Ruby Loves Adventure

Copacabana Beach, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Early today I was chatting with my friend about goals. She said she finally quit her job and is trying to look for another one at a multinational company. Staying 10 years at a local company, she realized she had enough, and looked for something better. Same friend told me her goals: she wanted to go abroad. It took her approximately 3 years before she made the leap.. and I'm glad she did. 

So, why are goals essential to your success?

Let me back up a bit here... and tell you some goals that I wanted to achieve:  

1. 1998: I wanted to go to London: Blame Boyzone, but yes, I wanted to see them live
•  2008:  I finally got to London, for free on a business trip. (Yes, business class all the way). You can see a very, very old post here. 
• Lesson learned: You will always find a way to make your goal into a reality, regardless of how much time it takes.
2. 2001: I wanted to move abroad. The Philippines got too corrupt, annoying, and the president was an imbecile. It really got annoying come 2012, when I definitely decided to move, by hook or by crook. 
• 2013: I moved to the USA. My original plan was to move to London but sadly, it didn't work out. Had another offer in Birmingham but since the USA came first, I decided to go with it. 
• Lesson learned: Sometimes what you want may not always be what you get. And sometimes what you get may turn out to be even better than what you wanted in the first place.

Those are just some of the goals I made happen for myself. There's a few more that I can mention: travel more (started backpacking around the UK in 2011, and Asia from 2012-2013)

Cambugahay Falls, Siquijor

How did I make it happen? Does this mean I'm successful?

First off, success is subjective. You can define your success in your own way.

Your goals are essential to your success because:  

1. It gives you focus - they say when you write down a goal, the more you get to make it happen. And that's true. I kept on writing down what I wanted to do, I told people who would dare listen what I wanted. I wanted to be the person who made things happen, and not just someone who says something and does nothing. A goal keeps you focused on what you want to happen, and then you move on to step 2


2.  You get creative - When you have a goal, especially a challenging one, you get more creative about how you would reach it. You start thinking outside the box and you're getting frustrated. Getting frustrated is amazing. It gives you something to obsess about: How do I do this? What do I do? What resources can I tap on? And that, my friends, is the start of step 3


3.  You make things happen - These goals tend to multiply: you get more and more of it. When you have a new goal, write it down, and set a date to review it. In my case, I write down goals whenever, but short term goals (ie within one month), I check the last day of every month. These are written down at least the month before. It feels so good to tick off things from my list and making things happen. The bigger goals, like moving from one country to another (not so easy, especially if you live in the Philippines), can go in a longer term goal and be on a separate notebook. 

It is so much fun to look back and realize hey, I made this dream (goal) happen!

Hopefully this has inspired you to make a goal. As of writing, here are a list of our goals to help inspire you:

1. Be financially independent (FI) - I became convinced I want to retire early after reading "Your Money or Your Life" and "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" - I've always wanted my money to work for me instead of me working for money. In fact, I even convinced Peter to get in on the FI mindset! We're slowly making our way there, and we're taking the necessary steps to do it. 


2.  Get married on a budget - Weddings are expensive all over the world. And ever since we got engaged, I've been trying to think of ways to make our wedding very affordable. Our starting budget is $3,000 but it looks like it can balloon to $5,000. Keep posted. We're posting our progress here on this blog.


3.  Travel a lot (weekend, vacations), even with a full time job - 2015 has been good to us, travel wise. Here's hoping 2016 will be even better (note: planning trips to France & Slovakia in 2016, as well as mostly local travel).


4.  Monetize this blog as another income stream - Still a work in progress, but hopefully we can do it. Still trying to learn the ropes on this.


5. Get sponsored trips - We love to travel after all, and sponsored trips will be the icing on the cake!

Good luck on your endeavors! 

Apologies for our absence - Peter and I have been busy trying to recover from our Philippines/New York trip and just recently, over the Easter holidays, we came back from Atlanta! Aside from that, I got really busy with other projects, such as planning my Financial Independence and side hustles! Oh, and I finally finished this blog after our Europe trip. Busy, busy!

Zoo Atlanta!

Why Atlanta?  Well, we had been discussing it for a while and we always wanted to visit this city because of its hustling & bustling activity. Plus, why not? It's only a 5 hour drive from Jacksonville.

Peter might be back to tell you more about our adventures, but so far here's a breakdown of our expenses. Everything in the breakdown is per person, split between two people (we're a couple)

• Gas: our main form of transportation is driving. For 3 days of sightseeing & from driving from Jax to Atlanta 
• $50.50 each 
• Sightseeing:
• $79 each for the Atlanta CityPass (to be reimbursed by Arrival+) 
• $11 each for the Atlanta Skyview (via Groupon)
• Total: $89
• Dining: 
• $ 80 - We had lunch at Golden Corral when we were driving to Atlanta, then ate at food trucks or cheaper food joints for dinner. 
• Others (Souvenirs, etc):
• $31.25 - That's a lot of money for souvenirs. It's mostly from me though. I got crazy at the World of Coke (its expensive but cute), and also had to get the quintessential magnets that I bring home to our souvenir pile. 
• Hotel: 
• $72 - For two nights (split with the boyfriend), at a Best Western near the airport. It was one of the cheapest we could get (was too cheap to use points to redeem for a short stay such as this). 
• Total spent: $323.75 ($244.75 once the Arrival+ points kick in)

So, since I've gotten into the points and miles game recently, I figured I'd also post my plans on how to travel for cheap in 2015.

Why so early? Because to travel for almost free, you need to book secure your award tickets as soon as you can. And it also means jumping on various promos to get as many points as you need. Oh, and this isn't a backpacker trip... we're traveling using hotels, cars, and doing all that we want to do: paying $30 for dinner? that's fine, we can offset it somewhere. Paying $50 for a tour? Yes, also fine - we can reimburse it. No holds barred, no budget constraints (much) - just trying to do whatever we want in the hopes of reimbursing as many of it using points.

So, our travel plans for 2015 are as follows and bits and bobs of what we want to do, we don't have specific itineraries yet. I'll update this page as soon as I have booked more flights/hotels and our overall out of pocket cost before the end of 2015. Note - most of these tricks only apply to the US, but you should know that YOU CAN TRAVEL IN STYLE WITHOUT PAYING MUCH - all it needs is a bit of planning and knowing what's out there! :)



Tampa (January 17-19)

• Busch Gardens - paid $45 in cash for entrance during the AMEX Daily Getaways (too bad we didn't have an AMEX card when we bought it, would have been much cheaper - paying $45 for 1 ticket is 50% cheaper than the normal price (around $100)
• Lunch - $17 (buffet) out of pocket
• Parking fee - $17 out of pocket