10 Money-Saving Apps and Tools You Might Not Know About

Everyone likes saving money, right? No matter how serious you are about saving your cash, we’ve found 10 more ways to do it. They’re all easy – some apps even save money for you in the background – and if you haven’t heard of them, we think you might be missing out!

#1: Amazon’s Subscribe & Save Program

If you’re like most people, you probably buy your toiletries and household items while you’re grocery shopping. Even if that’s the way you’ve always done it, you should take a look at Amazon’s Subscribe & Save Program – it could save you a lot of money!

Items such as toilet paper, paper towels, laundry detergent, dish soap, pet food, vitamins, first aid items, and makeup are all a part of this savings program. You can set the item to autoship on whatever monthly rotation makes the most sense for you.

For example, if you run out of laundry detergent every 3 months, you can have your detergent shipped to you every 3 months. Just by choosing the autoship, or “Subscribe” feature, you save 5% on that item.

However, if you add 5 items or more to your shipment, you save 15% on all of those items.

For example, let’s say you added paper towels, dishwasher detergent, vitamins, fabric softener sheets, and ziploc bags to your Subscribe & Save order. That means you save 15% off of Amazon’s price for all of those items.

Another perk you might have noticed from the example above is that Amazon sometimes has coupons that you can clip, just like a regular store would.

Using this example, let’s see how much you’d really save.

So, after looking at the 15% savings plus any coupons you can add, here’s how retail compares to the savings program.

That’s a total savings of $21.21 – not to mention the fact that you don’t have to get these groceries from the store to your home. They’re kindly delivered right to your front door.

The only catch is that each shipment must have 5 items in it. So, if you need your vitamins every 2 months, but you need the fabric softener every 6 months, you might need to add more items to that 2 month shipment in order to get your 15% off.

Over at mashupmom.com, there’s a list of Amazon Subscribe & Save items under $2.00 – if you’re trying to get at least 5 items in a month for that 15% discount, you might consider adding some of these cheaper “filler” items. It could still save you money, especially if you have more expensive items on your shopping list.

#2: Ebates

Ebates is one of those tools that works in the background to save you money on things you’re already buying.

You shop at your favorite stores and earn cash back on your orders. Ebates has cashback offers from over 2,500 online stores including Macy’s, Amazon, Ebay, Sephora, Kohl’s, Overstock, Best Buy, and more. There are also “Double Cash Back Stores,” which just means you can earn more than normal.

At the time of this writing, some examples of Double Cash Back Stores include Sephora’s 8% cashback, Finish Line’s 8% cashback, and up to 5% cashback in certain Amazon categories.

Every 3 months, Ebates pays out your rebate balance by check or PayPal, though you must have at least $5.01 in order to get the payout.

The easiest way to use Ebates is by adding the Ebates Google Chrome extension to your browser. Then, everytime you go to a website that has cashback through Ebates, the extension will light up and ask you if you want to apply the cashback.

If you don’t add the extension from your browser, you’ll have to login to Ebates and navigate to that store through their website.

It’s pretty amazing how much you can save without changing any of your spending habits!

#3: Walmart Savings Catcher

If you’re a regular Walmart shopper, download the Walmart app to take advantage of the Savings Catcher.

If you buy an item at Walmart, and another store is selling that item for less, Walmart deposits the difference into your Savings Catcher.

All you do is scan your store receipt with your Walmart app, wait for Walmart to do the comparisons, and you get an eGift Card for the difference.

That’s all there is to it!

#4: Honey

Honey offers so many ways to save money, it’s almost unbelievable.

Honey is a free browser extension that you add to Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, or Edge.

This is every way that Honey can save you money:

1. Honey automatically finds and applies coupon codes at checkout for over 30,000 shopping sites (no more searching for coupon codes!)
2. Honey finds better prices on Amazon by comparing prices of every top-rated seller in the marketplace
3. Honey tracks the prices of items on Amazon over time, so you’ll know if you’re paying more than you should for an item (items constantly fluctuate in price on Amazon)
4. Honey offers a perk called Honey Gold, which offers cashback at many online stores

If you do a lot of online shopping, you’re guaranteed to save money in one way or another with Honey.

Let’s say you need to buy some new clothes from Old Navy. The moment you navigate to the site, Honey will light up with all of the potential coupon codes available.

Once you add things to your cart and want to checkout, all you have to do is click “Apply Coupons.” Honey will automatically try every coupon available and will keep the one that saves you the most money.

It’s super easy to save money on items you were already going to purchase – and you don’t have to scavenge the internet or your email inbox for coupons anymore.

If you’re a big Amazon shopper, you also might consider using the Honey Droplist. You simply add an item to your Droplist, and Honey will notify you when there’s a better price available. Since prices fluctuate all the time on Amazon, this keeps you from paying more than you should.

We’ve found that the cashback percentages are a little better with Ebates, but if you’d rather use one tool instead of piecing together the benefits of multiple tools, Honey does seem to have it all!

#5: GasBuddy

Not sure which gas station has the cheapest gas in town? Try checking GasBuddy.

GasBuddy lets you search by city or zip code in order to find the best gas prices. You can even search by gas type – Regular, Midgrade, Premium, or Diesel.

The spare change can definitely add up over time!

#6: Ibotta

Ibotta is another app that offers cash back, but it works a bit differently than the other tools we’ve covered so far.

First of all, Ibotta is great for saving money on groceries.

You complete simple tasks, like answering a question about that product, and then you get to add the coupon to your account. When you go shopping, you’ll buy the products that correspond with your coupons.

Then, you simply scan a photo of your receipt, and Ibotta matches the items you bought to the coupons in the app.

Your cash back will be credited to your Ibotta account within 2 days.

Ibotta features stores like Walmart, Kroger, Walgreens, CVS Pharmacy, and for you snowbirds out there, Publix.

The nice thing about Ibotta is that you don’t have to wait to get your earnings (remember that apps like Ebates make you wait 3 months). You’re allowed to transfer your earnings to your PayPal or Venmo at any time.

The downside? You need at least $20 in order to cash out. That can be a little annoying when most coupons are saving you 25-50 cents or so, which means it might be a while before you get your rebates.

Nevertheless, Ibotta can be another great way to save money that you would have spent otherwise.

#7: Shopping Through Your Credit Card’s Reward Center

While some of the other tools we’ve gone over might be easier than this tip, it’s still an option if you’re looking to save some money!

Many credit card companies have a platform where you can earn extra cashback on purchases if you navigate to a store through their website.

For example, Chase has a platform called “Shop Through Chase,” and it gives you the opportunity to get some extra cash back – on top of the cashback you already earn with your credit card.

All you have to do is hover over the offer and click the green “Shop Now” button.

This will take you to the website, and Chase will track your purchase. That extra cashback will show up on your next credit card statement.

Even if you don’t have a Chase credit card, check to see if your credit card company offers a platform like this. It can definitely be a way to stack up the savings!

#8 Shopkick

Shopkick has to be one of the absolute easiest ways to save money, though it does take a lot more time to actually see the reward.

With Shopkick, you get paid just for walking into a store. Yes, you read that right.

When you walk into a store that’s featured on the Shopkick app (TJ Maxx and Best Buy are popular ones), you collect “kicks.” Once you reach 2,500 kicks, you get to redeem a $10 gift card.

You can also earn kicks by scanning items in the store, but we don’t find this to be a particularly good use of time. A better additional way to earn kicks is to add your credit card to the Shopkick app, and you’ll earn extra kicks every time to shop at a store that is offering kicks for purchases.

In the image above, the icon of the person indicates how many kicks you get for walking into that store. The barcode indicates how many kicks are available for scanning items in the store, and the credit card icon shows how many kicks you get for every dollar you spend using a linked card.

One of our staff members has used this app for three years, and they’ve been able to redeem three $10 gift cards. While that’s not much, it’s certainly more than nothing, and essentially no effort was involved other than opening up the app when entering a store.

#9: RetailMeNot

RetailMeNot is an app focused on getting you discounts in stores.

The easiest way to use the app is to check it when you go into a store. Simply search for that store and see if there are any deals, promotions, or discounts going on. All you have to do is present that deal to the cashier, and you’ll get the discount!

RetailMeNot also offers online discounts if you’re a big online shopper, but the in-store deals are what really set this app apart from some of the other options we’ve featured.

#10: Kroger Digital Coupons

Most grocery stores have an app that features coupons, but we couldn’t overlook Kroger – they have some amazing deals if you’re one of their regular shoppers!

Simply download the app and add any coupons that interest you to your account. They’re loaded directly onto your Kroger card, and they are applied automatically when you checkout.

You can check out the available coupons here: https://www.kroger.com/cl/coupons/.

And if you’re a snowbird? We recommend doing the same thing with Publix! You can check those out here: http://www.publix.com/savings/coupons.

So, are you ready to start saving some money? Let us know what you plan on trying out in the comment section below!

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