iPhone Will Show You How To Plan Your Budget and Save Money
Such actual economic phenomena as inflation, the consequences of global world financial recession and other political and economic events demand from us to be very careful on managing our bank accounts, to think twice over any new investments and to learn how to tighten our belts in order to scrape money on a summer vacation.
In order to let your expensive iPhone work for actual saving of your family budget instead of wasting money on its upgrades you can take an advantage of few simple tricks:
1. By means of an iPhone you can find the nearest fee-free ATMs in your area. To save $3 from each transaction from an ATM you can use a bunch of special apps to let your iPhone serve as a locator of all fee-free ATMs in a neighborhood.
2. If you are aground then feel free to upload from the AppStore one of these neat coupon-hunting apps. This is so far one of the easiest ways to save money. Below I posted my favorite coupon app for an iPhone that helps me to save more than few dollars each time I need to buy groceries. Choose an app according to your preferences. Only make sure that you will get an access to a large and frequently updated coupon database.
3. Another way to save dollars in your purse is to use the tips one of the smart shopping applications letting compare the prices in different online and regular stores. If you are not sure whether to buy new clothes or not because the price seems too high to fit your budget, try to find the better offer for the same item online. There are few decent iPhone apps for bargain hunters – RedLaser, Google Shopper or Amazon/eBay Mobile.
4. Keep all discount cards of different stores in one place – your iPhone! I use this tiny free app called CardStar that helps me to scan and manage all my numerous discount cards. I can get an access to these data whenever I need to save few bucks in my favorite store. The application recognizes discount cards of more than 350 different franchises including CVS, Petco and Kroger.
5. Save money on your iPhone calls and texts. Well, it is pretty much obvious that nowadays it is more profitable to use VOIP calls (I use Skype for iPhone) instead of regular phone calls, especially if you need to contact friends living abroad. You can also reduce your expenses on SMS/MMS texting using Textfree app.
6. There is no need to overpay for gas as well. When you start using the apps like Cheap Gas or GasBuddy you will notice the advantages at once – you will pay less for the same amount of gas. Just do not get lazy to find the most profitable gas price in your area.
There are, for sure, some other tricks exist that can help to save money by means of iPhone apps. Feel free to leave your feedback and own thoughts about how one may use a smartphone to decrease budget expenses. My top 4 money-saving apps are posted below. The best thing about these apps is that you won’t need to spend money on buying them from the AppStore. They are all free of charge.
Textfree: Save Money on SMS Texting
As I have already mentioned, there are few iPhone programs letting text practically for free. By means of the applications like Textfree (developed by Pinger, Inc.) you can text for free your friends practically everywhere (the list of available for SMS texting countries is given on the official AppStore page of Textfree) and also call them on the terms they are currently in USA.
Other bonuses you get when using Textfree:
• absolutely free SMS and MMS;
• you can get free minutes to call your USA friends;
• at once you become a Textfree client you receive a free separate number;
• if you friends are using Textfree as well you cal talk as long as you want since all incoming calls will be free;
• their SMS services and sound quality of calls are great;
• you can choose among hundreds of free available ringtones and text tones;
• you can even receive calls and texts when the app is off;
• the option of Group Texting is also available.
There are few lacks, though – Textfree doesn’t support 911 calls, if you need to use this app on your iPod Touch you will need Wi-Fi, you can’t call anyone living outside USA or in Alaska and Hawaii. The developers promise to fix these problems as soon as possible. Still rocks since its SMS and MMS services are totally free.
Let Your GasBuddy Find the Best Deals!
When you need the best gas price finder you appeal to GasBuddy – free application capable to look for the best offers of gas stations in your town. Unfortunately, it won’t help if you leave outside USA or Canada but as a local gas price finder it has not rivals. The interface is more than intuitive, even a noob will cope with these simple features.
Money-saving pros of GasBuddy:
• GasBuddy loves its users – they offer to find the best gas deals in the USA and Canada and also award you with a $250 gift card for a week;
• Online community where you can ask other users where to find the best gas price deals.
This is a must-have money-saving app if you are frequently on the road due to your job duties. There are few cons but let’s hope they will be eliminated soon.
Start Bargain-Hunting Along with Coupon Sherpa!
To cut the long story short, Coupon Sherpa is a dream app for everyone who in constant search for coupons. This program gives an access literally to thousands of in-store coupons and let you save money on everything – food, clothes, electronics, travels, jewelry, restaurants, books, etc.
Being a Coupon Sherpa user you get Exclusive bargains (available only for the users of coupons) and In-Store regular coupons (daily updates and the best coupon finder I have ever seen). You can also email your friends straight from the app about good deals.
Among other useful features are:
• literally thousands of in-store coupons;
• easily find the required coupon deals using convenient sorting filters;
• get new coupons every day;
• create the Favorite list and share it with your friends via email;
• get the best coupon deals in the nearest store.
You can find out more about how this application works by visiting its AppStore page. Highly recommended for everyone who enjoys coupon hunting activities.
Stick to your financial plan by means of Mint.Com app!
7 million of faithful users – not every run-of-the-mill financial application can boast such result. Why do so many people choose Mint.Com and trust their finances to this particular app? First and foremost, this software has a long reputable history of success and earned its trust few years ago because it is a contemporary prototype of the extremely popular Quicken App that was removed from the AppStore. The same developers (Intuit. Inc.) on its base created the website for personal accounting Mint.Com and offered in the AppStore its main features via free of charge mobile application for an iPhone.
What can you do using this iPhone app that was highly rated by such well-known magazines as TIME and PC Magazine? You will learn how to handle your budget to cut and contrive using this free and absolutely gorgeous pocket financial expert.
• by means of Mint.Com you will be able to track down expenses and plan a budget. All you need to do is to open an account and add information about your bank, loan, credit or any other account. After the input all your transactions will be tracked and analyzed by Mint.
• viewing of all checks. Savings, credit cards’ balances and transactions is included;
• easy graphs will help to get a complete picture of monthly expenses;
• if you put data about your presupposed monthly budget you will know how much left to spend. Your budget can be customized and Mint will show how to do this;
• tracking cash spending option is also available. Simply put all your manual transactions as well as automatic once;
• all entered data can be protected by a 4-digit passcode. If you lost your mobile phone, simply deactivate your mobile access form the personal profile on Mint.Com
In addition to this nice and neat app you can always download BillMinder (about $2 in the AppStore) for getting bill alerts on-the-fly so you could save money for a rent or cell phone payments.
Tips on How to Use and Choose Money-Saving Apps for your iPhone
The single installation of the mentioned or other applications for your iPhone may not be enough to keep your family budget safe from unreasonable or wasteful expenses. To help you learn how you can choose and use the installed from AppStore tools I post few simple rules I follow myself:
• try to find in the AppStore the free alternatives to the popular paid money-saving iPhone apps;
• stay within your monthly limit (at first set it) you can actually spend on iPhone apps;
• if you want to take advantage of cheap deals offered by one of your coupon or bargain hunting apps, double-check the data, especially if the price looks suspiciously low. Use the Internet check and your brain to avoid the obvious scams;
• do not ignore budgeting applications like Mint.Com especially if you can’t handle your budget on your own;
• do not get lazy to check the updates of all your coupon and bargain apps in order to find the best bargain of the day;
• coupon-based and shopping iPhone applications will encourage you to spend more. It is better to avoid such temptation if the deal is very good. When you are broke you can’t afford spending money on food or stuff that you won’t need as air in the near future.
Liked the previous tips & iPhone apps? You welcome to extend this list by adding your suggestions how to use iPhone for spending the family budget in more rationalized way.
