Technology- the First and Ninth Circles of Hell!

The first circle of hell is Limbo, the ninth is Treachery (I had to look that up). Technology resides in both.

I can’t count the hours spent over the past three weeks making decisions about and changes to our technological connections, all in preparation for living in the U.S. 1/3 of the year and living abroad and aboard (ooh…that’s a cool scramble of letters!) 2/3 of the year while staying connected to family and friends. It’s difficult to make decisions when there is so much unknown about connectivity and our real vs. perceived needs while in the places we are likely to visit in the Caribbean. We’ve researched how other cruisers deal with these things, what U.S. talk/text/data options exist, options for suspending/canceling local subscriptions to save money but not lose accounts completely, and on, and on, and on. There have been numerous hours spent online and in phone calls asking questions and sometimes finding answers, and purchasing new equipment.

Decisions and changes have been made, however, and we’ve checked several more items off our “travel prep” list. Hooray!

It will be interesting to see how these changes play out in connectivity and cost savings, how they mesh with our real vs. perceived needs, and what tweaks we will make for the following cruising season. I’ll let you know sometime in the fall after it all plays out during this first (short) cruising season.

Here’s some of what we’ve done. I’ve bolded the key points, and leave you to decide how much you will read beyond that.

• We signed up for Google Fiand bought a Fi-enabled (low end) phone and transferred our “home” phone number to it.This is how we will stay connected to family & friends while in the Caribbean (calls, texts, emails).
  • Fi charges $20/month (plus taxes & fees), plus $10/GB of data used. They don’t round up data use either- 1.2 GB data would cost $12.
  • Data can be used the same way in the U.S. and any of the other 170+ countries included (including most of the Caribbean). This includes the ability to use the phone as a hotspot.
  • We get unlimited talk & text in the U.S. and those 170+ other countries. Well, sort of…
    • Texting is covered in all those countries.
    • Calls to U.S. numbers from our Fi phone are covered as long as we’re in the U.S. or one of those 170+ covered countries.
    • Calls to non-U.S. numbers, regardless of where we are physically, results in a per minute charge (there is a chart of costs).
  • Fi-enabled phones automatically choose the strongest signal of three mobile 4G LTE networks or WiFi hotspots for making phone calls. We assume the latter are mostly in major cities/towns on each Caribbean island. Unlike U.S. carriers, Fi guarantees the fastest speed each country has available up to 4G LTE.
  • We’re not terribly fond of the Motorola we had to buy; we prefer the more intuitive (to us) iPhone. Sadly, the Fi features most relevant to our international travels are not yet supported on iPhones. Maybe someday.
• We purchasedKeeper Password Manager(family plan). I feel safer already.
  • I’ve been considering one of these systems for a while because it is highly recommended by pretty much everyone knowledgeable about cyber security. Knowing we’ll be mostly on WiFi networks of questionable security while traveling was the impetus to finally follow through on this.
  • PC Mag and CNET both rated Keeper as one of the best, and it’s quite affordable. For $60/year we can each have our own vault (where our passwords are stored), share passwords for our joint accounts between our two vaults, and sync our vaults across all our devices.
• Reducing home costs while home & traveling. If we’re going to have this lifestyle, we need to cut costs all around. I’m sure there will be additional changes in the future, but for now we’re starting here.
  • We changed our cable/internet package. Ditching our Xfinity phone nullified our Triple Play package, so we had to do something immediately. Their Standard Double Play package gives us good internet speed and all the TV channels we care about. It was actually the most cost-effective choice for us, beating out going with other streaming services + Xfinity for internet only (funny how internet costs go up when you’re not in a “package” deal).
    • There’s no contract, so we can change anytime at no cost.
    • To keep our account active but cheap while out of the U.S., we will ditch internet and go with their basic cable ($24.75/month + taxes & fees). In future years we can save a little more by making use of their “seasonal” option, which we’ll be able to apply at least February through April. This will charge us only $8/month for those 3 months, then revert to the $24.75.
  • We reduced our AT&T cell phone package. We don’t want to lose our phone numbers because we will want them when we’re in the U.S. We think.
    • We removed our iPads from our account, so now they’re WiFi only. Between our two we used less than 1GB of data this past year, so this was a no-brainer.
    • We use precious little data each month, but were paying for the top tier, so we dropped to their lowest tier.
    • We signed up for autopay, which on the lower tier of data usage, qualifies us for a $20/month discount on our bill!
  • We will ditch some of our other streaming services.We can re-subscribe if we want them when we’re back in the U.S. We are not going to the Caribbean to binge on Netflix!

Author: Indigo Lady

I am a retired educator married to a retired chemist/engineer/educator. We will be living aboard our solar electric catamaran for as long as possible. View all posts by Indigo Lady