4 Apps To Beat Financial Stress These Holidays

It’s that time of year again: the season to be merry and jolly. It’s also that time of year where I feel incredibly stressed with meeting end-of-the-year deadlines at work, hosting holiday celebrations, dealing with family conflict and a huge amount of added financial strain. Don’t get me wrong; I love Christmas, however, It’s fair to say that Christmas is typically one of the most stressful events of the year for me.

The Christmas aftermath includes massive credit card bills that can take months to clear. The expense of buying gifts, the pressure of last minute shopping, and the heightened expectations of family togetherness, all combine to undermine my best intentions……
If you are anything like me, and have a long list of activities and jobs that need to get done, you’ll appreciate a good App to help make the job easier and help you stay on budget……….

A special ‘thank you’ to the geniuses who invented the following 4 Apps, as you’ve made my life so much easier!
These Apps are definitely the pick of the bunch as I’ve found them to be very helpful with Christmas shopping and staying on budget this year:

EVERNOTE

During the stress of the holiday it’s hard to remain organized and remember all you have to do. With the Evernote app, you can not only have reminders of events such as family gatherings and work parties, but also keep track of ideas, photos and to do lists. You are able to take “clips” of ideas for creative snacks or the perfect present, you can even save entire web pages, and save them to your phone or computer.

The great thing about Evernote is, you can sync up all of your devices, so it doesn’t matter where you save it and with recordable voice reminders this app is a wonderful tool in helping you keep you and your family organized this holiday season.

GIFT LIST

This app allows you to track who you are buying gifts for and what you have gotten them.  You can create a budget and see how much you have spent on each person at any time.  The app also lets you check people off your list as you finish with them.

MINT

The last thing you want is to end up over budget and in debt from your holiday spending, which is where Mint comes in.  It connects to your bank account so that it can immediately record your spending and tell you how much you have spent over the last month in different areas.  You can even track cash with this app and it will send you an alert when you get below a certain balance in your account.

Mint by Intuit helps make sure that you don’t spend beyond your means. The app provides a summary of your current expenses and includes spending reports that can be separated into categories, such as entertainment and food, making it easy to create a budget and stick to it.

GOOGLE SHOPPER

Looking to save money on gifts this year? Google Shopper allows users to search the web for product deals directly from your smartphone. Scan a barcode or search for products by word or voice, and Google Shopper will give you information on the cheapest prices in your area. New to Version 2.0, Today’s Offers tells users about an individual deal for discounted goods or services in their area. Nearby Offers provides users with a list of offers in the Eat and Play categories available through nearby businesses.

Which are your favorite Apps?

xoxo