While the holiday season may be one the best time of year, it’s not for your wallet. Christmas has a reputation for being particularly harsh on limited budgets and every year it can be hard to keep your bank account safe from taking a hard hit.
To avoid issues like this as 2018 comes to a close, you'll need to try and be organized, plan ahead and do as much shopping on a budget as you can. You'll also want to make the most of these money-saving apps that can help you save money while doing your Christmas shopping. Let's take a look.
Shopkick
Shopkick is an app that allows you to earn points or ‘kicks’, as you shop for products that you need. You can cash in these ‘kicks’ in exchange for coupons and gift cards that can be used at a broad range of retailers.
Shopkick has four different ways that you can earn kicks. These are through receipts, scans, walk-ins or a linked card. An example of this is if you go to Walmart and the app picks up on your location, you may earn twenty-five kicks just for walking through the door.
If you keep your receipts and scan them, you could earn up to five hundred kicks, while scanning the products themselves could earn you up to fifty kicks. If you link your credit card to the app, you could earn up to two hundred kicks.
What’s great about this app is that you don’t actually have to buy products to scan them. Just walk into the store and scan them while you’re in there.
You can also earn kick points when you do your shopping online. This is done a little differently, through every dollar that you spend. You get even more kicks if you refer a friend to the app – up to 2500.
Flipp
Flipp is a coupon app that gives you access to thousands of coupons for discounts on products in all kinds of different categories.
What’s great about this app is that it lets you search for your favorite products by brand, item or category. Flipp will also find flyer deals for the products you search and match these with their coupons so that you save even more.
This app is great for sending reminders about expiration dates on any coupons you may have saved. It also notifies you of any new offers on products you’ve already bought with the app.
Shop Savvy
Shop Savvy is an app with saving money in mind. It comes with a built-in barcode scanner. This allows you to quickly scan products as you buy them, comparing their price with other retailers that may stock them.
Not only does this app display competitive prices at other retailers, but it also searches online to see if you can get a better deal there. You can even compare and read genuine reviews about the products that you're buying.
Whether you like to shop at Target, Walmart or Best Buy, this app is one to look out for this holiday season as it will be serving up some of the best deals out there.
Retail Me Not
This award-winning app allows you to access thousands of deals that are local to you. However, it doesn’t just help you save money shopping – it also gives you deals at restaurants, too.
This all-inclusive app allows you to find deals on anything from beauty products and electronics to food and clothing. The best part is it will help you find deals that are close to where you’re located, so you don’t have to drive too far for them.
This app will also let you know when new deals pop up near you. You can redeem any of your coupons directly through the app.
Ibotta
Don’t feel like shelling out a fortune for your Christmas dinner this year? Ibotta is an app that offers you cash rebates for purchases on groceries and more at over eighty stores.
Ibotta is another app that uses your location to show you where the best deals are near to you. It also goes even further and offers you cash rebate on grocery items that are often harder to get a discount on, like diapers and wine.
To earn your cash back, all you have to do is scan the barcode on your receipt. You can get your cash back through Venmo of PayPal, or you can choose from many different gift cards.
You can get rebates both instore and online.
Ebates
You know how nice it is to be organized for Christmas well ahead of time. That’s why you need to make the most of discount days like Black Friday – and the help of an app called Ebates.
Ebates actually has a section that’s reserved exclusively for Black Friday. You can use an app like this to either get deals on products or cashback.
Not only does Ebate help you buy your Christmas gifts early, but it also enables you to save on the Lyft you'll have to pay to get them all home. You can get $1 cash back on every Lyft ride you take.
Ebate will pay you through PayPal or through snail mail by check.
Squirrel
This next app is similar to Ebate – it helps you make the most of starting your Christmas shopping early so that you’re all stocked up when the holiday season hits.
Squirrel is an amazing app that helps you to put a bit of your paycheck aside for Christmas, one bit at a time. It basically takes control of your paycheck – but you decide how much you want to put away each week.
It's different from other budgeting apps, however. When you sign up, you allow your paycheck to go into another account, called Barclays. From here your money will be slowly drip fed into your original account. This ensures that you don't spend it all at once.
Mint
Mint is a great way to help you stay on top of your budget while saving some money in the process as well.
This app is all about convenience. It lets you view all of your bank accounts at once so that you can track your spending, set savings goals and create realistic budgets.
Because you’re often run off your feet around Christmas time, Mint will send you reminders of when bills are due so that you don’t miss any deadlines.
Because Mint uses multi-factor authentication, you know that it’s incredibly safe to use for all of your financing and budgeting needs.
Christmas Gift List
This pleasantly simple app allows you to get all of your Christmas lists in order and all in one place. This way, you’ll be able to avoid buying that last minute Christmas gift that you also forget about.
It’s a great app for helping you to keep on top of things during the busy holiday season. Buying gifts last minute is often expensive, so this app helps you to get your lists organized well in advance, so you're not spending outside of your budget at the eleventh hour.
Each gift entry comes with a personalized note, a link, and a picture, so you know how much your budget is for that person and who it is you're spending the money on.
You’ll also enjoy having features like keeping track of how much money you’ve spent and your overall budget.
Let Go
Need to find an easy way to increase your Christmas gift budget in a short space of time? Use Let Go to get rid of things you don’t want anymore.
Let Go is an incredibly simple app that allows you to put your items up for sale in just a few easy steps. All you have to do is take a picture of your item, select a price and then the category that it falls into.
Any potential buyers can contact you directly through the app.
Final Thoughts
There are a seemingly limitless number of apps out there, all doing something to make our lives more convenient.
The holiday season is no exception to this relatively recent release of technology. When you're trying to get everything done in time for Christmas, it pays to have apps like these on your phone to make the most of.
