Do you have an iPhone? I love my phone and I have become more and more reliant to manage just about every aspect of my life 🙂
I thought it would be fun to post 15 of the apps that I am loving right now. Most of these are free apps and they can help you keep track of everything from your finances to your children’s sports teams to making really cool things with your images and more!
Here is my list of 15 awesome apps for Mom- please be sure to let us know what your favorite apps are in the comments! I love finding new ones!
Mint.com is a great personal finance app. You can track your spending, create budgets, monitor your bank acocunts and much more. I have Mint.com for my personal accounts and I get an email when I have large deposits or a low balance in my account and then weekly I get an email with a pie graph showing how I spent my money (20% to Dining Out, 50% to car payment or whatever…)
This is a great resource when you are out shopping- you can enter the name of the store that you are at (i.e. Gymboree or Bath and Body Works) and the app will pull up any available coupons. You need to click on in store or coupon code (for use online) and often you can save a little extra money with a coupon. I have used the app many times at Children’s Place, Gap, Banana Republic, Kohl’s and more…
There are so many apps available to serve as rebates for your grocery purchases and this is just one that has been around awhile. Ibotta offers rebates on various grocery purchases at most major chain stores such as Safeway or Kroger or Target. You check for the rebates to be available on the item you want, purchase it, and once you have your receipt in hand, you submit for the rebate. Once you have enough money in your account, you can request a refund from Paypal. Click here to browse the current weekly ad for Kroger.
I love Audible and use it all the time- this is an audiobook service that is paid (although your first book is free). You can purchase audiobooks to listen to at your convenience. I listen to probably 5 or maybe 6 books per month- when I am driving, walking the dog, cooking dinner…. any chance I get really I play books. If you love to read and never find the time to pick up a book- this might be something to check out. I find it easier to use the web site here and you can get your first book free. You can manage all your books via the app.
This is a great app if you tend to misplace your Apple devices. You can log in to your icloud account and find my iPhone will play music so you can find your device, it will allow you to lock your phone etc…
I use My Fitness Pal when I am at my best as far as diet and exercise. My Fitness Pal allows you to enter your goals (lose 5 lbs by December 15th for example)- your current weight and then daily you can track calorie intake and exercise. My Fitness Pal will offer suggested calorie intake based on your goal or based on maintaining your weight. This is a great resource to keep on top of your diet.
I love Shazam. I always hear songs on the radio or often in stores or restaurants and then 5 seconds later it is completely out of my mind. I like Shazam because I can push the button and Shazam will tell me the name and artist. It all stays in my Shazam account and once I am ready to create some playlists or get new songs for running I can pull Shazam up and remember what I liked.
If you are a Target shopper this is a must have app. Target offers coupons via the app for all sorts of things from bottled water to clothing to toys. The coupons can be very low (5% off) or very, very high (50% off). You can either search for the items you want to buy to see if coupons are available or you can scan the item and the app will tell you if a coupon is available. You save the coupons you want to your account and at checkout pull up your barcode located in the app and the coupon value will come right off your purchase. Easy! (If you are interested in more tips to save money at Target you can see the post here.)
If you travel Uber is an awesome is an app to have for car service. Uber will send a car to pick you up- I have used it several times and my car has come within 2-4 minutes. The app will show you a picture of your driver, the type of car they are in, the phone number in case you need to call them or text them. You can enter your payment information when you set up your account so you don’t need to worry about paying- the amount of your trip is automatically charged to your card! You can also see a real time map of your travel so if you are going from the airport to a hotel for example you can see how many minutes are left in your trip and exactly where you are. I absolutely love Uber- it was wierd at first because you get into an unmarked car but the drivers I have had have been 100 times better than a standard cab service, clean cars and far cheaper! A recent trip I checked out and cab service from the airport to my hotel was $48, a car service was $44 and Uber was $29.
This is awesome to keep track of all your loyalty cards, library cards etc… You can enter it all into the app and then it will give you the barcode for each card that can be scanned. No more carrying around a million different loyalty cards!
This is a really fun app- it does cost money but totally worth it. You can take a photo in your camera roll and turn a standard photo into a watercolor image. There are tons of filters to choose from to make your work of art totally custom to your taste.
Here is a photo I snapped at the Ballantyne Hotel in Charlotte, NC:
And I just uploaded it from my camera roll into Waterlogue, chose the filter I preferred and here is my masterpiece:
I literally did that in about 30 seconds. You can fuss with it to make it bolder, lighter, add borders and on and on. Pretty cool!
This is a free app and I like this one because it will tell you that magic hour before sunset. This is the most perfect time to get gorgeous lighting for your photos. I try to take all my photos during the Magic Hour if I possibly can. I also like this app because I know exactly when the sun will set so if I want to go for a run or if I want to practice soccer with my kids or whatever I can see exactly when it will be dark so I plan accordingly.
Are your kids in Sports? This is an awesome app to put together for your team or group to keep track of everything.
You can manage the schedule, the roster, messages from your Coach, members RSVP for various things like practice or parties, keep track of payments and much more. We have this for our daughter’s soccer team and I can see in a glance what time her practices and games are, where they are, messages from the Coach, any payments I have due, who is in charge of snack…. Super handy!
Artkive is an awesome app to keep track of artwork for your children. Instead of keeping endless stacks of art, you can snap a photo of the picture and when you are ready create a photobook with all of your child’s art for say Kindergarten or whatever.
Evernote is a great organizational app. You can create to do lists, take notes, you can sync your work across multiple devices, prepare for meetings with notes/agendas etc… Evernote is awesome to keep track of everything.
And here are some other articles you might be interested in:
100 Books to Read in a Lifetime
or 100 Children’s Books to Read in a Lifetime
cathy says
Thanks for the recommendations. There are a few other money saving apps that I also like to use: Checkout51, Shopmium, and Berrycart. More recently I’ve tried Jingit and Snap by groupon. Both don’t offer a long list but are OK so far.
Charlene says
Yes Cathy- I have those in the matchups and in the coupon database. They are all good ones! Personally I think there are just too many of these rebate apps for a person to keep track of unless you are an extreme couponer or have a lot of time to plan your shopping trips each week. It makes me overwhelmed and this is my job 🙂 I just put one that has been around awhile and has good offers and a good reputation.
Tammy says
Lyft is better than Uber. They train their drivers one on one. They also have a different way in using the rating system. If you don’t like your driver, give them 3 stars, and you will never be matched up with him/her again. Uber doesn’t offer this.