This story is part of CNBC Make It’s Millennial Money series, which details how people around the world earn, spend and save their money.
Stephanie Synclair was on her own “Eat, Pray, Love” journey in 2012 when she first visited the place that would become her second home.
Synclair was newly into her entrepreneur era, having quit a 10-year corporate marketing career to become a consultant and work for herself. “I knew it was time to quit corporate America when I was sick of people telling me when to take a lunch break,” she says. “I wish it was deeper than that.”
Starting her own consulting business meant Synclair could work from anywhere, including while traveling the world.
She looked for the cheapest flights for her first trip out of the country — “It was Palermo, Sicily, and that’s how we ended up here,” she tells CNBC Make It. For a roughly $250 plane ticket, Synclair set off to Sicily with her then 6-year-old son, Caden.
She immediately found Sicilians welcoming, and “I knew from the moment I landed that I loved it here, and it was almost like home for me.”
Synclair, who lives in Atlanta, made Sicily her home away from home in 2022 when she bought a house there for 59,000 euros, or about $62,000.
She now runs her own tea company, LaRue 1680, and pays herself $80,000 per year. Here’s how she spends her time, and money, across her home base of Atlanta and her second home in Sicily.
Falling in love with Sicily
If the promise of good food and beautiful vistas drew Synclair to Sicily, it was the friendliness of the locals that made her want to stay.
She first felt it when she arrived in Sicily and committed the “cardinal sin” of taking a nap after landing, she says. She woke up in the middle of the town’s siesta, when many shops and restaurants are closed for the afternoon.
Synclair remembers wandering the streets with Caden looking for a place to eat, when she came across a woman who didn’t speak English.
Even through a language barrier, the woman recognized…
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