Line III

So, it was off to Banco Nacional to set up a bank account for our immigration needs.

When we arrived there, we ended up sitting next to a gentleman who was waiting to pick up his credit card. He took a look at us, and said: Are you with ARCR? We said we had just joined, and Mel said he was the president of the association. We got some more information while waiting in line and some tips on setting up the account.

Of course, the bank's computers were down when our number was called, so we walked around for a couple of hours, got some lunch and then headed back to the bank.

The computers were back up, but really slow, so it took around an hour-plus to get everything set up.

Since I was the primary on the immigration status (so why did I just get one year and Lucy two? Who knows?), I had to be the primary on the bank accounts as well.

We needed to set up a dollar account and a colone account. One of the hitches to our type of residency (called rentista) is that we have to change $2,500.00 per month into colones; not an insignificant sum. However, as everyone we talked to (including our lawyer, the ARCR folks, etc.) told us, there is a loophole. Once we change the dollars into colones, we can change the colones back into dollars the same day. So, we just need to keep the money revolving in and out of the accounts and make sure we change it monthly.

We set it up to do it automatically through Banco Nacional, so now we don't have to stand in line as much.