How Do Ticos Do It?

Costa Rica is often romanticized as “pura vida,” but for many ticos, la vida is neither glamorous nor easy. As beach towns gentrify and foreign money pours in, the traditional, simple Costa Rican life is under real pressure. The question “how do ticos do it?” sounds innocent, but the true answer is - with grit.

The False Safety Net

One thing many newcomers never learn is that the Costa Rican government provides social housing (casas de bono) to low-income families. These houses are a lifeline when wages don’t match land prices. But in coastal towns where gentrification drives land values into the clouds, even bono housing can’t shield families from pressure. A small concrete house meant to anchor a family for generations suddenly sits on terrain worth more to a foreign investor than a Costa Rican family.

And yet some foreigners arrive disappointed, believing that a typical Costa Rican lifestyle is somehow beneath them — expecting imported appliances, luxury finishes, and large spaces that local people have never needed. They don’t see the beauty in what tico families have created: strength, creativity, and pride shaped over decades. They don’t understand that a rural household with a patio, fruit trees, ropa colgando, and family close by is not “less than” — it is abundance in another language.

Life With Less

Ticos often say “aquí lo poco es mucho.”
Here, having less is not failure — it’s a style of living defined by resourcefulness, family closeness, and community support.

Picture rural homes built with concrete walls, zinc roofs, handmade tables, and a hammock swaying in the corredor. Life there is not stitched together but held together with family, with stories, with hands that know the land. But in gentrified coastal towns, that life grows fragile. Land that once carried the memories of grandparents now becomes a luxury listing, and long-time families find themselves pushed farther inland, priced out of their own home regions.

Privilege Changes Everything

Many foreigners don’t realize how deeply their expectations reshape local life. They assume that a “proper life” requires expensive imported appliances, private schools, and gated communities. Meanwhile, ticos continue living in ways that function beautifully: simple lifestyle methods that are tougher than they look, public schools held together by devoted teachers, and community spaces that thrive on shared effort.

The contrast becomes painful: newcomers often say public schools “aren’t good enough,” so they send their kids to private programs that cost between US$8,000–$20,000/year. A handful of scholarships are offered to local children — but imagine what that same money could do if invested in an entire public school community. Instead of strengthening a whole barrio, the focus narrows to a single child, and the system remains underfunded.

And here is the reality:
A Costa Rican earning ₡350,000/month (about US$630) would need:

• 12.6 months of full salary to pay for an $8,000 school year
• 31.7 months of full salary to pay for a $20,000 school year

That means 1–3 years of hard labor for ONE year of private schooling.
That is the scale of the financial divide — not theory, not opinion, but math.

The rural/urban divide in Costa Rica deepens this tension. Rural ticos often live with a humility and simplicity that urban ticos — particularly upper-class families — do not. Middle-class Costa Rica, once the pride of the nation, is shrinking fast, caught between low wages and soaring prices. Upper-class families in San José might not feel the same strain as rural families in Nicoya or Puntarenas, who face impossible rent increases the moment foreign investment hits their coastline. The differences are real, pronounced, and growing.

The Cost of Living

Look at the numbers side by side:

Rentals in Nosara, Tamarindo, and Santa Teresa easily reach US$1,500–$3,500+ per month.

Many rural or inland rentals cost US$400–$800.

Most Costa Rican salaries sit between ₡350,000–₡550,000/month (roughly US$630–$1,000).

And luxury land prices in Nosara reach US$1,641–$4,690 per m².

Now look at rent through a working Costa Rican’s eyes:

If rent is US$2,000, and a worker earns US$630/month, then:

• It would take 3.17 months of their entire wage to pay ONE month of rent.
If they earn US$1,000/month, it still takes two full months of their income.

The math is merciless.
The people who built these communities cannot afford to stay in them.

And when the world asks, “How do ticos do it?”
The honest answer is: with difficulty, con muchísimo esfuerzo — and too often, they don’t get to.

The Strength of Manual Labor

Something else newcomers often misunderstand: the value of manual labor in Costa Rica.
Many assume that “jobs without higher education” are simple work — but in reality, many of these jobs are extremely high-skilled, requiring precision, endurance, and deep generational knowledge.

A Costa Rican construction worker builds homes in 40°C heat using measurements, structural knowledge, and techniques passed from generation to generation. A farmer knows the soil, the rain, the wind, the timing of harvests — skills that cannot be taught in a classroom. A miner in Abangares risks his life navigating tunnels and stone, doing work most foreigners could not survive a single day doing.

These workers hold up the country. They are not unskilled — they are the backbone.

Integration vs. Gentrification can ONLY be done in Spanish

Learning Spanish is not a courtesy — it is the doorway to everything.

Learn slowly, in phases.
Learn badly at first.
Learn bravely.
But learn.

Because Spanish will become the most valuable thing you ever learn — I promise you that.
It is the best door you will ever open in Costa Rica:
the door to friendships, to real conversations, to trust, to belonging.
Without Spanish, you will always live outside the circle.
With it, the circle opens.

You cannot live a Costa Rican life without understanding Costa Rican words.
And you cannot understand Costa Rican words without listening to Costa Rican hearts.

Add — Don’t Take

If you come to Costa Rica, do not subtract.
Add.

Add to public schools.
Add to local wages.
Add to community events and shared projects by asking, "how can I help?" without imposing your culture.
Add to the dignity of the tico lifestyle — don’t replace it.

Costa Rica’s greatness isn’t its real estate market.
It isn’t its foreign investment potential.
It isn’t its beaches.

It is its people — su pueblo, su humildad, su fuerza, su manera de amar la vida con lo que hay.

And if you listen, if you learn the language, if you choose to live simply,
you will understand something that will break your heart open:

Costa Rica doesn’t need to become more like the world.
The world needs to become more like Costa Rica.

And when a tico tells you, “Aquí lo poco que hay es mucho,”
they are giving you a gift —
a truth big enough to change you
if you let it.