When it comes to saving money, college students need all the
help they can get. There are so many expenses associated with the college
experience—tuition, textbooks, housing, and living expenses—that it’s hard not to
panic about the amount of money being spent at any particular point in a
semester.
For college students with smartphones, I can offer a few
options to help lessen spending. There are a number of apps made for college
students on a budget, with each one specializes in some popular area of
spending. Here are my three favorite (free) money saving apps for smartphone-carrying
college students.
Bigwords
College bookstores are notorious for gouging students on
textbook prices, in some cases charging hundreds of dollars for a few dusty
hand me downs. Savvy students will turn to places like Amazon for cheaper
prices, but there’s one app that offers the cheapest prices on textbooks that
I’ve ever seen. That app is called Bigwords,
and it’s essential for any college student looking to save money on their
textbooks.
Bigwords is essentially a service that tries to optimize
your search for the cheapest deals on textbooks. They do this by searching for
lowest prices on books and shipping costs across a wide spectrum of
booksellers. If you find a textbook on Bigwords, you can rest assured that it’s
probably the cheapest in town.
Evernote
This app is all about prioritizing and organizing a
student’s time. Evernote has widely been
reported as the best organizational app out there, enabling users to save all
sorts of notes and keep track of the most minute scribbles you make throughout
the day. College students can use Evernote to turn their smartphone into a
mega-planner and storage device for class notes, financial records, and simple
daily routines. You can share your plans with your friends, or even store them
on other devices.
The thing that makes this app a cost-cutting service is that
it helps students organize their time,
the most valuable asset in college. With Evernote, college students can
prioritize their time so they can get the most out of a college experience.
Sometimes all it takes is a solid organizational tool to put a student on the
right track.
ZipList
Food is an everyday expense no matter who you are, but it’s
a particularly complicated one for the college student who doesn’t know how to
cook a decent meal without overspending at the grocery store. Enter ZipList, the app meant to help you shop for
groceries and plan budget-friendly meals. The app works wonders for college
students because it’s meant to help the user cook with the groceries they
already have. Simply enter the contents of your kitchen into ZipList and the
app pulls up recipes that you can cook that very second with them. The app also
helps you prioritize a grocery list for future meals.
ZipList can be a great tool for the novice cook, and that’s
good news for college students because they’ll save a ton of money cooking at
home.
Aniya Wells is a freelance blogger whose
primary focus is writing about online
degree programs. She also enjoys investigating trends in other
niches, notably technology, traditional higher education, health, and small
business. Aniya welcomes reader questions and comments at aniyawells@gmail.com.
Thank you Aniya for your excellent guest post.
If reviewing a product, it may have been received free of charge. That will NEVER have a bearing on my recommendations.
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