This is a guest post by Jesse Nowlin.
Years ago one had to venture out to the local river to wash their clothing, and everything took forever. Today, thanks to technology, we have much easier solutions, but they often come at a high price. While you can have a washing machine that will tweet you when your clothes are clean, this doesn’t help you if buying such a machine breaks the bank! Here is an essential list of ways modern technology can save you money in your everyday life.
Shopping First off – NEVER go shopping when you’re hungry. Do you send your spouse to the store and forget to give them the shopping list? Maybe you always forget it on the kitchen counter? If you have a smartphone (most do these days), you can use an app to store and sync lists with your significant other/roommate. Here are 3 Apps you can use to keep your lists synced and organized: 1. 2Do – http://www.2doapp.com/
My personal favorite is good for more than just lists- it’s a fully loaded task manager. You can sync with iCloud, MobileMe, Yahoo!, Custom iCal Servers, Dropbox, and Toodledo. The beauty of syncing with Dropbox is that you can have two people sign into the same dropbox account with 2Do and then your lists will be totally synchronized! 2. Things – http://culturedcode.com/things/iphone/
Things is an app that has an interesting approach to keeping track of all your tasks. Supporting wireless syncing with the desktop version on your computer, things allows you to enter in your shopping lists, and know they will be on both your desktop and Smartphone. When heading out to the store you won’t have to worry about finding that receipt your list was hastily scribbled on the back of. It’s in your phone, which is always with you, and you can add to it any time you need. 3. Remember The Milk – http://www.rememberthemilk.com/services/iphone/
The classic, user friendly Remember the Milk has been around for years, pioneering the space of list management. Free to download, they have an online interface where you can log-in from your computer and write your list, and when you head out to the store, grab your phone and you’re ready to go! Grocery Price Comparison PriceGrabber - http://www.pricegrabber.com/
Price Grabber is a website which finds and compares prices on popular products, and enables you to find the product you want for the lowest price around. There are a number of websites similar to this in each country. Here are a few more: http://www.mygrocerydeals.com/ http://www.shopbot.ca/
Finance & Receipt Tracking There are a number of apps out there that wish to be your own personal assistant. Let’s focus just on the money aspect of it. Instead of having to keep track of receipts which realistically will go into one of your grocery bags, never to be seen again, you can take a photo and forget about it. Here are 2 apps that enable you to track your spending and figure out where all your money is going! 1. Shoeboxed – https://app.shoeboxed.com/
Shoeboxed is a company that will store images of your receipts and offers a service to read and input the information from your receipts. Shoeboxed is the service that I know of which works in Israel, but there are others that can store your receipts as well.
2. Lemon - http://lemon.com/ 
Lemon is a receipt and money tracking website with apps for just about all your devices. Lemon differs from the others by being totally automated. The receipts are analyzed by their system after being uploaded and then the text is extracted and organized. This system is for American receipts, and you can still use it to store your receipts and keep track of what you are spending. Phone Services Enough already! Phone bill costs are through the roof! Here’s how you can save some money on your phone bills. Step one; kill your land line. Get rid of that old house phone and replace it with a shiny new VOIP phone. VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) is the technology used to make calls over the Internet. Here are some awesome contenders to take the place of your old school land line. 1. Skype http://www.skype.com/intl/en-us/home
Skype, the largest of all the contenders, was recently purchased by Microsoft for $8.5 Billion (yes, that’s Billion with a B), and is being integrated all over the place. It powers video calls on facebook, TV’s, and just about every platform you can think of. The monthly subscriptions for unlimited calling is where you can really save your money. If you don’t want to rely on your cell-phone or computer always being on, you can buy a dedicated Skype phone (http://www.skype.com/intl/en-us/get-skype/home-phone/cordless-phone/) and use that as your new home phone. Be advised: Skype cannot be used for emergency calling.
2. Ooma - http://www.ooma.com/ 
Another service you could look into, and can be used for emergency calling, is Ooma. This is a slightly more expensive option, seeing as you have to buy the equipment, but I’ve been told that the call quality is impeccable. They were recently ranked #1 in phone service and quality in a customer survey.The system is very advanced, and the units are designed extremely well. Not only that, but once the system is in place, you have unlimited free calling in the United States. 3. Grasshopper – http://grasshopper.com/
Grasshopper is the Entrepreneur’s phone system. Offering toll free numbers, unlimited extensions, call forwarding, and an online interface – all for $10 a month. It’s a great choice if you’re looking for an American office-line. If you’re doing service in the states and want a VOIP office solution, this is for you. Check it out!
Texting: On the topic of phones and how expensive they are, cell phone carriers are ripping us off. You can use Skype on your cell phone to save on minutes as well, but what about texting? In places such as Israel, where you pay for individual text messages, and cannot buy any kind of shared or unlimited texting plans, we end up paying through the nose! But, wait- there is a solution! Actually several of them… This area has been pioneered by blackberry for years with their incredibly popular BBM (Blackberry Messenger) platform. Now there have been many new entries into this area of sending messages via the Internet, most prominently being the largest company in the world, and technology behemoth, Apple Inc. Apple recently launched their iMessage service, which came along with the 5th generation of their iOS mobile operating system. Here are the details on Apple’s and other service’s offerings: 1. BBM (Blackberry Messenger)
If you have a Blackberry with Blackberry service then you have BBM. BBM works on the system of each blackberry having a PIN which when shared connects you to your friend. The messages are sent instantly through the Blackberry network and act like an instant text message. You don’t have to be online all the time to receive, and when you reconnect you will receive any messages you missed while offline. This is different from the standard instant message where you always had to be connected and online for IM’s to work.
2. iMessage - http://www.apple.com/ios/features.html#imessage
iMessage is Apple’s long awaited answer to BBM and the other entries on the market. It works, and it works well. iMessage is only available on Apple devices running iOS 5, but once it’s setup, there’s nothing more for you to do. If the contact you’re texting has an iPhone (or iPad, or iPod Touch) with iOS 5, the text will instantly change into an iMessage and go through the Internet free of charge. If they don’t, then it will be sent as a standard text message. Very simple in the traditional Apple style, iMessage is quick, slick, and easy to use. You can also use iMessage with wifi only devices entering your contacts email address instead of their phone number.
Cross Platform Messengers 3. WhatsApp - http://www.whatsapp.com/
An amazing app that works on iPhones, Android, Blackberry’s, and Nokia’s, it enables you to connect and chat with your friends no matter what smartphone they have! The design is well done, and looks really nice on Android. You have the option of changing your background with any of their themes, or a photo of your own. If you are interested in chatting with a group of your friends, you can do that as well!
4. Touch – http://www.touch.com/
Formerly known as Pingchat, a beautifully designed application that once again serves as a cross platform chat. Not only does it do chat, it is geared around a sharing of experiences with your family and friends. Touch is for you to share your experiences with specific people, similar to how you would share posts with your friends via circles in Google Plus.
5. Kik - http://kik.com/
Kik is an application developed by one of the people who worked on Blackberry’s famous BBM Platform. It is the most robust and fast platform out of all the above applications. It only does chat but it does it better than the rest, and has a superstar team behind it.
Use Less Data When you sign up for a cell-phone you used to be able to purchase unlimited data. Now, thanks to the iphone and other “super-smartphones”, cell-phone companies are having trouble keeping their infrastructure up to date, so they’ve started charging for every bit of data we use. Here’s one tool that’s crucial to fighting back and using less data to avoid going over crazy data charges.
Onavo – http://www.onavo.com/
Onavo is an Israeli Startup that is saving iPhone and Android users money everywhere. It works by running in the background and compressing your data as it is sent and received from your device. I use it on a daily basis and it saves hundreds of megabytes per week.
Other Money Savers Another approach for saving money on every day items, is through the latest purchasing phenomenon that has been going on for the past 2 years: group buying. Groupon got the ball rolling and several clones popped up almost over night. Google has their version called Google Offers, Amazon is building one, and there are a few others. Here are the links for those: Living Social – livingsocial.com Amazon Local – http://local.amazon.com/ Groupon – http://www.groupon.com/ Google Offers – https://www.google.com/offers/
Ordering Online? One last item in our long list of things to do to save money with technology, is a website called The Find, which will simply find the lowest price on the Internet for the item you’re looking for. They have over 320 million products from more than 500,000 stores, and online merchants are currently available through their search engine. Check them out at http://www.thefind.com/ Public Service Announcement
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