Do you love online shopping? Managing your money and saving on purchases are an important part of the online experience. The right savings, security and financial management are just an app away: Here are the best apps to download to improve your internet shopping – and help you save!
LastPass Password Manager
LastPass is a password manager, and if you don't already have one, you really need one of these apps while you shop around online. A password manager collects your account information and passwords, then automatically logs you into accounts when necessary. This can affect subscriptions, credit cards, online payment accounts, and much more.
Everything is protected under a master password, which is the only one you need to remember. Apps like LastPass can also automatically generally top-strength passwords when you create a new account, so you get as much protection as possible. It's a great way to improve your security, and keep you from forgetting all the random passwords you need when shopping online.
Surfshark VPN
A VPN (virtual private network) provides secure, private internet use no matter what you're doing, but there are particular benefits when using a VPN while you are shopping to save money. A VPN like Surfshark essentially blocks sites from following you, or installing cookies, or monitoring what you do, etc. First, this keeps ads from "stalking" you around the internet once you viewed a product once, which can be very annoying. Second, it can help you save money in certain buying circumstances, such as buying plane tickets.
Most air travel ticket sellers online will keep a record of your visit and browsing history so that they know when you return to review prices. If you've visited the site recently to look at tickets, when you return the site will usually boost prices higher to create a false sense of urgency – and make more money off your purchase. Not cool! A VPN can keep this from happening by blocking those tracking measures that sites use.
Cosign
Do you really, really like shopping and search for items online? Do you frequently post new products online on social sites like Instagram or Pinterest? Then you should definitely download Cosign and give it a try. Essentially, Cosign adds a feature to the photos that you post that will allow viewers to click on them to purchase that particular product – or follow the creator, etc. When you tag your products in this way, you can reap cash rewards when people use the tool, which in turn allows you to save up money to make these purchases.
Trivago
If you travel a lot and like to buy and book online, then Trivago is here to help. There are a lot of comparison apps out there, but Trivago is easily one of the best, allowing you to quickly compare results from across more than 180 booking sites. You can also dig deep in destinations, seeing where they are on the map and reading guest reviews to see what other people thought. If you want to get even more specific, you can apply a variety of filters to results from larger cities to quickly find what you need.
Myibidder
Shopping on eBay can be a fun and rewarding experience, but it can also be very frustrating, especially when there's a lot of competition over an item. Getting outbid so quickly that you don't even have a chance to get the item that you want can be a very frustrating experience for anyone. Myibidder tries to make that experience better for frequent eBay users. It allows you to quickly manage and track your auctions while enabling "sniping" features that will input a higher bid at the last minute for the items that you really, really want. For big eBay fans, an app like this is highly recommended.
Swagbucks Mobile
For many, online browsing is more of a luxury experience: Smart budgeting means you can't just purchase everything you want, but you can enjoy searching for it and reading up on it. Swagbucks is a way to also save up extra cash to those special online purchases and treat yourself. Enable the app, and start shopping, watching product videos, and filling out surveys (there are even rewards for playing games and shopping at local locations). Swagbucks will then start rewarding you with gift cards that you can use to purchase products that you've had your eye on. Everyone wins!
Raise
Gift cards are a great way to save up money to spend on a particular online store, rewarding yourself while also putting a limit on how much you are allowing yourself to spend on online shopping. You can also just give them away as presents! Raise makes this a particularly efficient process by allowing you to find discounts on gift cards from...well, there's an unbelievable number online stores that offer discounted gift cards here, including Best Buy, iTunes, Sears, GameStop, Target, Adidas, Kohl's, Starbucks, Hotels.com and so many more.
Mint
There are a lot of budgeting and personal finance apps out there, and many of them are very good. However, we're going to draw special attention to Mint, one of the friendliest and most competitive personal finance apps around. You can create budgets, track your spending, set goals, and learn all kinds of things about various investment and finance questions.
You can also link accounts from most major banks and financial institutions, so Mint can automatically update with the latest information when your accounts change. It's a great way to keep an eye on your money, save, and gather your bills in one place for easy reference.
Honey
Forget searching for coupons online for your purchases. Honey will take care of all that work for you. Add it to your browser (it works with the immensely popular Chrome browser), and it will start automatically searching for deals and coupons – basically, it keeps track of all the promo codes online that are functional. When you make an online purchase and reach that promo code field to fill in, you simply click on it and Honey will automatically apply any usable promo code to make sure you save. Don't buy online without it!
Surfshark and LastPass are both great security tools if you do shopping online. Especially if you’re on public wi-fi it’s easy for hackers to spy on your data, VPN protects against that. One setback is that it does slow down the connection speed a bit, but this you gotta answer yourself, better safe or sorry.