What do you do about you - and your kids! - using their phone abroad and all the costs involved?

[toosweaty]

We are going abroad, long haul. It will be expensive to make calls, send texts etc or I can get a daily data travel pass which is about £7. Either way, i can cope without. But I pay for my DC's phone. I don't want to take it away from them but I also know they won't care about clicking on You Tube!

How do you deal with this?

I thought about getting us Sim cards in the country we're in and using those? Does anyone know if all sim cards fit all phones and if our contacts on our phones are stored on hardware or the Sim?

Make sure you have WiFi wherever you stay and otherwise they have to suck it up.

We are going to summer cottage abroad where there is no electricity. Dc will leave their phones home.

Make sure contacts are on the phone
Remove SIM
Let them use WiFi

I stick my phone onto airplane mode and leave it on airplane mode for the duration. So I can use it as a camera etc but no data.

I tell my children to only use wifi. I wouldnt be buying sim cards for a short trip abroad, they can live without youtube and enjoy the holiday instead?

Money Saving Expert has an article on e-sims. I'll be looking at these as an alternative to paying the £6 a day that my provider charges.

www.moneysavingexpert.com/mobiles/what-is-an-esim/

We just use Wi-Fi and enjoy more phone free time when we’re out

We just use wifi at the hotel.
They download any music before we go.

We turn off data and use wifi only.

Removing the SIM and using WIFI for the kids phones is sensible. My absolutely spoiled 17yo cousin ran up a £7k phone bill in Egypt a few years ago uploading selfies and facetiming her friends.....

Keep your own SIM in in case of emergency.

How long is the trip? Which country? Are your phones unlocked to put a SIM in from a different network?

I bought an eSIM earlier this year for use in Asia. It was great for maps and places to eat and a guide. It’s simple to download, you can check if your phone takes one.

If they’re old enough for phones then they’re old enough to be told “no” 🙄

Just turn off their data as pp have said. If they try to use it and turn it back on then they’re clearly not old enough for phones

If you're not in contract some providers (virgin and I think O2) still do free roaming use of existing allownces. Though I would still have a spend limit set on the account just in case!

we tell them to turn off data roaming. We are in Jersey so if we go anywhere outside the channel islands we pay a fortune for phone use.

Don't make calls and only use wifi

Buy a dongle/WiFi device. Make sure its unlocked and then get a payg sim you load with data. You get them to connect to it like WiFi and can take it around with you

Payg in the country you are in!

My provider (EE) charges £15 a month to use our contract abroad (USA in our case) and it is worth it for the happiness of all family members I think! I certainly want mine to me able to look things up while we are out and about and to call my teenager if I can't find him, and cheaper than risking big charges if someone accidentally calls.

Thanks all! This is really helpful. I have no problem enforcing boundaries around this, I just wasn't sure what was feasible

Which country is this @Ninaguineapig ?

How will you manage with hot water for showering, cooking or seeing at night when it's dark?

How will you charge your own phone?

I mean, I don't know the cottage but options would include:

Gas for heating (if needed), cooking and hot water. An open fire, or a Rayburn type set up for the same. More modern would be solar power.

Candles, oil lamps, led lights, solar lights for lighting.

It really isn't all that long ago that electricity became normal in all houses...

I can't live without data abroad! We do a fair bit of travelling on holidays (staying in several locations, or visiting attractions) and it's just essential for using maps or sometimes information about a venue. I pay the £15 add-on for a month with EE, and DS has similar with Three. DH has a work phone and they're fine with him using it abroad. I wouldn't like the faff of switching sums, as it wouldn't be possible to phone my main number. I do use WiFi where available, but it's not enough when you're going between places.

Lots of good options above. Can you also try setting an out of contract spend control limit with the operator so that if the kids accidentally (or intentionally!) start using data etc. then it will automatically cut off?

If you’re in Europe check with your provider - I went to Spain last week and o2 let you use your data allowance and minutes etc the same as you do in the U.K. so we didn’t need to change anything and didn’t get charged any extra.

DS’s contract said the same, said it depended on the date you took out the contract

Remember in the old days before free roaming in some countries … even before reliable Wi-Fi in places?

we used to switch our phones off on holiday …. It was fairly easy to do.