Well, the travel allowance is meant to accommodate flights home (to the US) but I can spend it on whatever I want I suppose. I would like to shoot over to Europe at some point as I've never been. :) The phone allowance I think is to offset the long distance charges? Shipping allowance is to have things from the US shipped to me each month. I don't know at this point what I'd even need to have shipped over!! Maybe movies on a netflix account or something?