5 Ways Supporting Your Family Overseas Keeps You Connected to Each Other

Sending money abroad to family establishes a two-way flow of communication, expressing care and respect. Immigrants working and living in the US can stay within their family fold and retain a sense of identity and belonging.

Pomelo offers a way to remain involved in the everyday lives of family, regardless of location, without the sender paying fees or anyone waiting in line to pick up cash.

By Team Pomelo November 16, 2021  •  6 min read
Man staying connected via the Pomelo App

Staying connected with your family as you pursue a new life abroad is important for the well-being of both you and your family. Naturally, you’ll want to know how things are going back home and stay in touch with your culture and identity.

Regular video chats are helpful, but supporting your family overseas can foster a deeper sense of unity and shared purpose.

Here are five ways that your financial support can keep you connected:

1. Show Gratitude to Your Family

Like many immigrants, you likely feel gratitude to your family back home for giving you the opportunity to pursue a better life abroad. Many families in developing countries invest in their children to provide them with the education and career that will offer them job opportunities in wealthier countries.

71% of nurses who emigrated from the Philippines to the US received no state funding for their nursing education and had to rely primarily on their families for financial support. These nurses remember the sacrifices that their families made and are happy to repay their debt by sending remittances to their families back home.

The money that immigrants like you send helps in various ways. For example, it can:

  1. build a house for the family
  2. provide a pension to retired parents
  3. support a sister who’s unemployed
  4. pay for a brother’s hospital bills

Most notably, migrants often fund the education of younger relatives so they can pursue careers with international opportunities, and in turn, emigrate overseas themselves to repeat the cycle.

2. Strengthen Family Ties

Sending money home gives you a sense of continued belonging to your family, even when you are thousands of miles apart. Cultural traditions can play a role. For instance, Indian immigrants in the US send ritual cash gifts (called shagun) to their families back home, as well as regular remittances to help with the family budget or contribute to land costs.

The sending of money establishes a two-way flow of communication, expressing care and respect, which keeps family ties strong across vast distances. Immigrants can stay within their family fold and retain a sense of identity and belonging. This is especially important as immigrants strive to establish a new life abroad in an unfamiliar culture.

Sending money home gives you a sense of continued belonging to your family, even when you are thousands of miles apart.

Remittances are the best form of insurance for families in developing countries. When families back home face hardship or challenging times, they are assured in the knowledge that remittances will increase accordingly. As economist Dilip Ratha said in his inspiring TED talk, remittances are “dollars wrapped with care.”

3. Maintain Community Connections

You may send money home to remain connected to your community and culture. Remittances are threads that cross borders and oceans to preserve a sense of place and belonging. The recipients of these remittances typically spend their money within their community, whether it’s on groceries, housing, education, or healthcare.

Immigrants can take pride in the role of remittances in alleviating poverty and increasing development. Studies have shown that each $1 in remittance spending can generate $2 to $3 in local economic activity. The effect of the flow of remittances over time has many ancillary side-effects, such as reducing the school dropout rate and increasing the birth weight of newborn babies.

Most importantly, remittances allow immigrants to remain part of the conversations within their communities. As Dilip Ratha says, “I send money home to friends, to relatives, to the village, to be there, to stay engaged—that’s part of my identity.”

4. Manage Family Spending

Through learning about how your family spends their remittances, you can better understand your family’s financial needs. This can lead to discussions aimed at helping your family to better manage their finances, as well as stay involved in what’s happening in their day-to-day lives.

You can see if they are paying for healthcare or school, which can be conversation topics. You can watch out for negative money habits like impulse buying and addictive behaviors. These habits can have a devastating effect on your family’s financial health and standard of living.

Pomelo allows you to offer lines of credit to individual family members to be spent in their country. At the end of each month, you simply pay off any credit accumulated by your family members.

Instead, you can encourage positive money habits like setting a monthly budget, setting a monthly savings target, planning ahead for large purchases, and tracking spending. A little positive reinforcement can go a long way in helping your family members to develop better money habits.

Pomelo’s mobile app makes it easy for you to track how your family members back home are spending the money you’ve sent them.

5. Build Credit

Because Pomelo uses a credit card model, you can financially support your family while building your credit at the same time. This connects you and your family because you’re helping each other to grow together.

Pomelo allows you to offer lines of credit to individual family members to be spent in their country. At the end of each month, you simply pay off any credit accumulated by your family members.

Every time you pay off the credit on your Pomelo card, you build up your credit score in the US. A good credit score opens up better opportunities for you in many areas, such as buying a car, renting an apartment, and applying for a business loan. Better opportunities lead to a higher standard of living and an enhanced earning potential, giving you a greater ability to support your family back home.

Pomelo: A Refreshingly New Way to Support Your Family

Pomelo offers you a refreshingly new way to support your family members back home. Instead of sending money the old-fashioned way with expensive fees and transfer delays, Pomelo offers you zero transaction fees, zero interest payments, and instant transfers. Pomelo is paid solely by the merchant through interchange and foreign exchange fees.

By using Pomelo, you can offer instant credit to your family in another country. You set the credit limits for each family member, and you can track their spending in real-time with the Pomelo mobile app. So, you can support your family and help them improve their financial behaviors to achieve financial stability.

Reserve your card today.

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