Day 33 - Packing Boxes

We are now officially packing boxes. I am working on my bookshelf which has hundreds of books. Most of which I am getting rid of. Keeping some that mean a lot or that I use a lot for research, but most of them I am giving to the used book store. This way they find a good second home.

Funny thing is that a lot of my books came from the used book store. So I guess I just borrowed them for the long term.

When packing for a move to Costa Rica, you have to have a manifest so that the duty people in country know what you have and they can determine what they will need to charge tax wise.

If you are using a shipper that goes door to door, meaning that they bring the container to you in the US to pack up and then bring it to Costa Rica to unpack. The shipping service we are using "Ship Costa Rica" handles everything for us, including the duty and taxes as well as dealing with port issues and customs. The average price for this door to door service is about $10K. This also depends on the type of container you get.

To learn more about the shipping company we are using check http://www.shipcostarica.com/

It isn't a fancy website, but they respond to your email in a pretty timely manner, and that is a good thing when it comes to doing business with your shipper.

As I stated, you need to create a manifest of all your goods that you are shipping. It will help your shipper with all the customs issues.

We have created a simple Excel file which has the following information set up in columns ...

- Item #  / Box #

- Condition

- Contents

- Model ( if applicable) Most electronic items need to have their make and model recorded

- Serial Number ( if applicable) Most electronic items need to have their serial number noted

- Value

You start with box #1 give the condition being New or Used, what the items are in the box. IE books, since books have no make, model, serial number you can skip that, but then you put a real world garage sale value.

NOTE - this is the value that customs will use to tax your items so you need to have a realistic value that you could get at an average garage sale. Do not jack up the price of your items, it will hurt you in the long run.

Once you pack your box, tape it up really good. Put an the ID # on it as in Box #1 and have it correspond in the manifest.