Does anyone use any online apps or tools to save money?

michelle615

Like so many others, I'm looking for ways to save a little money.  Has anyone or does anyone use Ibotta.com or ebates, or a similiar app/website?  If so, have you been happy with it?

eyenigh

I use Cartwheel at Target at every shopping trip. I have used Ibotta but I find it to be just that extra step that is too much to deal with. I use Shopkick, which is just an app that you open to check in at stores and you collect "kicks" that you can trade for gift cards. It's not for all stores but if you're a Target junkie like me, those kicks really add up. I've gotten a lot of stuff over the last few years. I also coupon as much as I can, which is getting increasingly harder because I've started using my lunch to work out in the last 6 months and that was normally my coupon time. I just don't have much more time to devote to it other than then so my efforts have suffered. I'm a perpetual sale shopper for all other things so I don't worry too much about apps, I just watch for the best deals.

I disagree with using cash unless it's the only way you can keep yourself on budget. If you use a Target card (which can be debit or credit), you save 5%, which really adds up over time. We also use a credit card for EVERYTHING and rack up purchase points like crazy. Our airfare for Disney a few weeks ago was completely free for the three of us thanks to credit card points. If you can do it, there's a lot of benefits to ding so. If you have a hard time staying on budget when using credit cards, I can totally understand how it wouldn't work well for you.

michelle615

Thanks for some great feedback ladies!  I realize that I neglected to mention that I started using Cartwheel a few months ago and have found it to be a good way to save a little extra money.  Thus my quest to find other ways. 

While we are good at paying off credit card balances every month so we are not paying interest, we haven't tried one of the CC's that has rewards, other than the Target red card.  I think I need to look into a CC that has rewards as well as try one of these other sites such as Ebates or Shopkick.

 

kristennd

Mint works really well for a lot of people. We used it for about a year. (I spent much more than a year deciding whether to really give it all my bank passwords...) But it ended up being too much work to manually update because it couldn't categorize so much of what we buy. Like half. That's unusual though. Usually it can pre-assign your transactions to categories.

I also like an app called Shoppee because it lets you record prices for groceries at different local stores. And we don't have one that's consistently cheaper for everything, so that helps with planning. You have to manually enter everything though. There's no app that knows what every store in your town is selling everything for.

Chapter79

casey78 said:

• Cable/internet - you can often get big discounts for switching providers.  when your discount time is up (say, a year), just look again

Also regarding this part- you can consider getting rid of cable, too.  We did this just a few months ago and the amount of money we save is incredible. We were paying about $150 for cable/DVR and now we pay $11.99 a month for Netflix and $7.00 for Hulu Plus.  And the Roku we use to stream it all with was a one time $65 fee. <~ it came with one free month Netflix and 2 weeks of Hulu when we bought it.  I can get almost all of my shows there. Netflix has a crap load of many seasons of TV shows. Hulu+ has more newer stuff. A trillion movies. I don't miss my cable at all and I save like $110 a month.

michelle615

Chapter79 said:

casey78 said:

• Cable/internet - you can often get big discounts for switching providers.  when your discount time is up (say, a year), just look again

Also regarding this part- you can consider getting rid of cable, too.  We did this just a few months ago and the amount of money we save is incredible. We were paying about $150 for cable/DVR and now we pay $11.99 a month for Netflix and $7.00 for Hulu Plus.  And the Roku we use to stream it all with was a one time $65 fee. <~ it came with one free month Netflix and 2 weeks of Hulu when we bought it.  I can get almost all of my shows there. Netflix has a crap load of many seasons of TV shows. Hulu+ has more newer stuff. A trillion movies. I don't miss my cable at all and I save like $110 a month.

I would love to try something like this, (Cable and DirectTV are really expensive) but sports are extremely popular in our house.  Most of the games we watch can only be found on non-network channels. 

Chapter79

Yeah, we don't really do sports here so I guess that's a non-issue and easier for us to get rid of.