A small but critical part of the research for international travel surrounded how to manage our cell phones. Our phone numbers are critical for all sorts of things. The least important of those is staying in contact with family friends. We could find ways to get in contact with them without our phones. The most important function of our phones (which worried me the most) is lumped under “two factor authentication” (TFA). TFA is a critical security measure for access to websites, apps, etc. Especially when so many people are writing their passwords on paper on a sticky note by their desk (mom).
You almost certainly use TFA regularly. If you receive an access code via text that you need to enter in addition to your password, that’s TFA. If you have an app on your phone that produces a one time code (e.g. Verisign, Microsoft Authenticator), that’s TFA. TFA raises the bar that an attacker has to clear to compromise your account. It may not be perfect but it’s pretty damn close. I personally have never had an account with TFA hacked.
TFA is critical for us this year because we use it to get into every important account we have. The most critical of these are our bank accounts. It would be stressful if anything happened to disrupt our phone plans, as that in turn would disrupt access to our money.
Our Phone Plan
For years we have been using Google FI for our phone service. Everything about it has been first class. The initial purchase and setup was straightforward as new customers, the pixel phones are affordable and great pieces of tech, and the billing is transparent and easy to understand. At home for three lines (AC, JC, me) it costs us roughly $60/month.
We typically buy either the Pixel base model or the “a” counterpart. We have a 7a, 8a, and an 8 between us.
International Capabilities
I remembered hearing that Google FI “just works” for international travel. My initial thought was that we’d be fine for this year of travel due to that. However, my anxious personality couldn’t help the need to verify the details. It was good I researched it further. While you can travel internationally no problem, the length of your travel can become a problem.
Google Fi expects your data usage to be primarily in the U.S. over any rolling 90 day period. If you’re abroad too long, they may suspend international data (not calls/texts). With our plans to be international for a year, this is obviously a problem. After the first 45 days we would be in violation of this policy as our usage would be primarily international at that point for the rolling 90 day window. This data caveat was annoying. It turned a simple verification task into another thing on my todo list. I had to figure out how to work around this provision in their international service.
The Solution
After reading some personal accounts on reddit, the solution seemed to be a data SIM for our phones. A data SIM allows you to buy data to use. By simply buying data through a company other than Google FI, it would prevent the 45 day timer from evening starting.
Since our Pixel phones support e-sims, we went with e-sims from airalo. The cost ended up being $199.41 total, giving each of us a 20GB e-sim that is valid for a year. The installation of the e-sim was straightforward, which we did in June before we left. The end result was our phones being configured to use Google FI for calls and texts, and airalo for data. The data coverage has been great here in Costa Rica. It’s great to know that for all of our target countries, we don’t need to do anything else. We just show up and use our phones like normal.
We are now past the 45 consecutive day mark where we would have run into an issue. Everything is working great and we don’t experience anything different in the usage of our phones. The one oddity that we did run into is that on some text threads it switched to try to use airalo for the texts. It was just a quick click and change back to Google FI though, so not a big deal.
The airalo data combined with my phone’s hotspot feature also came in clutch recently. There is some weird anomaly here at our Airbnb with the wifi. It mostly works fine, but creates an issue with session management on many things. BC first noticed this trying to log in to Microsoft in Minecraft. JC and I noticed it trying to buy plane tickets from Japan to Guam. We couldn’t get through the process because the session kept dropping. We fired up the hotspot on my phone with airalo data and it worked perfectly. It’s nice to have a reliable backup on hand at all times.
Net Cost / Conclusion
One pleasant surprise is that with no data usage at all through Google FI, our bill decreased to about $50/month. That’s a savings of $120/year. Subtracting that from the cost of airalo put the true net cost of airalo at 79.41 for three e-sims. That’s less than $7/month and only requires $2,100 in investments to support in FIRE.
I would highly recommend this same approach to anyone. Google FI is a great at-home every-day phone service to have anyway. Combining that with airalo is a bargain, it’s simple, and I have personal evidence that it works.