Overall, the cost of living in Nicaragua depends on your lifestyle, and, with the constant influx of expats, it is increasing, including prices for rental properties. Locals find that things are much more expensive than they used to be.
On average, living in Leon, specifically, it would cost you US $600 to $700 a month to rent a small furnished home including all of your utilities. Most small two-bedroom rental homes in Leon are furnished. There are some that are rented for only $200 a month but they would be unfurnished and appliances are not included, either. You just pretty have the shell of the house and you have to furnish it yourself. For $600 to $700, you could rent a small two-bedroom house with a nice patio. The utilities would probably be included in the rent. If you go to the smaller communities, you can find a house to rent for about $50 a month but if you want to live in a major city with major resources like Leon then it would cost around $450 and up.
Some rentals, depending on the owners, already include a gardener and a housekeeper, which commonly is something for which you would pay extra. Pretty much the houses for rent in this price range are “turnkey properties”, which means that you don’t need to do anything or buy anything. Everything is included so you just have to move in. Sometimes, they even include electricity in the rent, too. Your electric bill here in Nicaragua would just be a fraction of what it would be in countries like the US, for example. I used to live in a small two-bedroom flat here in Nicaragua and my average electric bill every month was about $10 and my water bill was about $5. This is having normal usage during the day with a refrigerator plugged in all day and I was also using a computer.
If you want to rent a three-bedroom, two-bathroom, 2,500 square foot home in a safe area in Leon, you could consider renting in one of the more exclusive neighborhoods, such as Fatima, which is where a lot of the politicians, business owners and families with old money live. The cost would run you maybe $1,000 a month and up but you would have a pool, a nice landscaped yard, and it is in a nice and safe neighborhood. It could also include all the utilities as well.
Food is very inexpensive here, whether you like to cook or if you like to eat out. For example, if you are buying breakfast, you could spend around $2 at a local restaurant. We have many supermarkets. American brand foods are easily available but they are a little bit higher-priced because they are imported. It is kind of interesting that peanuts are grown here but if you buy a jar of Skippy Peanut Butter it would be twice as much as you would pay for it in the US. On average, depending on your lifestyle, you could probably spend $10 per person, per day at a local restaurant, which would cover full meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. If you are going to one of the many exclusive-priced, high end restaurants in Leon, you would spend an average of $30 for a really nice meal with drinks for two people.
One of the really great advantages about living here in Nicaragua is that food is pretty much from farm to table. About 75% of the food that people sell here is locally grown. That is one of the benefits of avoiding the high cost of processing, as a lot of fruits and vegetables come directly from farm. You can to the market at 5 AM and find tomatoes, bananas, etc. that have just been picked up fresh from the farms ad brought to the market for sale. A banana, on average, will cost you a penny. It is cheap to buy fruits from the local markets. If you are not into cooking, eating out at the local restaurants are also cheap. You can get a full meal for only $2, which is sometimes even cheaper than buying the ingredients and cooking your own food. In comparison to buying food in New Jersey, the cost to buy food in Nicaragua is only about 1/3.
(Street scene from Leon, Nicaragua, pcitured.)
In Puerto Vallarta, there is a really tight-knit community of expats. There is this one group called expats in Vallarta that have a happy hour every month. Depending on the time of the year, maybe between 20 and 200 expats get together, hang out, have some beers, and talk. We will have times where we meet up at Starbucks. There is another group called The Young Professionals Organization Vallarta and they schedule different activities.
The dress code in the Algarve is “smart casual” or “casual.” There’s no one with a tie here unless that person works in a bank. If you come along with a tie then we’ll know that you’re from another city or another part of the country. 
After we bought our property in Belize we were getting excited about building something where we could go and hang out 
