When’s the last time you left home without some smart devices? They’re on our wrists, in our pockets, connected to our cars – they are so accessible, we use them to manage our lives. There are countless apps created to help us with finances. We’ve gathered up some of the top apps that help save money, whether you’re buying gas and groceries, or wanting to invest your spare change.
Life
Gas Buddy finds the cheapest gas prices near you and contributors are entered to win prizes. Shop online? Download Paribus. It watches for price drops at stores with price adjustment policies. If a price drops within the adjustment period, it alerts you and you can get the difference refunded back.
Grocery
Grocery shopping has its own set of apps with different incentives. The easiest are Receipt Hog and Fetch, since you shop as usual and just snap pictures of your receipt afterwards. If you look in advance and change your planned purchases based on offered points, apps like Moby, Checkout 51, Savings Star and Ibotta are for you. Read here for more on money back apps.
Coupons
Swag Bucks, Groupon, Retail me Not, and Snip Snap are digital coupons. Retail Me Not has some coupons only valid online, but most can be printed and used at local stores. Snip Snap is a favorite of extreme couponers. Just snap a picture of a printed offer and the app converts into a mobilized offer which can be redeemed of the screen, no printing necessary. Honey tests millions of promo codes. Ebates is a referral site, so if you start on their page and then click on any suggested link, Ebates gets a commission, which they split with you.
Budgeting
The two most popular budgeting apps are Mint and You Need A Budget (YNAB). The differences in a nutshell: Mint is free and is compatible with most major financial institutions, but if you bank with a local credit union you will have to upload your information yourself. YNAB has a monthly fee, although offers a one year free trial to students who sign up via their school email. An entire article comparing the two can be found here.
Saving
There are plenty of apps that will round your purchase up to the nearest dollar and gather the spare change. You decide where you want it to go. These three apps send each have different end games. Chime is an alternative online bank that sweeps spare change into savings or auto transfers 10% of paycheck to savings. Qapital rounds up change to the nearest dollar and moves it into savings. The Acorns app sweeps spare change into an investment account. For more information, Amber Murakami-Fester writes a great article here.
If you’re going to have your smart phone on hand, you may as well make it work for you! Try some of the apps and watch as the cents become dollars! Slowly but surely you’ll see how much money you’ve saved.
Thank you