Mobile phone

A quick look at the Verizon website will answer your question, I think - $12/day is the Travel Pass option, you get charged each day you actually use it. You can turn off cell service to avoid that. Just use wifi when it's available, turn cellular back on as needed. Another choice is the monthly international plan, which I think is maybe $125 now - you get a month of calls, text, data, but check the site for details. Another option is to upgrade your plan to include international. Another option is an esim - again, you can use the search bar above, there are lots of entries with info...

buy a SIM card when you get to England, they sell them right at the airport.

buy a SIM card when you get to England, they sell them right at the airport.

Lebara and Lyca are probably the cheapest SIMs for international voice calls. That's the best way to do it if you don't need incoming calls, or can send your temporary number to people who may need to call you.

If your phone is unlocked, and will accept esim's, you could get an esim from Roamless. It's Pay-as-you-go, which means you make an account, give them $10 or $20, and you get data for about $2/gb. The nice thing is that your balance never expires, and works in 200+ countries. So next year you can go to Germany, and you're all set.

As for the phone calls, Roamless give you an option of making internatioal calls by using their app. The calls cost something like 2 cents per minute, I think. Only problem is that you can't receive calls. You can give them your actual phone number and then your outgoing calls appear to be coming from your normal home number. Just be sure folks do not try to return the call to your home number.

I've used Roamless in Switzerland, Germany, Ireland, and GB, works fine. I learned about it on this fine forum. I'm using it right now for internet as I'm at a big airshow in Wisconsin, and the local Tmobile towers are so swamped with literally 50,000 attendees, that using Roamless with AT&T towers works better. I have a tablet with a Roamless esim, so I make the tablet a wifi hotspot, and connect my laptop to it.

I should have added that if your phone is unlocked, you can buy a sim card or esim from one of many providers to get data, and then make calls and texts using an app like Google Voice (Android), Whatsapp, or quite a few others.

One disadvantage would be that your calls would be coming from a phone number your family doesn't recognize. And also such voice calls consume some data, so the cost per minute would be more than a few pennies per minute (but free if you use hotel wifi).

Lots of threads on this forum about favorite sim or esim providers, Airalo, Holafly, BCengi, GiffGaff, and Three. The last two are British networks, and can easily be bought when you arrive in GB.

I recommend gift-gaff.
I’ve used them twice in the UK with no problems.

"One disadvantage would be that your calls would be coming from a phone number your family doesn't recognize."

If the OP uses WhatsApp, it will display their own (home) number. All they need to do is download and create a whatsapp account while they have their home SIM in (ie before they leave, in this case as they won't be using roaming). After that it doesn't matter what SIM you have. I'm traveling at the moment with a different SIM, and my whatsapp still displays my Singapore number.

I usually wait until I have wifi to make calls. I then use Google Voice. Very cheap and no charge except for the call. (I think 2 cents/minute)

I'm guessing my phone number shows up as when I call businesses that "recognize" my phone number, they know it's me.