Jasmine Birtles
Your money-making expert. Financial journalist, TV and radio personality.
How the use of apps can help you save a fortune
Vicky Parry
19th Nov 2024
I am not someone who took to the use of apps quickly. As with any technological offering, I feared they were somehow “techy” or hard to use. However, the more apps have become user-friendly, the more I can see their use. For example, it’s so easy to save with a banking roundup app now. Now I can see apps are far less glitchy than the websites and often way more user friendly and it’s much easier to find information you might want, too.
Here is the very exciting part. Trialling my new “appy” life I managed to save nearly £300 in a year and they helped me to almost double my house deposit fund.
So, here I now stand, a full app convert, and am here to round-up why you should get appy too, and what apps I personally swear by.
Food and Drink Apps
This may sound obvious but nearly every big restaurant chain offers a freebie when you sign up to their free app. You then get deals almost weekly. Fast food places normally offer a free burger or pizza, restaurants a free course or drink, and grocery shops a random item. They really are fantastic at throwing freebies at you and often help you make regular savings on treats.
Savings Apps
These are an absolute godsend. Do you have big plans and great ideas for your money? A holiday, a new car, a deposit for a new flat or even something as simple as a big night out with your friends can all be a great savings goal.
We’ve all been there, all of the dream boards and plans of grandeur that fall by the wayside because saving is hard. The old faithful change jar just isn’t going to cut it – especially in an increasingly cashless world. Well, there’s an app for everything these days and maybe one of them is the answer to your saving needs.
We review savings apps such as HyperJar, Plum, MoneyBox and Cleo on MoneyMagpie.
Personally, I use HyperJar and have also made huge savings with Monzo’s “rounding up” function. Every time you spend, it rounds up the amount direct into a savings account. It is so clever you barely notice it and last year I saved an incredible £720 just by rounding up payments.
Smart Meter App
As we all know, understanding energy usage can sometimes be difficult. But with the help of a smart meter app, energy tracking can be easy. Smart meter apps can show you how much energy you’re using in real time, meaning you can work out where your energy usage is highest and make changes to help save you money on your bills.
Having a smart meter also gives you access to energy reward schemes and tariffs through your energy provider. These have a variety of benefits such as rewarding you for increasing or reducing your energy usage at certain times of day.
My neighbour swears by hers as has seen how much the price of different appliances varies. She said it’s particularly noticeable in the kitchen and has really made her think about alternative, more energy-efficient ways of doing things.
So see for yourself, you can request a smart meter from your energy supplier at no extra cost if you don’t already have one.
Budgeting Apps
Making a budget is a great way to get started with your savings safety net. When you understand your spending habits, it’s much easier to see where you can cut back or change your approach to save money. At MoneyMagpie, we like apps like Emma and Expensify to see where your money goes.
Food Waste Apps
There are some particularly handy apps around now that will help you get free food from your locality.
Too Good to Go
Too Good to Go enables you to get very cheap food from shops and restaurants near to closing time when produce is about to be thrown out. You can get top quality food for under £5 a time. From Morrison’s to sushi restaurants, there are so many establishments giving you their leftovers. They are all perfectly fine to eat and delicious!
Olio
Olio puts you in touch with neighbours and cafes with surplus food. As it says on the website, the app helps us all share food that would otherwise be totally wasted. Another brilliant idea!
Of course, when it comes to immediate neighbours, friends and family, we don’t need an app to share food, just a quick word. So, if you’re going on holiday, see if your neighbours would like what’s in your fridge that could go off.
Maybe have a ‘food swap’ session once every few months too so that you can swap tins, packets and jars of food that you know you’re not going to use. If you grow fruit and veg you could swap some of that too. Some friends like to have a monthly get-together where they bring whatever is left in their fridge and we find a way to make a dinner with it all – a great bonding experience while saving money, too.
After all, it’s good for all of us if we can avoid wasting food. Last year, it was estimated that businesses, organisations and supermarkets were throwing away 10.2 million tonnes of food and drink each year
Falling Fruit
Falling Fruit maps wild growing plants around cities. You can find plums, apples, herbs, strawberries and all sorts available for anyone to pick. It also shows you where there are often skips with edible food which you might be able to dive into for a spot of freeganism (see below).
Discount Apps
At the moment we are all watching the pennies, and it has become second nature to start looking for the best deals around. My friends and I even share a WhatsApp group in which we show each other weekly bargains: this little fun share has saved me and my close pals a fortune. But let’s face it, five women chatting ain’t gonna bring in the major savings.
If only there were somewhere that did all the legwork for us and found all the best deals: imagine what we could save then?
Whilst we have the obvious ones like Groupon and Wowcher, I personally love one called Honey. It acts as a browser extension and automatically adds the best discount available for when shopping. This saves so much time searching for the best deal.
These days, there seems to be an app for everything and keeping costs down in the home and helping us save for the future has never been easier.
This article mentions a media partner but wasn’t paid for
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