Why we decided to move to Puerto Rico

This is the story of why we put a pause on our epic cross-country road trip to live the island life...

My husband and I are digital nomads and with that freedom, we decided that we should do what most people with on-site jobs cannot: travel.

I read a post (probably in an AskReddit thread) that asked old people what they regretted most looking back on their life.

A few of the top answers included working too much, not spending more time with family, spending money on possessions instead of experiences.

We always valued these things and since we are young and not tied down by a job, we packed the essentials, sold most of our possessions and hit the road in a motorhome with plans to road trip all over the country.

We absolutely loved it, and we were inspired to create a travel blog to document our travels and share helpful tips, advice, and even inspire others to add a little more adventure to their life.

So for us, making the decision to completely change the course of our plans was not easy.

The Magic of April 15th

The inspiration to look into the possibility of moving to Puerto Rico came on April 15th. My husband remembers that day well as he calculated the taxes we owed (largely from investing and trading crypto but also from our online business) and painfully wrote the check to the IRS that practically drained our bank accounts.

Now, we have nothing against pay a fair share of taxes, but it appears that the IRS and I don’t share the same views on what is considered “fair”, or even reasonable in my opinion.

And so the search for ways to legally reduce our yearly tax liability began…

We heard talks on forums of crypto investors moving to Puerto Rico for the tax incentives so I did the research myself to see if this would be a cost-effective option.

Puerto Rico does offer incredible tax incentives that could have you paying zero taxes on short term and long term capital gains or even 4% taxes on net profit on a business (consult a CPA). There are obviously rules, stipulations, and requirements for qualification and I’ll touch more on that at a later time.

While many crypto investors were making the move, we were not sure if it was going to prove to be beneficial to us since our portfolio might not prove to be significant enough in comparison to the cost of moving and living in PR.

We were not very excited about parting ways with our life on the road, but we also couldn’t complain about living on beautiful, tropical island, steps away from the beach!

Or I should say, I wasn’t complaining, but my husband LOVES the snow. SO, a condition of the move was that trips to the north will be mandatory in the winter.

Since we are only required to be on the island for at least 183 days to be considered a resident, that still gives us a few months of the year to return to our cross-country road trip, enjoy the snow, etc.

Once we were seriously considering relocating, there were tons and tons of things to consider and research to do. I’m a list person. The first thing I started to do was make a list of all the questions I had and things I had to figure out to make this possible.

Um….Help?

It was overwhelming. Moving, becoming a resident, applying for Act 20/22 was honestly more than I could handle. There are some that have done it and I find that extremely impressive. I didn’t speak Spanish and I didn’t even know where to start.

You see, the thing is, we were in a rush and wanted to qualify for THIS year. So I looked for help, of course, turning to Google.

Did you know that there are agencies that specialize in helping expats apply for ACT 20/22 and relocate to PR? I sure didn’t but boy was I excited to make that discovery! There are several of these agencies and I contacted a few to find one that I was conformable with and that I felt had my best interests in mind. I’ll touch more on that experience in a later post.

Maybe I can help you?

I’ve already spent countless hours and days researching virtually every topic and question about moving so that’s the information that I’ll be sharing in my upcoming posts.

We are still in the process of moving. We should be signing the finalized, finalized lease in a few hours (figures crossed).

My goal is to save you at least some of the headache of the complicated, timely, and even annoying process. I hope that my articles can be used as resources for those planning on making the move or as information to help you figure out if this is the right move in your situation.

In my next post, I will talk about what you need to consider before moving to Puerto Rico.

Trust me, it’s much more complicated than packing a suitcase and hitting the airport.

Thanks for reading!

With Love,
Sonja

Information in this post is not to be used as tax/financial advice. This is just my personal experience and opinions. This article should not be considered as tax advice. Consult your own tax advisors before proceeding.