Watching home news and streaming from abroad

This is the one we use most. When you live overseas, the news and shows from back home are often geo-locked — the streaming service says "not available in your region," or the home broadcaster won't load. Connecting to a NordVPN server in Canada or the US puts us back on a home IP address, so we can keep up with home news and watch the services we already pay for, wherever we're living that year. For anyone who's felt cut off from home while abroad, this alone is worth it.

Protection on the endless public Wi-Fi of expat life

Living abroad means a lot of public Wi-Fi — cafés while you work, guesthouses between apartments, airports on every move, co-working spaces. Public networks are exactly where your traffic is most exposed. A VPN encrypts everything you send over them, so logging into your bank or email from a café in a new city isn't a gamble. When your whole life runs online from wherever you are, that encryption isn't optional for us.

Checking real home-country prices and websites

Here's a practical expat trick most people miss: a lot of home-country websites show different content — or won't load at all — when they see a foreign IP. We use NordVPN to connect back to Canada or the US to check real home prices — comparing what something costs back home versus where we're living, pulling up stores and services that block foreign visitors, and doing the kind of everyday admin (and the odd bit of family video-chat planning) that's easier from a home IP. It's the sort of thing you only learn you need once you're living the expat life.

Why NordVPN specifically

We've stuck with NordVPN across years and countries because it reliably does the three things above without fuss. It runs a large server network across 100+ countries (so there's always a fast home-country server to connect to), it's based in Panama with an independently-audited no-logs policy, and it just works without a learning curve — which matters when you're setting it up on hotel Wi-Fi at midnight. It covers up to 10 devices, so the whole family's phones and laptops are protected on one plan.

For the plan tiers and how to choose, see our NordVPN plans guide; for the current discount, our NordVPN discount code page.

Expat VPN FAQ

Bottom line

For living abroad, a VPN earns its place three ways: home content, Wi-Fi safety, and seeing the home internet as it really is. After years of full-time expat life across multiple countries, NordVPN is the one we rely on for all three. Code THEDUFRESNES saves at checkout.