We both have smart phones, so when my wife is at home it connects to our wifi internet and we can talk for hours for free. We use Viber to talk on the phone, which is free, I have 1gig of data on my phone contract and Viber say that 1 hour of talking takes 14 mb. We are also able to send messages and photos instantly over Viber too.
Other times we use MSN messenger, or Yahoo messenger. I have a Smart Roaming sim card, which my wife can send me an SMS for 1 peso, and if i need to call her mobile to mobile, I have another phone that has a chaeper rate to phils than my contract phone.
There are lots of ways to make talking easy, but the first thing to do is get her an internet connection at home, that is about 1000peso a month to maintain..