T-Mobile is rolling out a new feature in the next few weeks called "Family Allowances" which lets parents control just about every aspect of phone usage. The plan starts out at $2 a month and covers up to 5 lines on your account. The new feature comes on the heels of feedback from 30% of parents who identified their primary concern was getting a surprise bill.

The Family Allowances program will let parents set the number of texts, downloads and minutes on their children's phones using an online tool, as well as limiting the times of the day that the phone will work. Parents can put their minds at ease with the ability to set up always-allowed numbers which will permit their children to reach them at any time.

While the "Family Allowances" feature is aimed at helping parents curb kid's desires and their inability to follow the phone usage limits imposed at the dinner table, there is also a cool way that "adults" with less self control can use the feature to manage their own usage as well. We've all heard of freezing your own credit card to ward off the temptation of overspending. Well, if you can't stop your urge to download ringtones or curb your text messaging, you can set up an allowance for yourself so that you don't go over your plan amounts. Since you'll have to wait until you're in front of a computer to bump up your limit, you'll have likely overcome the urge to purchase the new "I Kissed a Girl" ringtone you thought was sooo sweet last night.

Last month I shared my quest to save money by reviewing our cell phone bill. I found that we could get unlimited texting on all of our lines without any increase in our monthly rate. This was a huge deal since my sister was as familiar with text overages as the Cookie Monster is with cookies! Due to the amount of texts already sent I decided to do something I should have avoided, I switched plans mid billing cycle. Most places this wouldn't be a huge deal, but Verizon's billing system is arranged to maximize confusion for users and profit for the company.

Since the switch occurred mid month Verizon pro-rated the text message plan on my sister's phone. Normally this means I get some money refunded and it only appears that I was ripped off on the bill. This time however was different. Even though the plan she was on was for 1,500 text messages and we switched to an unlimited plan Verizon decided that the allotment of messages at the time we switched was 913, which just happened to be 403 below what she had already sent resulting in a huge overage.