‘Tis the season for shopping! If you’re like me, you’re not quite done with your holiday shopping, or maybe you haven’t started. Some people shop late, I’m just throwin’ that out there. So today I want to talk about apps that can save you money and apps that can save you time. 

Let’s start with the time app. There’s a cool tool called Text Expander. It’s a Chrome extension and it costs about $3 a month. Text Expander allows you to enter shortcuts to common phrases, emails, anything, so you can use it anywhere — for email, for text, for Facebook responses. You can use it for anything that you would normally type on your computer, which is so cool. It’s just like your phone, you use a keyword. One of the easiest things, I think, is to do it all in caps. For example, if someone asks where you’re located, instead of typing out your address and directions every time you can just type in the keyword shortcut ADDRESS and Text Expander fills in the information. You can use it for entire paragraphs of information, a two-page resume, all the information for a listing for a house. Now, you do have to program it so that will take a minute but you’ll never have to type that stuff again. If you’re getting commonly asked questions like business hours or location, whatever the question is you can set it up like a shortcut on your phone with Text Expander. It will save you a lot of time. Here’s a video on using Text Expander. 

Now let’s talk about the money saving part. For all you online shoppers, have you heard of an app called Honey? You need it. Honey is a Chrome extension that automatically tells you if you have the best price while shopping online. That way you’ll never spend more than what the item is worth. You know, I’m guilty of going onto Amazon and looking at all the different sellers offering a product and wondering if used is ok or what to do. Honey will tell you will version is the cheapest. Honey will also apply any discount or coupon codes automatically.

Aside from Honey, there are others like Camel Camel Camel on Amazon which allows you to compare current prices with past prices so you can see if it’s trending up or down and if the price is going to change again soon. I also like this list from The Balance of the best money-saving apps. Check it out! 

Save yourself some time and money this holiday season with these great extensions and apps!