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Attention Shoppers: 3 Shopping Apps You Should Be Using

Whether you fancy yourself a big shopper or not, buying stuff is a necessity. Many mobile apps offer incentives in the form of item location, discounts, coupons, price comparison, consumer reviews, peer-to-peer recommendations, and social networking.

Three mobile apps you definitely should NOT leave home without:

Cartwheel – Target’s Cartwheel app allows you to search for coupons or scan items to check if there’s a coupon available, make lists, and more. It’s also social, so if you link it to your Facebook, you can see peer recommendations, and what your friends have saved money on or bookmarked. If you enable Bluetooth, you’ll be alerted to deals in the aisle you’re shopping in. Finally, Cartwheel not only makes Target-specific discounts available to you, but layers on any manufacturer discounts and store specials.

ShopSavvy – An awesome price comparison tool. Let the app know what you’re looking for, and it will search and advise when and where it may be available at a discount. You can also use ShopSavvy as a barcode scanner and SKU finder, and it will display user reviews, compare store prices, and search for nearby sales. You can even use it to price-match at the cashier.

Shopkick – When you use Shopkick as your shopping companion, you activate it before you walk into a partnering store to earn points (or “kicks”) just for walking in. Once there, Shopkick loads all available coupons to your app, and you just select the ones you want to use. Once you’ve earned a certain number of kicks, you can redeem them for free gift cards of your choice! In other words, you get paid for shopping.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t make sense to walk away from “free money”, or to pay more than others pay for the very same item. These apps prove easy to use and will save you money. So why not?

Elizabeth Strickert