Who answers your phone while you're gone?

So, how do you deal with your phone when you're away from home?

I know that some people just let their answering system pick up calls, then they check in periodically by calling their own phone.

Others use call forwarding to direct calls to their cell phone while they're away, but invariably the first call that comes in when they get home goes to their cell and there's a mad dash to grab it... or they just forget for a day or so until they realize they aren't getting any calls on their home phone.

If any of these, or different variations apply to you, you might want to give GrandCentral a try. It's a free (yea, really free!) service that routes your incoming calls to as many phone numbers as you like. That means your calls come to your new, free phone number and ring on both your home and cell phone.

There are some very cool features that let you set up different ring tones, different answer messages, and other niceties. And you can set the system to send email, text messages, or both to announce when you get voicemail.

You need to tell your callers to use your new phone number (which you can also announce on your home answering system), and your new number can be in a completely different area of the country if you like. For instance, I live in North Carolina but I just signed up for a Beverly Hills, California phone number... and hey, there goes Hillary Swank... Call me, girl!!

Anyhow, GrandCentral may be just the answer for stabilizing your phone traffic.