So I haven't made that much progress in the past six weeks, but some interesting things have happened.
Mainly, #1 - I won a yoga retreat to Barcelona in October. My partner won a luxury safari that we took back in 2017. It was amazing and unreal. It some ways it is still sinking in. After we got back I started aggressively entering contest after contest going anywhere from Paris to Baton Rouge. I had a "I'll get you back" mentality. In two years I've entered over 1,100 contests and I actually won one. Now five days doing yoga in Barcelona still isn't quite a ten-day luxury safari, but it's a pretty good start - especially not that long after our other trip. So I verified that it was real and decided on an October date. This will give me longer to look forward to the trip and longer to save, and maybe we'll beat the tourist rush that Barcelona experiences in the summer.
Five days of yoga, accommodation, and one vegetarian meal per day are covered, the flights are not. Also, you don't fly all the way to Europe for just five days, right? I found two pretty good flights out of New York (it's cheaper to fly from New Orleans to New York and then to Spain) for $338.50. So I put those on my new venture credit card and *hoping* that that might give me enough points to book the MSY-NYC flights. That would be great. Now we just need to save for a few extra nights in Madrid and all the things we will do outside of the yoga class.
#2 - I went on a trip to Upstate New York for my partner's college reunion. She bought the flights and paid for the reunion, but the petsitters, Uber trips to and from JFK, a sale at Topman because they are closing their US stores, plus food and drinks really added up. I've been laying low since we've been back to make up for it.
#3 - There's a lot of other travel and family trips coming up that is going to have me just treading water this summer. Hopefully I can do some more Uber Eats deliveries and some petsitting with Rover.
*Debt does not include these recent flight purchases, they haven't posted yet.
