There’s an app for everything, including saving money. From making a little back from your purchases to saving way more than you ever could yourself, there are tons of apps out there that work to improve your finances. We’ll be covering some of the best here. Be sure to download these ASAP and see how quickly your finances improve.
Rakuten
You may have seen them called Ebates before, but Rakuten is one of the best cashback apps available. They have a huge number of online stores and offer as much as 10% back on your purchases. Simply open the app, see the deals, make your purchase, and the cashback amount will show up in your account within 7 days.
You will get paid February, May, August, and November 15th as long as the money has been in your account for 60 days. Like with most cashback apps, they are making a commission and splitting the percentage with you. So, if they make $100 from your purchase, they keep $50 and you get $50. It’s a win-win.
Honey
Honey is part cashback and part coupon app. This program also works great as a browser extension. It searches the internet for all viable coupons and tries them to save you as much money as possible. Many purchases also come with a cashback option where you can get a good portion of your purchases back with ease.
Give Honey a try and see how much you can save at your favorite websites. It’s easier than looking for coupons yourself, and the cashback option makes this an overall favorite.
Acorns
Investing is hard, right? You have to pick stocks, get enough money to open an account, and hope the stock market doesn’t crash. While nothing can help with that third thing, Acorns helps with the first two. This automated investing app uses a robo investor that invests your money based on your profile (which you pick when you start), and you don’t need thousands of dollars to get started.
Acorns rounds up all your purchases and puts that in your investing account. So if you spent $9.45, then the purchase will be rounded to $10 and the $0.55 would be invested. Easy, right? You can also choose to have a monthly amount invested like $5 or more. Acorns charges a very small amount and you can easily put all the money back in your bank account when you’re done (or let it sit there and grow).
Ibotta
Unlike most cashback apps that focus on digital purchases, Ibotta is all about real-world purchases at those brick-and-mortar stores you visit. Go through their app and find coupons for items you know you’ll buy. Unlike other coupon apps where you present these to the cashier, you instead scan your receipt and Ibotta will put the saved amount in your cart.
You can withdraw earnings to Paypal and other methods once you have $20. It’s simple and you can save at many local stores.
Qapital
Did you ever think, “if I saved $1 every time I went to Starbucks, I’d be a millionaire!” Well, now you can put your money where your mouth is (or rather, in your savings account) with this very unique savings app. Qapital allows you to set rules for savings. For example, you can have this app save $5 whenever you walk 5,000 steps, or put $1 or more in your account whenever you buy from a certain store/guilty pleasure.
It’s a low-cost app at $3/month and you’ll end up saving way more than you think. Not only that, but having all these interesting rules and ways to save is actually kind of fun.
Swagbucks
Swagbucks is both a shopping portal and search engine where you get “Swagbucks (SB)” for certain actions that you can then convert into real cash. Like the other cashback apps here, it primarily works by splitting the commission with you.
The major difference here is that you sometimes get money just for browsing. It’s not a huge amount of SBs, but you’re only searching. It’s not like you have to buy something for browsing. Imagine if someone gave you a penny every time you Googled something, you’d be a millionaire! Wait, does Qapital let you do that, too?
Twine
So many of these apps pretend that you’re an island, all alone trying to save cash just to survive. But what if you have a significant other and you both want to save money together? That’s what Twine is for. It’s a cash-saving app that allows you and your significant other to link your individual bank accounts and there are two different ways to save money.
You can either choose a variable interest savings account of about 1.05% or invest it like with Acorns. The first option is free but lower earnings potential, while the latter charges $0.25/month per $500 invested.
When you start, you can set your goal for a vacation, home, or any other large purchase. This makes it easy to set goals, save money together, and you can both get much more by pooling your resources together.
These are just a few of my favorite cashback and money-saving apps available. They are all easy to use and leverage either everyday purchases or the power of small investments and savings to grow into something much bigger. Give these apps a try and see how much money you can get from them.
