We left the U.S. for Costa Rica and live better here on $30,000 a year with 2 kids

Kema Ward-Hopper never imagined she’d raise her children in the middle of a jungle.

But in 2018, after Hurricane Harvey destroyed her Houston home, a trip to Costa Rica with her husband Nicholas Hopper and then 9-year-old daughter Aaralyn became a permanent move. 

“The housing market was just insane in Houston because of so many people losing their homes to the storm,” Ward-Hopper tells CNBC Make It. “At the time, we were living in a small garage apartment above a neighbor’s home, with no relief in sight.”

Hopper suggested they house hunt elsewhere. “I thought he meant we should move to a different city in Texas or a different state, but he looked at me and said, ‘No Kema, let’s leave the country,'” Ward-Hopper, 41, recalls. 

From Hopper’s perspective, moving to Costa Rica was a no-brainer. 

The couple got married there in 2016 and had been itching to return, but life — whether it be bills, jobs or family obligations — kept delaying their plans. 

“When we came back to Houston [after the wedding], we both had this calmness about us, and I felt like we were missing out on something by staying in the states,” Hopper, 43, says.

In July 2018, after spending six weeks scoping out different neighborhoods along Costa Rica’s northern coastline and debating if they were ready to become expats, the Ward-Hoppers signed a one-year lease on a house (or “casita” in Spanish) in the middle of the jungle on Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula. 

The two-bedroom, one-bathroom house sat on seven acres of land in the middle of the jungle near Playa San Miguel and came with an outdoor kitchen as well as panoramic views of the Pacific Ocean — plus, rent was only $500 a month. 

“Ten years ago, I would not have believed you if you told me that this is where we would be,” Ward-Hopper says. “But it feels like luck or fate led us here.”

Fast-forward six years later, and the Ward-Hoppers are now…