If you’re going abroad for more than a few weeks, it might be worth buying a foreign sim card and putting it into your hand-set. It all depends on what sort of vacation you’re planning on taking, and how much you think you’ll be contacting people both within that country and abroad.

If you do a home exchange within Europe then it may be a good idea to look at your cell tariff to see how much the difference will be. If you are doing an extended home exchange then it is definitely a way that could save you money on your phone use.

In order to find out what the best tariffs, you can do an internet seach as most major mobile phone companies have websites where you can even buy the card online.

With some companies, such as Vodafone, in cetain countries if you buy a pay-as-you-go sim card, you get €10 of free phone credit. This means that the card itself costs next to nothing.

If you have teenagers who are likely to be going off on their own, but you’d like to have a safe-guard against them getting lost, then mobile phones are an excellent way of ensuring that no one gets horribly lost or into a sticky situation with language barriers etc.

Whether you think you would definitely like to purchase a phone card abroad, or if it’s just a passing thought, then don’t forget to ask your exchange partner for advice on the best deals and cheapest tariffs.