The Importance of Staying Connected
Making the decision to move abroad can be complicated, or at least it was for us. There are a lot of logistics, questions, fears, and doubts, but none were as hard for us as leaving our family behind.
When Chris and I decided to turn our dream of long-term travel into a reality, the timing was everything. Our parents were healthy, we had no nieces/nephews, and no kids of our own. Now was the time! We were afraid if we didn’t go now, our parents’ health or other significant life events might occur. Our dreams of traveling would be stalled.
Our timeline was set. We sold our house, told our family, friends, and jobs (kinda, more on that later) of our plans, and started to get everything in order. When our house sold, we still had a year and a half before we were planning on moving. To save money, we rented a house with my sister and brother-in-law. They were trying to save money to buy a house and we were saving to leave so it was a win-win situation.
Then everything changed!
Chris and I were at a wine bar in our old neighborhood when my sister and brother-in-law randomly showed up to surprise us with the news that they were expecting. My first thought was pure joy and excitement. I couldn’t wait to be an aunt!
…But then I started to think about all the plans we had made to travel. How was I going to be able to leave my nephew? I didn’t want to miss out on all the milestones and watching him grow up, but we couldn’t back out of our plans now.
That’s when we started seriously researching how we were going to be able to keep in touch with our family.
It was important not only be able to talk to them, but also to see them. We knew we would also be on a tight budget, so how could we do it for cheap or free?
Lucky for us, we are living in an age of amazing technology and have lots of options.
Note: We decided to save money by giving up our phone plan and being Wi-Fi based only. We knew we were going to be working from home, so any place we went would have to have a good Wi-Fi connection. Non-negotiable.
This may not be the best option for everyone, but we found international phone plans through our US provider to be extremely expensive. We have heard of other people getting phones, SIM cards, etc. at their destination, but we thought we would try using only Wi-Fi first.
We chose these 5 options to stay connected with family and friends. Better yet, they are FREE!
WhatsApp:
This is our favorite method for keeping in touch. It is totally FREE!! You can text, send pictures, call, or video chat (I love to see my nephew’s chubby cheeks and sweet smile when I make faces at him).
For those of you concerned with privacy, it’s also fully encrypted.
One of our favorite features is you can create text groups, so we can send texts and pictures to multiple people at the same time. It works great with Wi-Fi or can operate using cell service too.
Downloading the app on your smartphone and setting up an account is really easy. Before we left, we sent a message to our friends and family telling them how to download it and what our contact names were. When we touched down, we were ready to start chatting.
It is a very popular app in Europe, and it is what we use to communicate with the people we house sit for abroad.
“According to Statista, of the mobile phone internet users in the UK, 84% actively use the app, and correspondingly, 81% in Italy, 73% in Spain, 65% in Germany, and 23% in France. In contrast, only one-third of internet users in the United States have downloaded and use the app – most of which are people who have traveled to or have friends in Europe.” https://www.telemessage.com/why-is-whatsapp-more-popular-than-sms-in-europe-infographic/
Skype:
This app is FREE as well and great for calling people. If the people you are calling have the app, it’s free to talk. The features for texting and group messaging are available, but we prefer WhatsApp due to better functionality.
We have found Skype to be extremely useful when we need to call internationally for work or to take care of something at home. You can purchase Skype Credits and call for 2.8 cents/minute. It is extremely cheap, and it has allowed us to not need a phone plan. You can also buy plans for $5.00/month that have unlimited calling.
I am still baffled by how that’s even possible!!
Google Voice:
We don’t use this app a lot, but it’s great for when you need to provide an actual phone number for someone to reach you. It is also Free! When working from home, or setting up accounts for certain things, you are required to give a phone number.
Visual voicemail, you know the thing on a smartphone where it turns a caller’s voice message into a paragraph, is also available. This a cool function with Google Voice because you can check your voicemail from your Google inbox (on the beach, in a bar, or while you are just chilling).
Since we canceled our phone plan, we gave up our phone number, so Google Voice has solved this problem for us. You can make calls as well, but sometimes the Wi-Fi functionality is not as good as Skype or WhatsApp.
iMessage (iPhone users only):
We are iPhone users as well as a lot of our family. If you are chatting or calling between iPhone users, you just continue using it like you never left. It’s free and extremely simple. The only problem we found, is it’s hard to know which friends and family have what type of phone, so having a single platform, like WhatsApp, simplified life for us.
Facebook Messenger:
I didn’t discuss social media in this post because it’s a great way to keep people updated on what you are doing, but not necessarily the best way to communicate back and forth.
However, we have found that Facebook Messenger is a great way to send lots of pics and links to our family. All of our family is on Facebook, so we just create groups in messenger and send large files that way. We found when we were trying to send videos or large picture files through iMessage or WhatsApp, it would take a long time and sometimes the files couldn’t be opened. Facebook Messenger is a great workaround for this problem.
Fun fact: Chris and I were on a cruise while trying to sell our home back in The States. We needed to talk with our realtor and were able to use the call function within Facebook Messenger to speak with her. Mind blown!. Tech rules!
Technology Rocks!
We are so thankful for the technology that is available to us. Being able to communicate with our family for FREE whenever we want has made our transition so much easier.
Now that I know how easy it is to communicate while abroad, I can’t believe I was so worried about it before we left. Hopefully, this information will help ease some of your fear about staying connected with family and friends.
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