cost of Living Update: Picking a Town, Finding a Home, and Creating a Budget in Costa Rica —Kindle $9.99, Paperback $15.99

My new book is available!

Happier Than A Billionaire: Picking a Town, Finding a Home, and Creating a Budget in Costa Rica. It’s the perfect companion to The Costa Rica Escape Manual and will guide you through finding the perfect spot to start your own Pura Vida lifestyle.

To celebrate, I made mango cobbler in a cocktail dress. You may be wondering if I always cook in cocktail dresses, and yes. Yes, I do.

 

My husband advised me to wear heels because I looked taller when compared to the countertop. He’s the Don Draper of the Happier Production Company. So instead of five feet in height, I’m a whopping 5’4”.  It’s shocking how little that detail made in my appearance or in my confidence overall.

I’m sure nobody cares about my height or even the mango cobbler. But the new book is great if you’re dreaming of moving to Costa Rica and want a better understanding of how much rent costs, the average monthly grocery expense, or even what a suicide shower is.

Electricity AND water? Who knew? (not a feature in The Happier House)

But I think the most important piece of this video is the montage of the happiest moments Rob and I have made in Costa Rica. This filmstrip plays in my mind every day — flashes of crazy adventures we had after quitting our jobs and trying to forge a completely new life.

Now when people ask, “You left everything behind? What were you looking for?” I can point them to this video. The answer is simply…

  • I longed to see my husband smile after climbing behind a waterfall and looking all but twenty-four again.
  • I wanted to sit on a beach with a dog under my legs as mama turtles swam back to the place where they were born to lay their eggs.
  • I wished to bathe in orange sunsets and marvel at lightning bolts flashing across the horizon.

Perhaps I wanted too much. But I remembered the person I was when I was my happiest. She smiled a lot, and I missed her. It turns out the things I needed back were the richest things I owned.

I hope all of you can visit this lovely country and bear witness to a capuchin monkey stealing a lemon. It’s never too late to replace your frayed and yellowed filmstrip with a happier one. There is an endless supply of unprocessed film tucked away in your head. It could be buried in your cerebral attic, or maybe you moved it to an overpriced grey matter storage facility.

I eventually found my box of film hidden in a mental shoe box. It smelled of my grandmother’s Italian cookies and was the color of the yellow dandelions that wildly grew in my parents’ yard.

Inside I found a treasure map pointing to bluer skies with air that smelled of coconuts. Your map could take you to a Himalayan mountaintop or a Bali yoga retreat. The only thing I’m sure is you have to reach inside to get out and dip back to go forward.

And moving forward, whether in flip-flops or four-inch heels, is a happier place to be.

***Happier Than A Billionaire: Picking a Town, Finding a Home, and Creating a Budget in Costa Rica is available at:

Amazon

iBooks

Kobo

Nook

 

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A New Book and a New Adventure

By | 2018-04-15T18:19:06-04:00 January 6th, 2018|Categories: Uncategorized|Tags: , , |

Happier House Backyard

Costa Rica Cost of Living Update: Building a home in Costa Rica—Results may vary.

It’s a New Year, and I just released a new book!

I’m excited to share it with all of you: new readers and those who have followed our journey since the beginning. And what a winding road it has been. This is a stand-alone book and you don’t need to read my entire series to enjoy it, but in the first Happier Than A Billionaire book I write about my husband hiding a gun in a fireplace and later setting it on fire. This is what I’m working with guys, and that ridiculous story alone makes reading the first installment a worthwhile endeavor.

If I were a savvy critic and reviewed Happier Than A Billionaire: An Acre in Paradise, it would sound like this:

A rip-roaring comedy about a couple who decides to build a bed and breakfast in Costa Rica.  If you liked Under the Tuscan Sun, you’d love the adventures of this dynamic duo.

If Rob were to review the book, it would read:

A clever husband makes dreams come true after driving his wife crazy in Costa Rica.

If my dad were to review it, he might say:

Nadine, why isn’t my iPad charging?

This book chronicles the year Rob and I spent building The Happier House. I wish I could say it all went as planned, and we sailed through it without one stormy night. But I can’t. There were storms, guys. Some were nor’easters, like when Rob needed to superglue his hand back together after falling off his scooter… for a second time. Others were full-blown hurricanes, like when we thought we might run out of money before finishing the project. Fulfilling this dream has been a bigger challenge than we ever expected. That turns out to be a good thing when you’re writing a book, and if we were aware of every bump in the road ahead of us, we would all take the safer route. Risk can be rewarding, and bumpy roads always lead to bigger adventures.

I want to thank all of you for sticking with me and giving me this career as a writer. When I work, I’m always thinking of your many faces. I imagine the woman who only has ten minutes to read at night after putting her kids to bed. She’s exhausted and wants a brief mental vacation from her responsibilities. I imagine the man in the back of a boring work seminar, sneaking in a chapter of my book while dreaming of hammocks and palm trees; a life that seems ever more possible with each turning page.

You’re the friendly faces I see as I put these crazy stories to paper. These spirits are always in the room while I fill blank pages with tales of this unconventional life. I’m both humbled and grateful that so many of you take my voice into your home, and I thank you all from the bottom of my heart.

I hope you enjoy this next installment in the series. I truly feel it’s the best one yet.

Have a wonderful new year and may it be filled with dreams, blue skies, and howler monkeys.

With Affection,
Nadine

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Happier Than A Billionaire in Costa Rica: 5th Anniversary, The Book, and The Journey

By | 2018-04-15T18:19:14-04:00 September 6th, 2016|Categories: Cost of Living, The Happier House|Tags: , , , , , |

Happier Than A Billionaire

Costa Rica Cost of Living Update: 15 ounce Country Crock margarine — $3.33

It’s been just over five years since the official release of my book, Happier Than A Billionaire. Some things have changed, while others have stayed the same, and this may cause some confusion to many who are new to our story. This post is a short recap to clarify why we started this journey, how it has changed along the way, and where we hope it will take us.

So why did I name my first book Happier Than A Billionaire? After working seventy hours a week in order to live the American dream, we were still stressed out and miserable. We had no time for each other or anything else outside of work. We started to suspect that more stuff was not the key to finding real happiness.

Studies prove this, and it is evident by stories like those of the Tyco executive who stole his company’s cash to fund lavish parties, complete with Jimmy Buffett playing guitar and an ice sculpture of Michelangelo’s “David” urinating Stolichnaya vodka. The executive was later convicted of embezzlement and spent six years in jail, where I’m certain his urination issues did not involve vodka or ice sculptures. And our suspicions were correct. We moved to CR with a few suitcases and started living the happiest times of our lives. We were not billionaires, but happier than the ones we read about.

Happier than a Billionaire is about making the most of our resources and being grateful for everything we have. It was never our plan to be “living in a van down by the river” although we did live near a river, where Rob tested our handgun that he had just set on fire after hiding it in our fireplace. He shot into the ground, blew out our water pipes, and at that point, I’m sure our landlord would have preferred we lived in a van down by the river. (more…)

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I’M TOO CUTE TO WORSHIP THE DEVIL

By | 2018-04-15T18:19:39-04:00 July 15th, 2011|Categories: Uncategorized|Tags: , |

Costa Rica Cost of Living Update: Happier Than A Billionaire, $2.99 on Kindle and $12.99 in Paperback

The paperback version of my book is out today.  I woke up anxious to share the news when I heard a loud crash. A tree had fallen, wrapped itself with the telephone wire and blocked the road right outside my driveway. Our internet was still working but I knew I had only minutes to share some good news.

I rushed to the sink to make a cup of coffee and realized there was no water. Wait? No morning coffee? This was serious. I dashed to the window just to reaffirm frogs and pestilence were not loitering on my terrace.  Surely, judgement day had come.

With the threat of boils and lice dropping in by midday, I announced my paperback to the world via Facebook. I then went through a caffeine withdrawal which looked a lot like the shower scene in Silkwood.

When I logged back onto Amazon, I was happy to see I was number one in my category. Surprisingly, I also made number 45 in the Occult division. (Calm down mom, I haven’t spray painted any pentagrams on my wall. It is a rental you know.)  (more…)

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