Web Wealth: Smartphone apps can save you money
Smartphones are expensive to own, but the powerful, often free, apps they carry around can make up for some of that expense. These sites offer guides to useful money-saving apps.
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Smartphones are expensive to own, but the powerful, often free, apps they carry around can make up for some of that expense. These sites offer guides to useful money-saving apps.
Budgeting apps are first-off. Everything Zoomer, a site that says it's for the "45-plus demographic," recently posted this list of recommended personal-finance apps. It notes that most banks and other financial institutions now provide apps for tracking your accounts, finding ATMs, and so forth. Many save you a trip to the bank by allowing deposits by snapping photos of checks. Debt managers, budget-makers, stock-market trackers are also included in the Zoomer list.
Apps can be "the quickest way to save a buck," says this post at U.S. News. The post points to a feature of most phones that is often overlooked or forgotten - the calculator. At the grocery store, for example, "Whip out the calculator on your smartphone, and see if the price of pre-packaged fruits and vegetables are really worth the convenience. All you have to do is figure out how much each option costs per pound. This works for shelved items too," it says.
Women's site More.com has a post by finance writer Cassie Kreitner on ways smartphone apps save money. One of her suggestions is the Allpoint Global Surcharge-Free ATM Network app, which finds ATM locations that don't levy a surcharge. Another is RepairPal, a free app that, among other things, will estimate what you should have to pay for specific repairs. The app covers most 1990 and newer car models.
On a road trip, the smartphone can present an array of apps to tell you where to save money on gas and other highway expenses. This post at Bankrate.com points out a potentially economizing feature of Google Maps: "When you plug in your destination from Point A to Point B, the app automatically populates a list of routes for you. If the route includes toll roads, the app will tell you. To avoid toll roads, simply select 'route options,' and then select 'avoid tolls.' "
Price-comparison apps are the bane of many retailers. That's because they are so effective in telling shoppers if the price is right. DailyFinance.com, in a listing of money-saving apps, starts with Red Laser, a smartphone tool that reads bar codes on products and compares prices at online and local stores. Like many sites recommending apps for bargain hunters, this one also points to GasBuddy, an app for finding the best nearby prices for gasoline. It's a crowd-sourced service, in which users of the app help one another by submitting the prices at the gas stations they pass or visit.