How to Call Back Home For Cheap
All of us had to leave friends or even family back home when we migrated to the USA. However we’re very fortunate to live in a high tech world that allows us to talk and even see our beloved ones at any time at no or very little cost. Think about our ancestors for a second and how they communicated with the people they left behind. Maybe they wrote a letter every couple years to their relatives, others just started a new life and never looked back.
Let’s take a look at today’s technology and some of the neat communication tools that are available to us other than a regular phone call through your landline with rates from a few cents to a couple dollars per minute depending on what country you’re calling.
Skype
Available for Windows, Mac and mobile devices, it allows Skype users to call or video chat other Skype users for free. All you need to do is download the software and sign up for a free account. Both parties need to be online in order to call each other.If the other person doesn’t have Skype you can still use your Skype account to call or text their cell or landline for a very low rate starting at 2.3 cents per minute for an international call or even lower if you sign up for a monthly subscription. See current rates here. Just load some money to your account with your credit card and you’re good to go.
Can other people call you on Skype with their cell or landline? Absolutely! What you need is a Skype number, starting at $5 a month with a 12 month subscription. There are also shorter subscription periods like 3 months for $6/month. Once set up, people can call your Skype number and it’ll ring on all of your devices that have Skype installed. You can also have Skype be your answering machine, if you’re unavailable.
Facetime
Another free audio and video chat service is Facetime from Apple. The catch is, that both parties need to have either Apple computers with MacOS 10.6.6 or newer, or another Apple device like iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch running iOS – Apple’s mobile operating system. The other person doesn’t even have to run the Facetime app in order to receive a call. Facetime calls and video chats are always free and without time constraints.I hope you learned about one or the other new tool to call your friends and family at home and give them a call soon.
What tools are you using to call back home? Please comment below.
top photo by Fotolia.com © Tyler Olson
Hey great blog Dan,
Love the layout and the idea behind it.
What about using google voice. Im not sure how it works out of country but I use it for a couple of my businesses.
Allows me to have a new number ring to the same phone. For your situation I would think (don’t know this) that you could get a google voice number local to wherever your main family is —–(this would only be local for one area unless you pulled off the multiple google voice numbers which needs more than one real phone to do)—– That number is local to them so when they call you they call a local number. I think you can call them using google voice as well but it could cost something.
Just a thought I haven’t really tried it for that purpose. Have you looked into it.
Thanks for bringing up Google Voice. I haven’t tried it yet, but just did some research on it. You can call for free within the US and Canada but it’ll cut you off after 3 hours. Enough time to talk in my opinion. For international calls you would have to pay for example 10 cents per minute to a mobile phone in Germany. Rates vary based on country.
I should write more about it and maybe add it to my article.
Its definitely a great tool. I use it everyday for my real estate investing side. Ya love to see what you thing in your blog and see if you find other cool tricks that it can do that I am unaware of.