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A chiropractic practice in New Jersey put Rob Pisani in a hospital bed — so he and his wife sold everything and rebuilt their lives in Costa Rica.
Episode 12 of Reserve Channel’s EX-PATS series, hosted by Savannah Jane Buffett, tracks down Rob and Nadine Hays Pisani five years after they walked away from a demanding chiropractic business in New Jersey. What started as a medical scare turned into a full relocation to Central America, where the couple now measures success in scooter rides to the market rather than billable hours. Buffett’s profile catches them mid-transformation, physically and otherwise, deep in the “pura vida” routine they built from scratch.
- Rob’s health collapsed under the stress of running the couple’s chiropractic practice, landing him in the hospital and forcing a reassessment of their entire lifestyle.
- In their late thirties, Rob and Nadine sold their possessions and moved to Costa Rica, trading corporate income for a simplified expat life.
- Nadine’s writing about the move became the blog and bestselling memoir series starting with Happier Than a Billionaire: Quitting Your Job and Moving to Costa Rica, which later spawned sequels and escape manuals.
The Breaking Point in New Jersey
Before Costa Rica, Rob and Nadine were running a chiropractic practice in New Jersey — the kind of professional grind that looked successful on paper but was quietly wearing them down. Nadine worked as the chiropractor while the couple managed the pressures of ownership on top of patient care. The strain caught up with Rob, whose stress-related health complications became severe enough to put him in the hospital, according to the episode.
That hospitalization became the couple’s turning point. Rather than treat it as a one-off scare and go back to business as usual, Rob and Nadine used it as the reason to ask a harder question: whether the lucrative but exhausting version of their life in the U.S. was worth what it was costing them physically.
Trading the Practice for Pura Vida
The answer came fast. The couple sold their possessions and relocated to Costa Rica in their late thirties, stepping away from the practice entirely to chase the “pura vida” lifestyle the country is known for. It’s the kind of leap that connects with viewers who’ve watched similar downsizing stories, like the couple profiled in Living a Radically Simple Permaculture Life on 1/4 Acre, where trading square footage and income for a slower pace becomes the whole point.
For Rob and Nadine, the move meant giving up the predictable structure of a U.S. practice for the logistical realities of expat life — visas, language, unfamiliar markets, and a completely different pace of doing business. The episode doesn’t gloss over those adjustments; it frames them as the trade-off that made the healthier outcome possible.
Life Five Years In
By the time Buffett’s cameras catch up with them, the Pisanis are five years into the experiment and clearly better for it. Rob has taken up mountain biking and plays in a local band — activities that would have been unthinkable during the hospital-stress years back in New Jersey. Nadine, meanwhile, has shifted into full-time writing.
The episode leans on everyday texture rather than grand gestures: Rob riding a motor scooter to buy fresh produce at local markets, the couple navigating cultural adjustments, and wide shots of Costa Rica’s coastline. It’s less a highlight reel than a document of what a recovered, deliberately smaller life actually looks like day to day.
From Blog to Bestseller
Nadine’s chronicle of the move didn’t stay private. Her writing about the transition became a popular blog and then a memoir series, starting with Happier Than a Billionaire: Quitting Your Job and Moving to Costa Rica, which went on to spawn sequels and companion “escape manuals” for readers considering the same jump.
Happier Than a Billionaire: Quitting Your Job and Moving to Costa Rica
The title itself does the work the episode is built around — contrasting the couple’s formerly lucrative, exhausting existence in the U.S. with the healthier, simplified version of success they found abroad. It’s the same contrast that runs through other expat-relocation stories in the space, including The Truth Behind Italy’s $1 Homes, where the appeal isn’t the price tag but the life that comes with it.
Five years and a bestselling memoir series later, Rob’s still playing in that local band and still riding the scooter to the market — which, for a guy whose old job put him in a hospital bed, is about as good an outcome as this genre of story gets.
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