Constantly on the go? Need some ideas for streamlining your holiday savings? Consider the many options available to make shopping with your smart phone an actual reality. Streamlining loyalty card storage and gift card delivery, price comparison and even mobile couponing are all possible with your mobile phone. Here are some of my favorite ways to make smart phone shopping happen.
Compare prices on the fly to perfect your bargain-hunting smart phone skills.
For items you’ve researched ahead of time, this might not come into play. But for those products that catch your attention while you’re out and about, developing a little smart phone savvy is definitely a necessity. Nextag is a popular site for keeping track of prices for items on your wish list, and they have a helpful smart phone app that will alert you when a product on your radar drops in price. Perfect for those who don’t mind waiting to get the best deal.
Nextag’s isn’t the only shopping app available to for savvy saving. Both ScanLife and The Find allow for frugal price comparison based on a product’s barcode. Another nifty app is OO on the Go, which feeds you deals of up to 50 percent off, and lets you know when they start. This is particularly useful for higher-ticket purchases you’ve been holding off on in order to score the best bargain.
Learn to love your customer loyalty cards again by storing them on your smart phone.
Hey, I love to get the produce deals at my grocery store too, but carrying around all that plastic when you’re trying to save room in your pocketbook can be a real drag. Apps such as My Card Star let you upload all of your loyalty rewards cards for storage on your smart phone, where you can retrieve them to your screen for the cashier to scan at the checkout. So if you’re a loyalty card junky like I am and have them from a wide variety of retailers such as Staples, Winn Dixie, Sally’s Beauty, CVS and more, this will help you carve out more room in your wallet for all that cash you’ll be saving.
Go green by sending and receiving gift cards on your smart phone.
Loyalty cards aren’t the only thing you can store on your mobile phone. Gift cards are also fair game. SWAGG, an application that lets you track, swap and combine gift card balances on your smart phone. Available for free on iTunes, this service is not only space-saving and convenient, it allows you to skip the actual cards altogether, thereby reducing plastic pollution.
Mobile couponing saves you snipping time and offers deals.
Don’t have time to scour the paper every Sunday? Try having coupons from your favorite retailers and restaurants delivered directly to your smart phone. Apps like Yowza and Cellfire allow you to receive and retrieve valuable coupons through mobile marketing efforts. While it may be a bit cumbersome for grocery store checkouts on major shopping days, this strategy is more than doable for restaurant coupons, store-wide savings specials and other deals at places where you regularly make purchases.
While you still have to be involved and do your part in the planning and purchasing process, shopping with your smart phone is definitely doable for today’s busy shopper on the fly. Do you have any applications or resources you feel are particularly stellar? Sound off in the comment section below.
A lifelong money cruncher who can squeeze a nickel ‘til it cries, Myscha is a syndicated columnist, best-selling author, and founder of Trek Hound and We Be Sharin’.