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.
Stephanie Synclair, 41, is a businessowner and mom in Atlanta and splits her time at her second home in Sicily, Italy.
Mickey Todiwala | CNBC Make It
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.
Mussomeli, Sicily, went viral for selling homes for 1 euro.
Mickey Todiwala | CNBC Make It
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 Synclair’s need. “She grabbed me by one hand and grabbed my little baby by the other hand and walked us to the store that she had just left from,” Synclair says. “I felt like that was one of the most hospitable things anyone could have done, instead of just leaving me to be lost in the streets of Sicily.”
Those neighborly interactions motivated Synclair to spend more time in Sicily. She figures she knows more about her neighbors in Sicily than she’s ever known about her neighbors in the U.S.
“Once people know you’re in their community, they do take you in as family,” she says.
Another welcome difference is the Sicilian approach to leisure, she says: “My favorite thing about living in Sicily is you actually get to live. I do find that in the United States, it’s more work focused for me. And so here I’m able to really relax and spend time doing things that I love doing.”
“I always said I could see myself living here, but it was more so in a dream way,” she adds. “I never actually saw myself buying a house here. I don’t know that I really thought it was possible at the time.”