Julia Bagley

Whether you’re looking to plan a road trip, book a flight, or plan out a journey by train or boat, make sure you check out these resources to save you a lot of money and make planning a breeze ⛱️ I’ve been using Autoslash for about 5 years now and they’ve consistently found me the best rental car rates. I just plug in my departure airport and a date range (can be several months), and it will bring up a map showing the cheapest flights everywhere! Rome2Rio is great because it includes local transportation, so it tells you the cheapest way to get from point A to point B, whether it is on a bus, train, ferry, flight or even a ride share. Today I found a flight from Raleigh to Denver for $41 and to Orlando for $31!

She has extensive travel insight to offer, having lived abroad in South America and Europe and regularly traveling between Canada and the US with her dual citizenship. My father was a big proponent of travel and was my main cheerleader in taking a gap year (a few gap years haha) and still encouraging me now to be a digital nomad. I understand finding all this information on website hosting, SEO, networking ,etc can be difficult, but all that information is in one place and the information is provided for a lifetime and it gets updated with new free or budget friendly programs the entrepreneur can use. I also am bias with Croatia because I met so many amazing people and remet a friend I originally met on my gap year when I was 18 (6 years prior).

They served their purpose, but once we started getting Green Chef meals, I knew I’d never go back to any other meal delivery service because Green Chef tastes so much better and I like being able to freshly prepare the meals instead of heating up pre-made food in the microwave. If you haven’t tried Green Chef before, they are a meal kit delivery service where they send you all the ingredients needed to create each recipe and most meals have taken 30 minutes or less to prepare. A bonus is that all the meals are bursting with color and they look beautiful once plated – believe me, I’m NOT skilled in the kitchen, but their ingredients and easy to follow instructions will make you look like you have professional chef skills! If you’d like to try Green Chef, here is my link to receive $55 off your first box.

After being on the waiting list for almost 6 months, I finally got the invitation to sign up for Bumped Stock Rewards, which is a marketplace that allows you to earn fractional stock (instead of cash back) at a wide variety of stores. If shopping online, start your shopping through the Bumped app or website, and click on the store you want to purchase from. If shopping in-store, all you need to do is add the in-store offers from the app as shown below, then purchase through your linked credit card. As I mentioned, we purchase all our dog food and grooming products from Chewy, and we already have stock with them, so I was thrilled to find a way to earn even more stock in their company through Bumped.

I love hiking, but I love animals even more, so when I discovered a park in Virginia that offered incredible trails and wild ponies galore, I was itching to get there as soon as possible. Thankfully, the weekend of January 2nd was unseasonably warm (in the 50’s) and we jumped at the chance to take a quick road trip up to Virginia to check out Grayson Highlands State Park. From the park website: Near Mount Rogers and Whitetop Mountain, Virginia’s two highest mountains, Grayson Highlands offers scenic views of alpine-like peaks more than 5,000 feet high. We enjoyed all the creek crossings and so did our pup, but many areas require you to climb slippery rocks, so make sure to wear boots with good tread like these and hiking poles like these are helpful as well.

From bonding with friends and family/furry friends, making new connections, building confidence, increasing physical fitness, relieving stress, disconnecting from technology, and exploring a whole host of beautiful new places, the benefits are endless! Gyms may be closed in your area, or may be requiring masks to workout (like mine is), but the outdoors is a great free option to get some physical activity in and disconnect from the daily grind at the same time. Also be sure to enter the 52HikeChallenge New Year’s Giveaway for the chance to win great prizes like a $100 REI gift card and more. Thanks for reading and stay tuned later this month when I’ll be sharing about our first hike of the year where we saw some beautiful waterfalls and a bunch of wild ponies!

The culinary options in Costa Rica will please even the pickiest of foodies and there are plentiful delicious cocktails topped with fresh fruit and good local beers (cervezas) as well! After we passed out from our food comas and got some rest, we set out to enjoy some whitewater rafting on the Balsa River which had Class 2 and 3 rapids. Here we saw our first iguanas by the pool, tried sea kayaking (complete with awkward flips into the waves) and learned that monkeys like to try to sneak into your room if you leave the balcony door open! It’s the perfect spot for a trip with friends or family, with plenty of options for adventure, relaxation time, amazing food, nature exploration, fruity drinks galore, plenty of exotic wildlife, and best of all, right now it’s fairly cheap for direct flights to Costa Rica from the US (under $400 in my area) and one of the few countries open to Americans right now.

We have been gradually finding some good deals on at-home equipment this past year; so far we have a weight bench, adjustable dumbells, resistance bands, a stability ball and pull-up bar. so they will not all be “traditional” workouts; I’ll be mixing in many types of movement that I enjoy – hiking, planking (of course), running, walking, disc golf, volleyball, tennis, rebounding, aerial fitness, curling, kayaking, HIIT workouts, cycling, rowing, boxing, resistance training with bands and weights, and swimming. I’m planning to take advantage of the free online workouts from apps like MapMyFitness to vary up my routine between online and in person fitness options and find out which activities I enjoy the most. My husband and each purchased our own Mind Pump Fitness program at a 50% discount, so we have about 3 months of targeted training developed by personal trainers that we respect ready for us whenever we want to start!

Maybe you’re just looking to stay consistent in the fitness routine you’ve already implemented. If you’re looking for some variety in your home workouts, check out the free 20 minute streaming Planet Fitness workouts every Monday – Friday at 7pm EST. They also share great free 5 minute HIIT workouts every Tuesday and Thursday on Instagram! When I travel, I always pack a set of resistance bands because they take up so little space and help me stay fit while on the road.

I’ve tried many other meal delivery KITS in the past like Green Chef, Blue Apron, Sunbasket, Hello Fresh, Home Chef, and Gobble. The meal kits I tried were definitely helpful and cut down on cooking time, but I have been feeling a complete cooking burnout and just wanted MEALS already prepared that only needed to be heated with no preparation needed. After a fairly long search, I finally landed upon Factor 75 because of the wide variety of healthy meals they offer and the ability to choose each meal you receive. I’ve tried pre-made healthy meals at places like Clean Eatz and other macro restaurants before and thought they tasted quite bland, but I could tell that a well-trained chef prepared the Factor 75 meals because they are full of flavor and well-seasoned.