If you are reading this article, you are probably either living abroad, or have decided to in the near future. Hopefully you’re finding this article as you begin your expat life. If you are, these tools will make your journey a whole lot easier. It doesn’t matter if you’ve decided to teach overseas (which I highly recommend) or become a digital nomad, these resources will help you. Most aren’t specific to any one profession, instead they are tools to help anyone living the expat life get along much easier. 

Skype Personal Number

Pound for pound, this has probably been one of the most useful and under-rated tools that I have ever signed up for. I have lived in 6 different countries and changed phone numbers a boat load of times. For people that I keep in touch with on social media, that’s no problem. For other connections in my extended network, it was probably really hard for them to keep track of me over the years.

The main reason that I got the Skype number was so that I could hunt for jobs in the States a few years back and pretend like I was still living there. I didn’t end up using it for this purpose, but for $50 a year, it is totally worth it to be reachable at the same number no matter where I’m living. www.skype.com

Traveling Mailbox

This was another service that I signed up for later than I should have. Even though you are moving abroad, you are probably still going to need some sort of physical address if for nothing else than to be able to put something on visa applications and tax returns. And, unless you are totally going rogue and disappearing into the night, there will be the odd Christmas card and credit card statement that you may want to receive, as well. For many of us, myself included, this most likely ends up being your parents’ house. But as the years go by, and you get tired of making your parents run to the post office every time you need a piece of mail forwarded to you, you will want to find a better option.  

Traveling mailbox is an awesome tool that will give you an address to receive, store, and forward mail. When a piece of mail arrives for you, they will automatically scan a copy of the label and then email it to you. You can then choose for the contents to be opened and scanned, and then emailed to you as well. Afterward, you have the option to have them shred the documents, or in the case that it’s something important – like a new credit card or W2s – you can have them forward it to you. The cool thing about Traveling Mailbox is that you can have them hold important pieces of mail until you have enough to fill a big envelope and then forward them all together to save shipping costs. These types of services have really solved one of the biggest issues with the expat life. www.travelingmailbox.com

VPN

In case you are not sure what a VPN is, I will explain it to you. It is essentially a function of networking to connect to a network with a virtual connection rather than a physical one. There are many, many reasons why this is cool and useful for both business and personal computing.  However, we are only interested in one: accessing foreign servers to get around internet restrictions. If you are not already aware, many countries in the Middle East and Asia exercise different internet website restrictions than the ones that you are probably used to. Many video calling features are blocked in the Middle East. Wikipedia is blocked in Turkey. Google and Facebook are blocked in China. So, definitely if you are planning on setting up shop in one of these countries, you will want to subscribe to a good VPN service. In layman’s terms, you will use the VPN to connect to a foreign server, i.e. one operating a Greek IP address, to trick websites, and your computer, into thinking you are trying to access from Greece and not from Saudi Arabia.  You can also pretend to be in the US, which SOME people use  to access US-only content like TV channels and sports packages.

There are a ton of services out there, so do your research and make sure the one you choose is optimized for the country you are using it in. I started using Astrill in 2014 to get around the “Great Firewall,” and have been using it ever since. www.astrill.com

Couchsurfing

If you are beginning your expat life with limited funds, then this site is going to be an invaluable tool for you. You are going to want to figure out how to maximize your travel and minimize the bill for it. After all, there’s a lot of world to see and teaching jobs in South East Asia aren’t well known for their paychecks. Enter Couchsurfing. Couchsurfing was around long before Air BnB and gives travelers the opportunity to contact local hosts and, well, crash on their couch. Hosts will get on and say hey I have a free couch, or hey I have some space on my floor, feel free to sleep on it if you want. It’s a great way to meet local people and travel on the cheap at the same time. Highly recommended. www.couchsurfing.com

TESOL Job Board

For all of you soon-to-be educators, you have probably noticed something by now. There are teaching jobs EVERYWHERE. There are tons of opportunities out there and you should have no problem finding enough work to keep you busy for the next, say, decade. What you may not have realized yet, though, is that the ESL industry abroad is very much a business, and very much profit oriented. This may sound obvious, but the reasons I mention it is to point out that there are A LOT of not-so-good employers (and especially recruiters) who are looking to maximize their profits in that whole dynamic, your spiritual journey be damned. As you go, you will get better and better at spotting these types of people and learn to avoid them. Until then, I recommend being wary of where you hunt for jobs. Everyone has their own go-site, for me it’s TESOLjobboard.com. They haven’t been around as long as some of the other more well known job boards, but I like them because they don’t typically spam jobs by recruiters and they have a good variety of jobs for both new teachers and more seasoned ones. www.tesoljobboard.com

Upwork and/or Fiverr

If you read my article on ways to make extra cash while living abroad, then you have already heard my pitch. Both sites are places to buy and sell freelance labor. This is a great way to either supplement a meager salary that you may have, or to fund your life abroad altogether. The amount of money that you make will ultimately depend on what skills you have and how much work you want to put into it, but one thing is for sure. There are TONS of gigs out there. Knowing that you have an outlet to make some cash in USD is a fantastic safety net if and when things go south when you are living in a country that is not your own. www.upwork.com; www.fiverr.com. 

So, there’s my list. I went through a lot of trial and error to perfect it. I’m really curious to know if you have any awesome tools that I haven’t listed. Do you have any cool apps or sites that help the expat life run smoother? If so, send them to me at matthew@teachfor travel.com!