Tired of Spending $1000 Annually on Your Cell Phone?

A global plan will cut your costs, truly

When setting up your phone for Nomad Life, there’s one rule you’ll absolutely want to maintain: don’t give up your USA phone number. Chances are that you’ve had the same number for decades. It’s attached to so many things, including your two-factor authentications (those texts from your bank that verify you.)

Can you imagine if you had to rely on pay phones as you traveled?

Set Up Your Phone to Work in Any Country

Prior to leaving the USA, it’s imperative that you have your cell phone set up for world travel. When we first left, we thought Google Fi was the solution that would take us around the world, providing phone service, data, and two-factor authentication. When we got to Mexico at month six of our travels, we received the dreaded note from Google Fi that they’d be cutting off our data; we had violated the terms of service. A mad scramble ensued to find a solution that worked for us, and we’re going to share it with you.

Start with Your Phone Number

While you may be used to using one service like Verizon, T-Mobile, or Sprint for your phone and data, these services are very expensive internationally ($10 a day on average) and won’t serve all your daily needs as you move through the world as a full-time traveler. We suggest you port your number to a better choice, and we offer two solutions.

Solution One: Keep your number where it is and pay lots of money to do that.

Solution Two: Port your number over to Google Voice (or similar) and buy data plans. Below, I walk you through the Google Voice option. We have a video for this, which you can watch here.

Use Google Voice or Tello for Your Phone Number

First Step: Sign up with Google Voice before you leave the USA. Port your number to Google Voice and install the dialer app for Google Voice on your phone. Google Voice is free. This is the app you’ll use to make calls and texts around the world. You’ll receive your two-factor authentications from your banks, etc, through this app as well. In addition, add money to your Google Voice account to pay for the international calls you’ll make. Calls cost about $.01 a minute on Google Voice.

If you are not in the US or you don’t have a US phone number and can’t use Google Voice, another fine option is to use Tello. It cost $5 a month, and it’s what Steve uses. He doesn’t trust that Google Voice won’t disappear.

International Calls Explained

Let me explain international calls with Google Voice or Tello. Let’s say you’re in Italy and you want to call a US number. No problem, it’s free. But let’s say you’re in Italy and you want to call an Italian number. No problem, it’s $.01 a minute (roughly). Or you’re in Italy and you want to call France. It’s $.01 a minute too. I’ve had $10 in my Google Voice account for over 5 years, and the balance currently is $8.95.

Data Plans, Explained

Second Step: Once you have your Google Voice set up, you’ll need a data solution. We suggest one of two choices. Both involve getting a sim card or an e-sim. Sim cards (either physical or electronic) are what you need to get data on your phone. Without a sim card, you can’t get data (surf the internet) when you’re not on WIFI. The sim card also comes with a phone number, but it’s not something you’ll probably ever use. You’ll continue to use the phone number attached to Google Voice.

Get Your Data (Team Steve and Team Chris)

Next you need to get your sim which is your data plan. There are two choices.

Choice One (Team Steve): This is the cheapest option but not the most convenient. Steve likes this option. When you arrive in a new country, buy a local sim. You can find stands in the airport, at convenience stores, and at phone stores. Prices vary widely, and the plans often cover not only the current country but a region (like Europe or Southeast Asia.) The amount of data you’ll get also varies from small amounts to unlimited. These plans include expiration dates.

For example, a plan might be good for Italy for 30 days of unlimited data for 30 Euro. The advantage of these plans is that they’re cheap. The disadvantage is that it might be hard to find a vendor, the instructions might be in another language, you’ll need to register with your passport, and it might be hard to top off a plan if it runs out. In addition, it takes time. Often Steve has had to spend hours finding a vendor and getting his phone to work.

Choice Two (Team Chris): This is the plan that I prefer. I use an e-sim from Flexiroam. Other popular vendors include Airalo and Saily. With e-sims, you download the e-sim to your phone. There’s no hardware, it’s all software based. Like sim cards, you can buy the appropriate plan for the country you’re in and the amount of data you want. Flexiroam has a global plan for 20G that expires in 360 days.

Although I can buy cheaper local and regional plans, which I sometimes do if we’re slow traveling and in a country for more than a month, a global plan is easy, and I can forget about it once it’s set up. The disadvantage to the plan is that it’s more expensive (about 30% more, generally). The advantage is that I don’t have to spend much time at all setting it up, and the tech support is in English via WhatsApp. In addition, the plan is instantly available upon landing when we immediately need data to get from the port/airport/bus station to our next location.

You’d think that Steve and I could come to an agreement on what to do with our phones. But we can’t, so we use our phones this way. The advantage is that we do find ourselves in situations where one of our phones will work and the other one won’t for whatever bizarre cell phone reason might be happening on that day. In those situations, it’s nice to have two different solutions so we always have one that is working.

Save Money, Ditch Your American Plan

So what do we do when we return to the US? We keep our phones as they are. There’s no need for us to go with one of the big carriers, as this solution works globally, in any country. Thus, if you’re in the US and staying in the US, dump your expensive plan. Go with our magic set up, and you, too, can save $1000s on your cell phone bill.