Can My Phone Make Me Smarter About Frugal Living?

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Short answer: YEP! There are seemingly countless smartphone apps for frugal living. In fact, a Google search of “smartphone apps for frugal living” resulted in 153,000 results! Another search of “iPhone apps for frugal living” returned 1,520,000 results! With that much information on the Internet about frugal living and easy-to-use apps at your fingertips, don’t you think it’s time to start saving money?

Here are 15 of the more popular and useful “frugal living” smartphone apps:

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Amazon Mobile: One of the best comparison-shopping apps available. Compare prices and find out where you can purchase the product. (android | android tablet | iphone, ipad, windows phone)

GasBuddy: Find the cheapest gasoline nearest to where you are! Then, map a route to it. Station pricing is provided by GasBuddy.com. (android, iphone, windows, blackberry)

Coupon Sherpa: Delivers exclusive coupons right to your smartphone. Save money on clothing, shoes, restaurants, jewelry, electronics, travel, books, sporting goods, and more. Coupon Sherpa will also search the Internet daily for the best in-store coupons that you can have scanned from your smartphone or print out and bring to the store. (android | iphone)

Dinner Spinner – An app from the popular cooking site allrecipes.com allows you to enter an ingredient and see a list of recipes using that item. {android | iphone)

Grocery Gadget: Create shopping lists for supermarkets, pharmacies, convenience stores, office supply vendors, or any other provider of consumable goods. (Android, iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Phone, Nokia)

Groupon: One of the largest and most used money saving apps ever.  Download this app to gain access to deals on travel, food and entertainment, beauty and spa treatments, etc.  Typical savings are 50-90%! (android, iphone, windows phone, blackberry)

Kids Eat Free: The fastest and easiest way to look up the days restaurants near you have cheap or free kids’ meals.  From the reviews, it seems some people didn't find results that satisfied them, but a quick a local search for us pulled up some good ideas. Try a search on their main web site before downloading. (android, iphone)

Mint.com: With the Mint.com app, you can create an account and add all your personal financial accounts, allowing you to aggregate your transactions to track where you are spending the most. The free app also creates a budget, which will tell you exactly how much you have left and where you can make savings. (android, android tablet, iphone, ipad)

Check.me (previously Pageonce): Looking for an alternative to mint.com?  You might want to check out Check.me, which is bringing some serious competition to the space. Check.me is a mobile banking application that allows users to pay bills and track bank, credit card, investment, and loan transactions and balances. It also also has a popular new feature that lets users pay bills from the mobile apps.  (android | iphone)

Pocket Expense Personal Finance: One of the most customizable budgeting apps on the market, this app gives you total freedom over your spending. You can set budgets, easily transfer funds, create personalized budget and finance records, etc.  (iphone only)

RedLaser: A great barcode scanner that can search thousands of retailers to bring you the best prices near your location.  You can even create and share shopping lists with friends and family. (android | iphone | windows phone)

RetailMeNot: This app makes it easy to save in store with thousands of coupons at the places you love to shop. Easily search for the coupons you want, check out the “Today's Hot Deals” or browse their “Categories” and “Trending Deals” to find the best offers available. (android | iphone)

Shopper Pro: Create shopping lists and Shopper will match them to savings offers automatically.  Find store recipes, create shopping lists, and find FDA/USDA alerts and recall information. Search for local coupon deals and free samples. It also has a free barcode scanner price check app. (iphone only)

The Coupons App: Awesome coupon deals and comparative gas prices. You can create a calendar that will list coupons in order of relevance and expiration date. Has a barcode scanner and delivers alerts directly to your iPhone.  All you need to do to redeem a coupon is display it to the cashier at a participating store. (android | iphone)

Yard Sale Treasure Map (Formerly Yard Sale Mapper): This app rounds up listings for nearby yard sales, tag sales, and garage sales from Craiglist.org and plots them on a Google map. (android | iphone)

FamilyMint.com provides a fun and educational way for children, with the help of their parents, to manage money and build financial literacy. Your feedback is important to us. Let us know what you think about our website and blog, and if you have any great money-saving tips for families, please send them our way. 

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