if you're a digital Nomad a remote worker or even a slow Travelers like us then stick around because in this video we're going to share with you our pros and cons from our time living in Puerto Rico hey there we're jel and Michelle and we're the wandering Hearts we're helping you live a more Abundant Life through slow travel and travel abroad so one of the awesome things about slow traveling or even being a digital Nomad is that of course you get a chance to experience and live in a lot of really awesome places Puerto Rico is one of those really awesome places uh we were fortunate enough to get a chance to spend uh over 2 months there and we decided that in this video we wanted to share with you some of our pros and cons from our time living on island of Puerto Rico every destination has some advantages and disadvantages and so in this video we're going to kind of touch on some of those especially if you're considering either a move to Puerto Rico or working remotely slow traveling like we do or making it maybe your digital Nomad destination so let's start with the pros of Puerto Rico number one for us is the tropical climate year round and that is one of the reasons why we chose to go to Puerto Rico uh is just the warm weather we decided to go there in February in March and it's a lot warmer obviously than the mainland United States so we enjoyed uh yeah the beautiful warm weather the Sun and also really warm water as well Pro number two is that there's no work visa required for US citizens so if you are a US citizen all is required is your driver's license as your form of ID in order for you to get to the island not only will your driver's license allow you to get to the island uh but it also enable you to rent a car for exploring all of the island has to offer now also since Puerto Rico is a US territory that also means that you don't need a passport nor do you need a work visa in order to spend time there working remotely or as a nomad this is ideal especially for longer stays like we like to do basically allowing you to escape the winter Blues which is pretty much what we did so number three and this was a big one for us is the stunning beaches in Puerto Rico if you love the beach Puerto Rico is definitely the destination for you the water remains warm throughout the whole year uh temperatures rains usually from about 79 to 84° throughout the year there's almost 300 miles of Coastline so there's tons for you to explore on the island we had the opportunity to live and work in ringcon Puerto Rico which is considered well we consider it one of the best places to live and we enjoy daily walks on the beach and that not only provided us with exercise but also gave us an escape from our work during the day and we got some vitamin D number four is plenty of outdoor activities PTO Rico has a ton of activities that you can do keep you entertained for your entire time there now like when we were there we enjoyed spending time whether it be going to the beaches just taking walks in the Parks exploring Old San Juan um or even going out to places like the elun rainforest or taking a sa in snorkel turle out tour out to some of the other Islands as well and if you're interested in seeing a little bit more about that we've actually got quite a few videos from our time in Puerto Rico that you can check out on the channel here or even on our website wondering hearts.com so number five is geographical location to the United States Puerto Rico is uh really well located to the mainland of the United States so it's conveniently situated making it easy to travel to other Caribbean islands or even Latin American countries uh we flew from Tampa Florida non-stop to San Juan and it was only a three-hour flight from New York flight times are about 4 hours and from the Midwest they're a little over 5 hours non-stop so it's definitely an easy location to get to number six is the internet one thing that's really interesting about Puerto Rico is it has one of the fastest internet speeds in the Caribbean which is great especially if you're like us and you're working on your laptop all the time uploading videos or photos or whatever it is you might do Zoom calls that kind of thing so we found during our stay that we had internet speeds that were more than enough for all of that as well as that pretty good uptime too we only had a couple times where we lost internet for like an hour or so which is actually better than a lot of other places that we've been to one quick tip before we head to Puerto Rico is verifying the internet speed with wherever you're going to be staying have them take a screenshot it's like time stamp so you can actually see exactly what you're going to be expecting Additionally you might also want to ask about backup generators in case of the power outage So Pro number seven for us is the Puerto Rican food so it is a mix of Spanish African and tahano influences that make it similar to Latin American food also Spanish food um it's not spicy a lot of people think Puerto Rican food is spicy but in our experience it wasn't it's lots of rice and beans PL pains uh the slow roasted pork which is amazing uh so yeah we really enjoyed the food there and thought it was fantastic now number eight is Affordable cost of living but when it comes to affordability Puerto Rico does offer some considerations now if you're from a place like Los Angeles or Chicago or one of the bigger cities in the United States you're going to see a huge cost difference like a lot of you're going to save a lot of money now even for us coming from Nashville we found that Puerto Ric Rico was still significantly cheaper the biggest expenses that we found in Puerto Rico were accommodations and of course car rentals but nonetheless you can still find accommodations that are affordable that are even really close to the beach as well you just have to look for longer term stays whether it be like a month at a time or even if you're signing uh like a year lease or longer if you're moving there you can find a much much bigger price break so we've been slow traveling as Nomads for over 4 years now and Puerto Rico is one of the more expensive places that we have lived but it's still significantly cheaper than places like the Turks and Kos or even Hawaii now again depending on where you're coming from and what your cost of your living currently is this can be a pro or it could be a con as well number nine is tax incentives in Puerto Rico so under act 20 and act 22 which the Puerto Rican government has introduced um it's part of their economic incentive businesses can benefit from a low 4% tax rate if they meet certain criteria there's also additional perks for investors um like an exemption from taxes on dividends interest capital gains and even cryptocurrency so just make sure you do a little bit more um due diligence on that especially if you're thinking about moving to Puerto Rico number 10 is actually work life balance in Puerto Rico so our life in Puerto Rico was definitely one of the most enjoyable work play kind of routines that we've had so far in our four years of traveling it's hard to beat the sunny days and the warm weather that you constantly have and for me especially since I suffer from some pretty severe seasonal depression Puerto Rico was awesome for us another thing to consider is that since it is like in the Caribbean you're real close to the equator you've got pretty even day day daylight hours you're getting about 12 to 13 hours of daylight every day and for us that actually made it really easy for us to schedule our day out by you know starting in the morning by a walk in the beach or something working throughout the day and then making sure that we stop before Sunset so we could go and have a couple Sundowners and just enjoy the beauty and nature and just all of that our last Pro for Puerto Rico is the excellent coffee so coffee in Puerto Rico has a long history and Farmers have actually been growing it on the island for over 200 years most of the coffee plantations are located in the mountain towns where there's the volcanic soil and the elevation so they make for the pretty good growing conditions uh it tends to have kind of more fruity notes with undertones of chocolate and I actually really enjoyed the coffee in Puerto Rico we went to a couple places in San Juan and yeah I definitely definitely liked it now before we get into the cons first off we just wanted to mention that this video is not sponsored so all of those likes and subscribes really do help us out and it helps get our Channel and content out there for other people to be able to like learn from that as well again our goal here is to help people like you watching this video to live a more Abundant Life through slow travel so you can find a lot more information about Puerto Rico on our website at wandering hearts.com and also on this channel okay let's go ahead and get into the [Music] cons now despite its numerous advantages there of course are going to be some disadvantages as well to living in Puerto Rico as a digital Nomad or slow traveler and these of course are our opinion so let's go ahead and talk about the ones that we consider are cons con number one would be the hurricane season in Puerto Rico despite the Island's beautiful weather there of course hurricanes do pose a significant problem h season runs between June 1st and November 30th with the most active period being between mid August through October this is something you definitely want to keep in mind if you're thinking about moving to Puerto Rico or if you're planning on basing there for several months so number two is the lack of public transportation so if you're a digital Nomad planning to live in Puerto Rico outside of San Juan having a car not not having a car might be a problem for you there is an affordable Metro system in San Juan and there's also the resorts that offer shuttles like to and from the airport there are ride sharing services in San Juan but uh outside of San Juan you're not going to find any of those it's just going to be taxis and it'll still be very limited so during our two months on the island we actually chose to rent a car for those two months which can get quite expensive so that is just something to keep in mind and the number three con is power out outages and the infrastructure so depending on where you're staying in Puerto Rico power outages can actually be a bit of a problem for you as of the filming of this video Puerto R is still dealing with power outages and trying to upgrade its power grid now during our experience on the island the most of the power outage that we noticed was in ringcon where we stayed at a a small apartment complex but luckily for us that complex had a backup generator so if you're going to be staying in Port Rico especially for any length of time we definitely recommend that you reach out to the landlord or the property manager to see if they have some kind of a backup system for power as well as water reserves so number four con to consider is language areas in Puerto Rico so although English is widely spoken uh across the island there still can be some language barriers locals mainly speak Spanish and not everyone may be fluent in English the language barrier can also extend to to official government documents and government processes also on uh paperwork and any forms a lot of them tend to be in Spanish so that's just something to think about if you're actually going to be moving to Puerto Rico we didn't really encounter any problems uh at all except maybe just in uh some of the rural areas that we visited so yeah other than that it was fine all right number five con is the high cost of living in Puerto Rico I know I know we just said it was affordable but like we said in that segment it can be also unaffordable it just all depends on where you're coming from and then what your monthly budget is what you're expecting to spend but here's a couple things that you want to be aware of while you're there for one the sales and use tax in Puerto Rico is 11.5% which is pretty high compared to a lot of states in the United States so you want to take a you know just be aware of that as well so that's going to affect you on things like buying cosmetics or toothpaste um shampoo any of those types of basic Commodities are going to be a little bit more expensive than what you're used to back on the mainland and the same goes for groceries as well we found that groceries were similarly priced some most of the time they might come in a smaller packaging so you're actually getting a little bit less for the same amount of money another thing that you want to look at is electricity electricity can be almost twice as expensive than what you find on the mainland in the United States and it fluctuates quite a bit uh the way the electricity works in Puerto Rico is that people are basically charged for the electric electricity costs and the maintenance costs depending on the neighborhood that they're in so for us it did not really affect us because we were only there for like 2 months and we were staying in like short-term accommodations so that's already factored into our accommodation prices but if you're planning on actually staying here for much longer like a move move or like 6 months or more then you want to be aware of that beforehand okay our next con is traffic so like we mentioned before there's not really great public transportation on the island so that means everybody has to have a car so just keep that in mind uh when you're kind of driving around Puerto Rico has a population of 3.2 million people so you're going to run into some traffic Jans uh we only spent a few days in San Juan so we really we didn't need a car there there was ride shares and we can walk uh the most traffic you're going to run into is going to be on the weekends cuz everybody heads to the beach and yeah that's you know the favorite thing to do on the island number seven is potholes and dirt roads now generally speaking for the most of Puerto Rico it actually has pretty good roads but you're going to find a lot of like hazards that you might that you're going to have to navigate around biggest ones of those of course are potholes and the dirt road in our experience we found that most of the potholes and the Really bumpy washed out dirt roads were of course the ones that take you to the most awesome beaches this is where you hear a lot of the you know horror stories about raining a car in Puerto Rico and people losing their deposits it's because they they rent a car and they take them on these roads that are just not that are only meant for like four-wheel drive so if you plan on heading to some of these really cool beaches or doing some uh like more off-road exploring just be sure to drive really slow and just be careful okay so number eight is expensive short-term rentals so if you're planning to live and work remotely as digital Nomads like we did Finding affordable short-term rentals can be a challenge our A&B me and ringcon had two bedrooms two bathrooms it was right on the beach we had amazing views we had amenities like a pool had a beautiful patio and girls so that's going to cost you a lot more money there are cheaper options available uh if you're willing to go to a little bit more rural areas of Puerto Rico off the beach uh you can definitely find more affordable options and also if you're planning on moving there and you sign a one-year lease obviously you'll get a price break on that number nine is the trash unfortunately living by the ocean does have uh some downsides especially in the modern age uh where you get a ton of trash that can wash up on shore we even noticed trash on some of the trails that take you some to some of the more remote beaches as well which is really disappointing when you see that especially when the rest of the island is just so beautiful luckily there are some local organizations in Puerto Rico that organize Beach cleanups which is really cool to see number 10 is the lack of co-working spaces in Puerto Rico so there are a few co-works in San Juan but that's about it your options will be pretty limited uh prices we found range from about $230 to 450 per month for a membership uh there are plenty of cafes though and coffee shops that you can work from in Puerto Rico and in San Juan and Old San Juan as well just make sure to ask the staff it's okay uh for you to kind of hang out for the day personally we decided to work from our apartment uh in Fardo and ringcon just because we had such amazing views and plenty of room so living in Puerto Rico as a digital Nomad or slow Travers like we did um gave us a lot of insight into what it's like to live on a Caribbean Island and I have to say that we are kind of kind of hooked on that so we definitely are going to find our way back there again we found out the high quality of life that Puerto Rico offers very appealing especially when you consider access to the beaches the weather uh the excellent food and of course if you're interested in like moving there or moving your business there there are some really great incentives as well that you can take advantage of too so overall PTO Rico offers a beautiful Tropical Paradise with modern amenities uh rich cultural heritage and just plenty of outdoor activities so to us it made it as a really great destination uh as digital Nomads or even remote workers or if you're looking to move there you can check out some of our other articles on our website wandering hearts.com we got a lot about Puerto Rico as well as a ton of videos here on this channel there's even a playlist you can check out too thank you guys so much for watching this video we hope this video is helpful and happy wandering happy wandering [Music] [Music]