Best Money Saving Apps For Your SmartPhone

Join us for Day #16 of the 20 Day Budget Challenge – The Best Money Saving Apps For Your Phone!

Let’s talk today about how you can get the best money-saving apps on your phone. 

These help us save money that goes above and beyond finding and clipping paper coupons, or using promo codes when shopping online.  Plus with the nation’s unrest both with our health and finances, it’s time to find more ways to pinch pennies, especially if you are temporarily unemployed.

My favorite money saving app is Ibotta (cash back program – use referral code nettpg when you sign up!)

Basically you click on deals you want and can either upload a picture of your receipt or link your grocery store rewards card and automatically get the savings in your cart.  When you reach $20, you can cash out using PayPal.

There is also one I use a lot called Fetch Rewards.  

This one is similar to Ibotta, but what is nice is that you don’t have to select the deals before you purchase them.  It is just a one step scan your receipt process, and this app automatically finds every deal on your receipt you qualify for.  One less step is what I like!

When you sign up, use promo code UW6RT and you automatically earn 2,000 points just for signing up (which is the equivalent to $2). They have some great gift card rewards that I want to save up for! 

One of my favorite parts about this app is that I can link my Walmart.com grocery pick-up orders to this (via my e-receipt in my e-mail), and they find me my bonus points!!!!!!

You can also sign up for other cashback websites such as SavingStar or Checkout51.

I use both of those as well on a regular basis for grocery savings.  SavingStar is great because you type in your loyalty card number (Wegmans Shopper’s Club card for example) and when you purchase an item you selected that you wanted a discount for, the savings go into your account.

Checkout51 requires a receipt photo upload.  Both of these you can cash out when you reach $20 in earnings.

Checkout 51 has a brand new cashback feature at participating gas stations.

1. Update Checkout 51 in the app store to see gas offers under the bonus section.
2. Activate the offer by selecting your location and adding the offer to your list.
3. Fill up within 4 hours. Reminder, you must pay with a debit card or credit card.
4. Upload the receipt and get ready for your Cash Back.

What’s the average American spending on gas? Let’s just say a lot.  With that, we’re saving members $3 per fill up, on average— that’s over $150 a year!

Drop is a new current favorite because you connect your credit card and get points to places you shop regularly at. 

Currently, I’m filling up my gas at just 7-Eleven stores, and am racking up the points for a $5, $10, $25 or $50 free gift card!  Use code 6ats6 and you’ll get $5 worth of points in your account just by joining!  Drop has temporarily stopped the Walmart Grocery deal until after things settle from high demand on Walmart right now, otherwise I’d get $3 for every time I made a Walmart Grocery Pick-up Order!! 

If you want to find a weekly sales ad like you’d find in the newspaper, then you should checkout Retale.

If you want to find Big Lots savings for example, you can find the weekly ad for Big Lots right on your phone without having to buy or dig through the newspaper to find it.  You can change your location in the app to be sure you are finding your local store deals.

Dosh is another app to try.

You type in your credit card # into your Dosh account, and whenever you make a purchase that earns you cash back, it automatically shows up in your account.  The biggest savings I’ve seen so far are for travel.  You earn $5 just to sign up – and you can cash out once you reach $10 (which is an advantage since you need $20 on SavingStar and Ibotta.)  They also have Walmart Grocery Pickup cash back options.  It’s currently on the platform right now, but they have taken it off in the past for a few months.  

You can also earn cashback on online purchases through sites such as Savings.com (ex. shop online at The Children’s Place) or Ebates.com.

I recently got 18% cashback from a hotel reservation using Ebates!  (Keep in mind, you don’t get your rebate on travel until 6 weeks after your trip.  And this trip was actually canceled do to covid.  But with vaccination roll-out starting to occur – I bet you’ll find some sweet deals on hotels as we feel safter traveling!)  Ebates has its own app that you can shop through on your phone.  Savings.com has an app called PriceJump where you can scan a bar code of a product and it will tell you the cheapest place where you can purchase it!

If you are a Wegmans Shopper, be sure to download the Wegmans App and keep clipping those e-coupons!

The savings will come off your total just like a Shopper’s Club deal.

Like video better than reading?  Then check out my Facebook Video below where I explain in more detail on how to use my top 3 favorite money-saving apps.

It will take you a bit of time to download these apps and play around with them a bit.  I recommend starting with Ibotta or Fetch Rewards.

This post is part of a 20 Day Budget Challenge.  If you’d like all of the info from this free challenge right in your inbox, fill out the form below.  Then be sure to join the Budget Challenge Facebook group for more discussion!