3 Ways to Save Cash Using Your Smartphone
It is fairly common, and correct, to think of our smartphones as expenses. They might bring us many conveniences, but in many instances these conveniences are luxuries.
Image credit to open.edu.At the same time, the important benefits they do bring us are difficult to measure. It’s time to turn around that thinking.
There are a number of ways your smartphone can make your wallet fatter.
Price Comparison
Have you ever seen someone at a store playing with a smarpthone while shopping? While that could be standard texting and messaging, oftentimes the person is comparison shopping right from the smartphone.
There are a number of apps that perform this function. All you do is scan the barcode with the camera and the app spits out the price of the product at various other outlets — though usually online.
The Amazon Price Check app is one of the more popular ones. That’s not surprising, since Amazon is one of the world’s largest retailers. The premise is simple: scan products at a store before you buy, and see if you can get it cheaper on Amazon.
This works particularly well for Amazon Prime customers, since they get free two-day and discounted overnight shipping. It might not be instant gratification, but it’s better than waiting for standard shipping.
Other mobile price comparison apps include Google Shopper and ShopSavvy (which was actually around before Amazon’s and Google’s price tools).
Alternatively, you can use the smartphone browser to search any site you’d like. In any case, it’s an easy way to save money using your mobile.
Coupon Apps
It seems that coupons are a lost art form. Maybe it’s because newspaper circulation is down considerably.
I remember my mom going through the Sunday circular and clipping endless coupons.
It was then my job at the store to find the items on the coupons. That seems to be a relic of the past, though.
The coupon itself, though is alive and well. The difference is that websites and smartphones provide them now.
One app that has gained plenty of traction is Cellfire. It’s just like a Sunday circular, in that it provides numerous coupons.
You can view these in the mobile app or on the website. You then “clip” the coupons, which adds them to your account.
Once you’re at the register, you show the cashier your smartphone, and he or she enters the barcode number. That instantly applies the coupons you saved.
While it typically doesn’t cover groceries, Groupon is another popular discount app. It offers you deals in your area, which you can redeem right from your smartphone. That is, you can buy the deal, and then use it by displaying your smartphone.
If you remember getting those Valpak coupon packs in the mail, those are also around in mobile format. The art of couponing is not dying at all; it’s just changing the medium.
Mobile-Only Discounts
Last year on Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year, we saw retailers try something new.
While they still offered their standard lineup of in-store discounts, they also offered special discounts for people who bought things on their smartphones.
This is something that any retailer can do, and that some actually do. Since most retailers have mobile apps, they can offer deals right within the app. That incentivizes people to install the app, which is what they want in the first place (so you’ll buy from them).
Other specialty apps offer discounts on certain products and services as well, too. The Orbitz mobile app allows you to book travel from flight to hotel to rental car, and has mobile-only deals for cheap hotels.
Other travel apps, such as Kayak and Travelocity, have hotel deals that are available only through the mobile app.
In that way, it’s silly to shop any other way. Why pay full price on the web when you can just use your smartphone to save a few dollars?
Our smartphones can cost us plenty. In America the two-year cost of smartphone ownership — when factoring in the device cost, service plan, and apps — can be around $1,000.
It’s nice to have the ability to recoup some of those dollars by using our smartphones.
By using price comparison apps, coupon apps, and mobile-only deals, we stand to save a few dollars while we use our phones. It might not cover the whole cost, but it will make the total cost of ownership much less expensive.
