Photo & Story Treasures: September 2022

Don't you love that you can show someone a photo just because you have your phone in your pocket? It's pretty amazing, really.

One of the downsides of photos on phones, though, is that phones have limits. If you have a 512 GB phone, you have to divide that up between apps, photos, and such. Same if you have a 64 GB phone.

Another downside is that you can generally only have photos on your phone that you actually took with your phone. It's a bit complicated to put pictures of, say, your parents' wedding or your great-grandpa Jones on your phone.

Another downside is that phones are not permanent. A phone can be dropped in a lake, or it can be stolen. Phones are really easy to lose, too. In fact, 70 million smartphones are lost each year, with only 7% recovered.

A Permanent Solution to a Temporary Tool

So it sounds like what we need is a permanent solution for accessing as many of our precious photos as we want on our convenient (but temporary) phones without requiring a lot of available gigs that eat into our phone memory capability.

And so I give you: how to carry every photo you own in your hand.

You only need two things:

the Forever app on your phone
Forever Storage

One is free, and the other you'll buy and own forever (for generations!).

Let's get started! First, I want to show you how awesome it is to use the Forever app and how it lets me show every picture I own, using my phone without hogging up the memory on my phone.

Isn't that fantastic?! I love the convenience, but I also love how accessible all my photos are. I love being that connected to my pictures and having them that shareable.

NOTE: I am a Forever affiliate (a decision I made because I love it so much), so you will find several affiliate links in this post, from which I earn a commission if you make a purchase, at no extra cost to you.

You can get the free Forever app in just a few minutes. First, open your (free) Forever account here. Next, find information about the app here and get the appropriate one for your phone.

Now it's time to learn about Forever Storage and see what's so great about it and which option will work best for you. Keep in mind that Forever Storage is unlike any other digital cloud photo storage company anywhere! Here are the differences in a nutshell:

I'm not kidding when I say there is nothing else out there that offers this. (If you haven't already read "What You're Really Signing Up for with Digital Photo Storage," you should!)

This one-minute video shows how Forever Storage is really a permanent home in the cloud for your photos, videos, and memories. There's really nothing else like it.

The video explains how the Guarantee Fund works, too.

Social Media Isn't Photo Storage, Either

Don't forget, too, that posting pictures on social media is not a permanent (or secure) place for your photos.

It's definitely a great way to share photos immediately, but Facebook and Instagram (among others) do not guarantee the privacy or the permanence of your photos. Don't use social media as your photo storage because it (very literally!) is not FOREVER! Here are three very important reasons:

You probably already know that social media platforms change their policies any time they want. Social media sites can be shut down, change, or discontinue their services any time they want, even without warning! This is often stated in their fine print.
Social media sites aren't set up to handle large file sizes, so they compress photos, which lowers their quality. (This is why it doesn't take forever to scroll through Facebook or Instagram--you don't have to wait for all those photos to load because the quality has been lowered so they'll load quickly.) Your photos look fine on social media, but if you want to download them back to make a photo-memory book or a wedding invitation, they'll most likely have a fuzzy, low-quality look. And there's no guarantee from any social media site that you'll be able to download them back anyway.
Any photo uploaded to social media is subject to data mining. Data mining is the process of sorting through large amounts of data to identify patterns and relationships. This is why if you Googled "blue shoes," you start seeing ads for blue shoes on Facebook. This happens with photos as well. Photos may or may not be private on social media.

Please don't think you can use social media as a photo storage platform. It was never designed to work that way.

The Convenience of a Phone + the Permanence of Private Cloud Storage You Own

With the Forever app on my phone (or tablet) and however many GB of photo, video, and audio files I want to save in the cloud in Forever Storage, I can carry every photo I own in my hand--even photos I didn't take with my phone, such as pictures of my 20-something kids as babies and photos of my now-gone grandparents.

This video tells you everything you need to know about Forever Storage! Grab some popcorn and spend 20 minutes learning something that can change your life. It's amazing.

And this quick video shows you options for organizing and even tagging your photos in your Forever account:

You can see all the Forever Storage options here. (Don't be thrown off by the "monthly" cost shown there. You still OWN your storage space because you are buying it. The monthly breakdown is just an option if you'd rather pay by month instead of all at once. You are not paying a monthly fee--you are purchasing your own personal Forever Storage. And you can always buy some and then if you discover you need more, buy more later. That's what I did.)

And, remember, it's permanent storage!

You Can Even Save Special Voicemails!

By the way, you can even store voicemails in your Forever Storage!

So if you've got a special one you've been saving on your phone for a while, give it a permanent home! It's easy to upload to your Forever account with the (free) app, too! Here's how:

That's It!

And that's all there is to it. You can carry every photo you own in your hand, plus have the peace of mind that comes from having your photos privately, securely, and permanently preserved for your lifetime plus 100 years.

Your grandkids can use the latest app to show their friends your wedding pictures. Imagine that.

P.S. I've also put together a list of ways to save the most on Forever products and services, including Forever storage, so just click that link to see.