My cell phone has been an indispensable part of staying in touch with my son - or allowing him to stay in touch with his dad while he’s with me. With a two hour time zone difference between parents, being able to reach the other party at the right time is important. Sometimes that means while you are on the road or in a place where you otherwise wouldn’t have a phone. Being able to be reached any time by your child who is two hours ahead is priceless.

I have a Treo 650. it’s nice for me to be able to keep my schedule and task list with me along with my phone. When you are a busy parent and your child doesn’t live with you, having something with an alert on it makes it easy to set alarms to remember to call - or alerts for important events. It’s even nicer to be able to snap a picture and send it to my son’s email - or to snap a picture of him doing something silly to send to his dad. It sure beats lugging around a phone, a pda AND a digital camera everywhere. I can even record his voice and short video clips.

I personally use Cingular. I know, I know. Cell phone carriers. Blah. They are all the same, right? Wrong. Cingular has JUST the right setup to make staying in touch really inexpensive.

Rollover minutes. Nobody else has them. So when you don’t use your minutes, they roll over to the next month. Our family can keep a smaller plan because we are less likely to go over our minutes with every month that we save a few.

Family plans that work. None of this ‘the whole family gets to share 20 minutes of talk time!’ stuff. The have real plans that the family can use.

Free mobile to mobile nationwide. I had this before they took over the AT&T network and it was STILL worth it then. Now it’s even more worth it. My ex husband had Cingular, I had Cingular - that meant I could talk to my son free any time I wanted to - even across the country. That’s worth it right there.

Of course, they have free long distance, nights and weekends, call waiting, voice mail and all the other goodies that are indespensible to making sure that you can afford to stay in touch too.

I know it sounds like an ad - and I suppose it sort of is. But I wouldn’t recommend it if I didn’t use it personally and if it weren’t worth it. If you use this link to sign up, you will help support the site AND you could score a $25 gift card if you sign a friend or family member up. So next time you’re in the market for a new carrier, look it up!