Keeping in touch with life back home

Once upon a time there were many expats and travelers who couldn't keep up with life and bills back home. They sometimes couldn't get bills paid on time, ruined their credit, and in general lost track of life. Those days are long gone thanks to the advent of the Internet.

Nowadays, there are multiple methods to pay bills, get your mail, talk to friends and family, and receive faxes. The following is a rundown of some of the methods I've heard that are user friendly and not too expensive. I'm only focusing on new services I haven't talked about in the past.

Online Bill Pay
If you use a bank such as Citibank, they have the option to do paperless checks online. This is great for any type of check payment and is especially useful for those few places that still don't want to accept payments online. Citibank also offers the ability to do wire transfers online, both domestic and internationally, a plus over the older systems that required you to go to the bank.

Mycheckfree is great for keeping all of your bills in one place online. The bills can be scheduled for a later date, scheduled to be paid as they arrive, or paid a couple of days before they're due. Reminders are sent to your email several days before the payment is due just in case you forget. possible to have reminders sent.

There are other systems out there but these two have been found to be very easy to use and thus are recommended highly.

Phone Calls
The advent of Skype, Yahoo Phone Out/In, Jajah, Vonage and other systems have made calling or receiving calls very easy. We were originally using Skype until the firewalls in our system began to cause trouble so we looked for other methods. I'll talk about the two we are using now that have been relatively effective, give or take a few problems.

Yahoo Phone In/Out makes it easy and cheap to call home or to receive calls. To call out you will need to set up a Yahoo account and download Yahoo Messenger. Ten dollars has lasted me almost three months and I use it all the time. The best part is that with Yahoo Out you can purchase a telephone number that people can call. For instance I purchased a Miami telephone number for 29.00 for the year. Friends and family dial that number and it calls my computer. If I'm not available they can leave a message. The downside to this service is that there are times when the voices are garbled and you have to try several times, but give it a little while and you'll be ok; the other downside is if you need to be running with DSL if possible or it will not connect well.

Jahjah is one of the newest systems to take advantage of VOIP technology. With Jajah you log onto their site, plug in the telephone number you want to call and hit send. Their system then dials your telephone number, when it rings you pick up and it proceeds calling the other telephone number. Yes folks this is all done by telephone so all you need is the hookup just to access their Internet site and then you talk by regular telephone. This service has been quite handy a few times already. And, the best thing is it's very clear.

Receiving your mail
I have links to many of the services out there, but this one is particularly nice.

Paperless PO Box has proven to be quite useful as a way to make sure I get my most important mail.  Instead of forwarding the mail to you, they scan all of your mail and send it to by email. You are given a log in access code for their site and can access your account 24 hours a day. The costs are very reasonable as well at 29.95 and 39.95 per month for up to 500 scans. Definately take a look at their site.

Faxing
Efax is one of the easiest ways to receive and send faxes without paying huge international charges. You can get a number in the States so that the faxes stay local for the sender. You will receive the fax to your email. Sending is just as easy, simply scan the document, upload it to the site, and send it. Simple as one, two, three. It's one of the easiest methods I've found so far.

Well that's it for today's suggestions. As I find other useful tools I'll be sure to share them with you.

Comments

[Chris Turner]

Hello from the U.S.! I thought that I would add one more way to keep in touch with life back home. I work with a company called ooVoo that has free video conferencing and works for six people at a time. It’s great because now you can connect with more than just the one on one experience that’s usually available. There is also free video messages so you can record and send them when your to busy to video conference.

Let me know if you manage to keep in touch using ooVoo and if you have any questions about it feel free send me an email!
I hope your having a great time in Buenos Aires!
[email protected]

[RennyBA]

Hello from Norway! I came to your blog from SearchForBlogs and really you have a great blog. Very interesting and informative - thanks for sharing!