A couple months ago, I posted about my favorite ways to save money. One of those ways was through apps. Since there are quite a few that I use, I thought it would be best to do a separate post sharing some of my favorites! Check them out below.
Ibotta
If you are any of my close friends or family, you already know about Ibotta because I forced you to download it. This is one of the best apps I have ever discovered. I have no idea how I found it, but I am sure glad I did. Ibotta gives rebates on tons of different things at the grocery store. Simply pick what store you shop at, look through the list of rebates, and select whichever ones apply to what you’re buying. When you pick an item on the list, they usually have you answer a quick question or watch a short video. Then after you buy the item, you scan the barcode, take a picture of the receipt, and they give you the money back. Once you have $20 in your Ibotta account, you can cash it out through Paypal, Venmo, or exchange it for gift cards.
Checkout51
Checkout 51 is basically the same concept as Ibotta except there aren’t as many offers. They offer more name brand goods whereas Ibotta has a lot of generic (tomatoes, eggs, etc.) as well as name brand goods. I like to use both of these apps on my grocery trips because it gives me twice the opportunity to save money. And once you collect a minimum of $20, Checkout 51 will send you a check.
Cartwheel
Any avid Target shoppers out there? If so, I hope you have heard of Cartwheel. It is made by Target and offers discounts on hundreds of products. You simply upload the discounts to your cart and have the cashier scan the barcode on your phone at check out. Although the savings are small a lot of the time, they do add up! The app even shows you what you have save cumulatively over the course of using the app. And if you really want to get crazy, you can do both Ibotta and Checkout 51 at Target as well.
Mint
Now that we’ve gone through some money saving apps, it’s time to cover the “saving” apps. Mint is an app that helps you budget. With it, you can see where you spend your money and how much money really goes where. You may think you don’t spend much going out to lunch every day, but Mint will show you that you’re spending 20% of your earnings on sandwiches, overpriced coffee, and mediocre meals. It will also help you set budgets on what you want to spend on food, living, clothes, etc., and will notify you when you get close to hitting those budgets.
Digit
Digit used to be just a website, but they just recently came out with the mobile app. Digit analyzes your bank account and transfers money into a savings account every couple of days. Once you sign up, you link your bank account. Then, it texts you updates every few days of your account, what’s been transferred, and what’s been saved. The best part is that it only transfers what you can afford. This can be anything from a few cents to fifty dollars. Any time you want to transfer the money into your checking or savings account, you just have to go on the app and transfer the funds. I have only been doing this for about four months and already have a decent chunk of cash saved up for my travel fund. And the best part is I didn’t have to do even think about it.
