http://www.ticotimes.net/business.htm

I have decided to take a straddle position on the two currencies.

By “nationalized” I am presuming that you now possess a cedula de identidad that is given to a CITIZEN of Costa Rica. If you have that, read below. If you do not, you may not work here at all, regardless of your parents birthplace.

Presuming you do have your cedula, then you may work but your husband my not in ANY capacity. However, if you definitely have the cedula, you can remarry your husband and he can apply for automatic permanent residency which does allow him to legally work here. That process takes about 17 months during which time he cannot work. Regardless, if he does not speak very decent Spanish, I cannot imagine anyone hiring him even if he does have his Permanent Residency.

On the plus side, we won’t take a hit when we pay our rent in dollars.

When I said “it cost everyone in the world” I meant everyone who is coming to Costa Rica. If you have your money in dollars and spend it here – and tourists don’t keep their money in colones preparing to visit here – everything you do, buy and eat here now costs 4% more.

Euros are better than dollars and colones in the short term, certainly. But no unbacked paper money will be good for long. And I’m willing to bet you $5 – er, 10,040 colones – that is true.

The dollar is already worthless paper, but nobody is willing to own up to it. The colon, the money used by a developing nation, poorer than poor, has gone UP in value over the dollar! This is history making.

On Friday, SB was at 504/497 which was prudent of them, I thought! They may edge out of whack over time to take advantage, but they haven’t yet.

I got some sweet emails today from those who did and they are most happy campers!

Your comment about “People with their money in dollars everywhere in the world, not just in Costa Rica, just took a 4% hit.” is not correct. This change ONLY affects people who continued to hold dollar accounts AND who will spend that money here. If you withdrew it, it is the same dollar.

As for tourists, we shall see. It is possible hotels will increase 4% (a NON event IMHO as nobody will change their travel plans for $40 more per $1,000 spent!) Just silly! Also, hotel rates are SO high now, they may not want to take the chance.

What to do?

I gave my further advice in this post.

There WILL be in my opinion, more devaluations, so I continue to state **put your money in COLONES accounts**.

Forget the Euro.

It may not hurt you as much but it clearly will not help you. Besides it may go down!

Finally, if you have never noticed, Scotia Bank always seems to “getcha”! While most banks were at 516/519, last week SB was posting 518/521. Kiss!

Just s little present just for you.

As for:

“Dollars are bad news, no question, but most people won’t realize it until it completely crashes.”

I am sorry Sara, but that is just nonsense. It will never happen. You have been reading too much left wing silliness.

Everytime I use my BN card (dollar account) to buy stuff at Hipermas or Auto Mercado, everything in that store now costs me 4% more. BUMMER.

Dollars are bad news, no question, but most people won’t realize it until it completely crashes.

So do we change that dollar account to colones (have an account) or to euros (have an account)… what is the exchange rate between euros and colones? (I’ll ask my moneyman, Hal, but he’s asleep at the moment.)

There was something else brilliant I was going to say but I’m going to have to have more coffee! Que tenga un buen dia, amigo!