My Eat Pray Love Journey

Elizabeth Gilbert is my inspiration. She’s the main character in the movie, Eat Pray Love. I can remember seeing the previews for the movie and immediately knowing that it was a MUST SEE. 

Needless to say, I saw the movie and was inspired to take my very own Eat, Pray, Love Journey. Even though I was inspired, I wondered for years, if I could really travel solo, eat amazing food and establish a deeper relationship with God? Absolutely. 

Fast forward to 2021, I’m doing it! If you haven’t seen the movie, I highly recommend watching it. Maybe it will inspire you to travel but most importantly, I believe it will inspire you to live YOUR most authentic life.

Last night at 3AM, I booked my Eat, Pray, Love trip. This will be my first time taking a solo vacation and I couldn’t be more excited.

In this blog post, I will share how I saved for this vacation, how I researched resorts and saved $300 on my flight/resort when booking.

How I Saved For Vacation

Taking time away has always been important to me. In 2019,  I found myself burnt out because I had not taken significant time away from work. Since then, I’ve been intentional about taking extended time off each quarter. After making that decision, I decided to contribute to a vacation savings account each month. The amount I set at the time was $150 per month but depending upon what I had going on that amount would increase. I didn’t have a set amount to be saved by a certain time (even though I recommend that you do), I just wanted the money there for when I needed it.

 To save for vacation;

1. Determine how much this vacation is going to cost you. This includes, lodging, flight/rental car, food and spending money.
2. Determine your travel dates.
3. Determine when you would like to book your lodging/flight.
4. Divide the amount you want to spend by the number of months you have until you book your trip.The result is the amount you will need to save monthly to reach your goal. Keep in mind you don’t have to calculate spending money into that  figure. Your trip is scheduled for a later date, which means you have additional time to save for that.
   1. For example: You plan to go on Vacation in August. You plan to book your  trip at the end of March. it’s currently January. You have three months to save. To keep it simple, to save $1,000 by March you will need to save $333.33 per month to reach that goal.

Breaking down your big savings goal into monthly chunks makes your goal attainable. Instead of, “I need to save thousands of dollars for a vacation.” You can now say, “I need to save a few hundred dollars for a vacation.” This approach is practical. When a task is practical, there is a greater chance that you will put the work in to reach the goal.

How I began Researching 

Youtube. At first I had no idea where I wanted to go. So I went to Youtube and searched “Female Solo Vacation” and I found soo many amazing vlogs. So of course benjed. An hour or so later, I had decided on Mexico. Next, I determined the city I planned to visit. I will share the city and the resort name when I return from my vacation.  From there, I began to browse the following sites for resorts:

1. Cheap Caribbean
2. Expedia
3. Booking.com
4. Trip Advisor

I’ll do another blog post where I go into detail on each of these at a later time. My advice is to determine 3 to 5 things your resort/hotel must have and narrow down your search based upon that.

How I saved $300. 

I booked my resort and flight with expedia. I love expedia. I purchase my rental cars and hotels through expedia, quite often. When browsing the site, expedia notified me of this great savings if I booked my resort stay through them. This was a huge savings for me because flights in June are SO EXPENSIVE.

I hope this information was helpful and inspiring. Remember, life is meant to be lived.