Take the Sting Out of Your Expenses in 2016
By Chane Scallan (follow Chane on: @Chane_Scallan)
Living in London doesn’t have to be an eye-wateringly expensive business. These 5 apps will save you heaps of cash across these facets of life in this city.
- Tracking your spending
- Utilities
- Gifts and things
- Transport
- TV and Entertainment
#1 Spending Tracker | FREE
Spending Tracker has one aim: to help you take control of your finances. The simple fact is, by tracking your spending you will be able to stick to a budget and therefore save money.
If you find saving difficult you could always download the Spending Tracker app to help sort out your finances. A user-friendly and intuitive platform, Spending Tracker permits you to enter in your income and your expenses for the month to see how they match up (or don’t match up, depending on how you manage your money at the moment). It then presents the findings in either list, pie chart or bar graph form for you to analyse.
Available for: Android, iPhone
Spending Tracker App
#2 Meter Readings | £0.99
This is a rather more specific money saving app in that it tracks how much electricity, water and gas you’re using at home, before converting it into a rough estimate of how much your monthly utility bills will come to. Once you enter your household energy and water readings, it enables the app to then calculate your costs (and potential savings) in easy-to-visualise graphs. You can enter up to nine meters, compare usage across a specific time range, and get an estimate of how much your next bill will be.
Available for: iPhone
Meter Readings
#3 Wish | FREE
Just like your own personal virtual shopping mall- this is a great app for gifts, tid bits and odds and ends you always need, but need not spend a fortune on. The app seeks out “trending items” of clothing and electronics across the web and secures its users savings of anywhere between 50% and 80% off the retail price. Saving requires a little effort, and this app is here to guide you.
Available for: Android, iPhone
Wish app
#4 Uber Pool | FREE
London’s had Uber since 2012 and journeys are now even cheaper in with the introduction of UberPool: The option to allow passengers to share a ride with a stranger to split the fare. Both passengers have independent pick-up and drop-off points, but the majority of the journey is shared. Riders will be paired with other people making a similar journey, allowing them to subsidise each other’s trip by 25 per cent. This means that when a driver pulls up to collect you, there may already be someone in the car, or that shortly after being picked up, a driver will swing round a corner to pick up another passenger. A sure fire way to get from A to B for a third of the cost of a black cab.
Available for: Android, iPhone
Uber App
#5 ITV Player | £3.99
A TV licence can be an expensive outlay. Even in a London house share.
The ITV Hub is for telly lovers everywhere bringing a world of entertainment straight to your Apple phone or tablet. Download the app and you will save loads on TV and still catch up on your favourite shows. You can even watch shows live. Better still, you can be first to sneak a peak at show premiers. The app is free to download with unlimited usage. For £3.99 you could get the premium version (without the advertisements). All videos can be viewed over 3G/4G or Wi-Fi and you can catch up on shows you’ve missed from ITV, ITV2, ITVBe, ITV3, ITV4 and CITV. You can switch channels while you’re watching and navigate using portrait or landscape view.
Available for: Android, iPhone
ITV Player App
