Tong Family

So if you are traveling around the world things have gotten a lot better. Most phone plans have global roaming (the T-Mobile 5GB/month of free international roaming is great). But you still have to be careful about phone calls where they are charging $0.25/minute if you are an international plan.

So what do you do in the modern age, well first there is Airvelo which Bruce turned me on to that provides inexpensive e-sims around the world (if you use my referral code RICHAR2140), you get $3 off. And make sure to turn on Rakuten as there is a 15% click-through bonus as well. So you begin to save.

This gives you international data and if you need it, you get local text and phone which is nice.

But what about people trying to call you or you are making a call back home? Well, there is a simple solution, Google Voice lets you make and receive calls for free as long as you have a data connection. We use the free Google Voice which you can get with any personal Gmail account for things like startup businesses, but one of the benefits is that if you load the Google Voice application on your iPhone or iPad or use voice.google.com in a web browser, then you can make and receive calls.

So when overseas just use that as your number. When you are local you can also have it forwarded to your real mobile number, but disable that when overseas, otherwise you are paying to roam again!