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Advice on phone plans? 1 year in Europe


by @larsheather 5yr  | 8 comments

Weโ€™re Americans planning to be in Europe for all of 2020 - approx. 90 days in each country, and alternating Schengen and non-Schengen. Our destinations will likely include four of these: Italy, Croatia, Bulgaria, Estonia, Ireland, Romania, and Spain.
Can anyone give us advice on cell phones? We would prefer to keep our current (U.S) numbers if at all possible. We donโ€™t anticipate making many local calls, but will phone the U.S. about once a week. Weโ€™ll use our phones for internet quite often.
Any advice for our situation would be very much appreciated!
Thanks,
Heather and Lars

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Hi Heather and Lars,

A local prepaid SIM card should be the cheapest option in most cases.

Personally, Iโ€™m not yet living the nomadic lifestyle, but Iโ€™m working on it. At the moment, Iโ€™m still living in Switzerland, my mobile phone provider is Salt: I pay 69.95 CHF/month (69.39 USD/month). This includes unlimited data, unlimited calls and SMS/MMS in/to Switzerland, EU, USA & Canada. I donโ€™t know however, if itโ€™s available without a Swiss address. Their homepage has an English version (sorry, but I couldnโ€™t include the link).

If you still have an American address, Google Fi might be an option for you. With them, you can phone for the same price in 200+ countries and territories.

A similar service, working in 140+ countries, is Flexiroam.

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Iโ€™m an American living in Brazil. I have a U.S. phone number from Google Voice so anyone in the U.S. can place a call to me and my phones, iPad and computers ring wherever I am (it is somewhat annoying when they all ring at the same time!). I spent three months in Europe last year and bought SIM cards for my phone in Antwerp, Lisbon and London. Each card cost me $25 or so for a month of data. I donโ€™t make phone calls on my phone. I had a free WiFi connection almost every night.

And I use WhatsApp to stay in touch with my Brazilian and European friends/clients/colleagues. Itโ€™s free for messaging. Calls, too.

It is pretty easy to travel the world and remain connected these days. The local telecoms are the only hassle, with their myriad rules to try to protect their monopoly. Hence I had three SIM cards in three months as I traveled around Europe last year. Iโ€™ll do the same this year unless I find a more accommodating telecom. :grinning:

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Hello Lars and Heather! This is unfortunately a common dilemma, having experienced it firsthand last year travelling almost 6 months. We kept our Verizon number by simply suspending our account while we used Google Fi via the cheap but beautiful and amazing Moto X4 Android One (can easily set entire phone up for 2 completely different users). Many here recommend just getting sim cards upon arrival. We found this to be often much more complicated than not. We wanted something that just simply works immediately upon touch down in many different countries and FI did not disappointโ€ฆ nor did it break the bank at $20/mo + 10/gb. If youโ€™re an iPhone couple, you can now use the FI sim but with less functionality (no free wi-fi calling to US and T-Mobile connection onlyโ€ฆ no Sprint or US Cellular). In closing, Iโ€™ve seen people recommending tossable digits dot com for various phone issues but Iโ€™m not familiar at all with it. Hope this helps. Jack

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@lricci 5yr

I have my US plan with T-Mobile. When I call the US, I pay for $5/day plan that allows 24 hours of international calling. For family and informal calls, we use Skype. They also have a $50/mo. international plan, but I havenโ€™t needed more than a few $5 daily plans, so I havenโ€™t looked into it. We had Verizon and they were awful. Every time we went abroad, there was some lame excuse that we didnโ€™t set up our international calling correctly. After a few multi-hundred dollar bills for international roaming (not calls) I went shopping for another provider. T-Mobile has been great the last two years.

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Thanks for sharing your experience with Verizon. Sounds like a nightmare!

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Hey Heather and Lars!

Iโ€™m Polish, who spent summers in Europe. Similarly, I mostly use my phone for internet connection and the mobile operator market is changing so fast that every time I come back to Europe I choose the current best offer.

Recently, the EU forced all mobile operators to allow โ€œfree roamingโ€, which on paper means that whatever you have in your base country, youโ€™ll get everywhere else in Europe. In practice, all operators retain to Fair Usage Policy, which in short means that after 4 consecutive months, theyโ€™ll look back and check if you used your plan more in your base country or abroad. If abroad, theyโ€™ll charge you extra fees.

Most EU markets are controlled by big telcos like T-Mobile, Vodafone or Orange, but they focus on selling long-term contracts with some โ€œEuropean planโ€, but Iโ€™d avoid it. Their offer is usually very complex, expensive and youโ€™ll still be restricted by Fair Usage Policy of the country, where you signed-up the contract.

The only viable option, in my opinion, is to buy a pre-paid plan, thatโ€™s usually for 30 days and in case itโ€™s not what you expect, buy another one.

Iโ€™ll be travelling between Poland and Italy a lot this summer and the most convenient offer I found so far will be Lycamobile. A virtual operator focused on international customers. They offer quite big data quota in addition to the EU phone calls, that Iโ€™ll need for my work.

Lycamobile is present also in the USA. Check their plans and compare them to what youโ€™ll get with their European card with a new number. You can also buy a new Lycamobile every 3 months in your new โ€œbase countryโ€.

As for calling to the US, Iโ€™d use Skype, VoIP or Hushed app on your phone. Thatโ€™s in most cases cheaper and faster than calling via regular telephone infrastructure. Thereโ€™s also a way to โ€œconnectโ€ your current American mobile number to Skype in order to receive calls, but youโ€™d need to double check it with your current provider.

Hope that helps :smiley:

PS. Please check details on how Schengen zone and travelling visas affect your allowed stay. All the countries you mentioned are already tied to the Schengen rules.

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This is really helpful information! Thanks so much for taking the time to answer in such detail. Youโ€™ve put us on the right track!
Happy travels.

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No worries! Safe travels and hope to see you on the track! :vulcan_salute:

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Hey, hope everyone is well!

We're leaving in a month to go travelling. Our first destination is still to be confirmed, but will likely be Poland or Slovakia. We will be moving around every month or two to different destinations.

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I'm a dual citizen of America and France with my resident based in the America. Can I travel to the EU using my French passport?

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Hello,
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i am trying to find a monthly based condo in SUKHUMVIT in BKK becaue i am staying 1-3 Months in BKK. But somehow its nearly impossible to find a nice one. Except Air BnB 1000$+ โ€ฆ

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Greetings Vesko

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Planning ahead for the winter. Iโ€™ll be in Spain in the Fall and want to go someplace warm for the winter in or near Europe, but not Schengen. Was first thinking Cape Town, but the internet is slow and it is very far. Was also thinking:
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Weโ€™re researching places to use as a home base next year, and are leaning towards Mexico or Panama for 10 months (with 1 week โ€œvacationsโ€ to explore surrounding countries)

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by @kartman92 6yr 6 years ago  | 7 comments

Hello nomads,

Due to a recent US work visa rejection (H1B), Iโ€™m considering turning to freelancing and being a digital nomad. My former employer (US based start-up) wants me to continue rendering my services as a contractor/freelancer (so I have a confirmed major client and Iโ€™ll probably take on other minor clients on the side). From the get go I want to get my taxes right and I was hoping you seasoned nomads can assist me. Some of the key aspects of my case are:

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https://finance.yahoo.com/news/vermont-pay-10-000-move-110056645.html

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in Portugal by @solardive 6yr 6 years ago  | 0 comments

Hi everyone!

Currently looking at ridding myself of the 9-5 and becoming a freelance consultant. Iโ€™m not planning to go full erm, โ€œtax optimisationโ€, as I believe in taxes as a concept, but I would like to pay less of them so I can get my business off the ground with more peace of mind.

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Where to pay taxes if self employed non-resident of the UK, travelling Europe?


by @jadi4nd 6yr 6 years ago  | 5 comments

Hi, I know there are a few posts around this topic but none of them quite answer my questions.

I am British and currently a resident in the UK.
Next year I am going to become a non-resident and spend over a year traveling mostly around Europe, moving every few weeks never staying anywhere longer than a month. (My first venture into becoming a digital nomad!)

I am remote, self employed, software developer working mostly for one client based in the UK.

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From what I have read I will not be liable to pay taxes in UK, can anyone confirm this?
If not the UK then where if I am moving every few weeks?
If possible I want to avoid starting a company as this seems unnecessarily complicated for my work setup.

Thank you in advance for any help :slight_smile:

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