Money Making and Money Saving Apps- A Beginner’s Guide

Recently I’ve started becoming quite savvy with my grocery shopping, which has led to me significantly cutting the amount I spend. Today for example, I placed my grocery order for the week with Sainsbury’s; initial cost was £55.10 (which is quite good for us anyway), with offers and promotions, it reduced to £43.50. With vouchers and coupons, it reduced again to £34.30 and with cashback, the grand total is £30.60 including delivery. So I thought I’d share some of the apps I’m using for grocery shopping and beyond in the hope it might save my lovely readers a few quid. Deets as follows:

Shopmium

My absolute favourite new app! The Shopmium app offers significant discounts on groceries and some free products, too. Last week, I bought around £25 worth of groceries that were featured on the app and received £23.88 back, which consisted of £15.88 cashback on my purchases and an £8 reward for referrals. Once I’d followed the steps to claim my cashback, the money was in my Paypal account the following day. Current offers include free BOL Salad Jars (RRP £3) and free Blind Pig cider (RRP £2.90).

If you use my referral code, ec5ma, you will also get a bar of Lindt chocolate (100g) for free!

Checkout Smart

This one was recommended to me by the lovely QDiscount on Instagram- this lady is a legend! This apps is quite similar to Shopmium, in that you receive cashback for products making them either free or heavily discounted. There are a lot of prominent branded products available, like Nivea (up to £2 off products) and Cow and Gate (free products). From my limited use, I noted that you have to let your cashback build up to £20 before withdrawing to save on fees but if you are buying the products anyway, then doing this will mean you get a nice little £20 bonus every now and again.

Shoppix

This app requires you to scan all of your receipts, for which you accumulate points, that equate to shopping vouchers. You can also do surveys to earn even more points. Using this for a week now, I’ve struggled to remember to actually scan my receipts but it could not be simpler to use when I remember! Ultimately, it’s a few seconds of work to earn vouchers from a purchase you were making anyway. My plan is to invest a tiny bit of time doing this all year and cashing out at Christmas, to pay for some Christmas shopping. Wanna join me?

Use my referral code for 200 tokens- 1Y22HRVD (I get 200 points too, thank you!).

TopCashBack

I used this site years ago and a notable deal I got was £15 off HotelClub bookings. The website was happy to pay out for any booking, and I was travelling round SE Asia at the time, usually in a different place each night, therefore some nights I was paying less to stay in some hotels than I was receiving in cashback. This app is so handy if you are already buying something online as it offers cashback for a huge amount of retailers, usually a percentage of your purchase. Even your Saturday night takeaway place could be on there, so make sure to check. If you are signing up today, make sure to check out the current offer with Superdrug, as they are offering £15 off your order for new TopCashBack customers (no minimum spend!). I mentioned this to my partner who signed up today, and the deal has already been applied to his account, making his £18 purchase just £3 after cashback.

If you’d like to join, my referral link is: https://www.topcashback.co.uk/ref/member157837782442

InCompass

Ipsos Mori got me linked up with inCompass, an app that you can download to your phone that tracks what you watch and listen to on TV, online etc. In return for downloading the app and enabling it to run in the background of your smartphone, the company give you £20 in shopping vouchers (Amazon, I believe) for your first month and then £10 per month thereafter.

I found that it really slowed down my phone and because I use Spotify so much, it tended to throw up an error message whilst it was playing. But if this isn’t an issue for you, contact either Ipsos Mori or google inCompass to sign up.

Pinterest

And because we all love a bit of social media, Nick from PoundsAndSense.com gived you the rundown on how to monetise your Pinterest account here!

So this is my current offering! I’m going to test a few more apps over the coming weeks and will share the details of any I’d recommend. Please let me know below or over on my Instagram page if there is a money saving app you’d recommend too!