Most everybody can think about money issues when they are sitting at home writing checks to pay bills, but it can be more difficult to keep track of your spending when you are out and about. This is unfortunate, since this is when most of us rack up charges where savings are important. With the new popularity of smart phones, I thought this would be a good time to look at some of the ways you can use that phone to help you save money in your everyday life. Since I myself have an iPhone, that's what I know best, but to take advantage of most of these tips you don't need any iPhone specific software. As a matter of fact, most of these could be done just by carrying a small notepad with you wherever you go.
Before I get started, let me say that for now I do most of the notetaking on my iPhone with a really cool free app called EverNote. It lets you take notes by text but you can also add pictures and voice annotations. The notes are saved with the location you were in when you wrote it, and they are all accessible and editable over the web from a browser. There are a few features I'm not really thrilled with though, so if anyone has a better app that they use, please let me know in the comments.
Comparison Shopping
A smartphone can be a great tool when you are trying to compare prices from store to store. Write a note or just take a picture of the item and the price. Note that some stores don't like you taking pictures of their prices, but in this day, nobody is going to stop you from typing on your phone.
If you are looking to save money on your weekly grocery bills, you may be interested in trying Price Booking. This is the process where you keep track of the prices for staples you routinely buy at each of your local markets. You can then learn which place is the best for each item. You can do this with a notebook and pen, but the whole process will probably be a lot easier with your camera phone.
Reduce Impulse Buying
One way to save money and to reduce the amount of clutter in your house is to not buy more stuff in the first place. If you are trying to limit your tendency for impulse purchases, one handy trick is a 30-day list. Anytime you are tempted to buy something not absolutely necessary, write it on the list with the date you added it. Then don't buy anything that hasn't been on the list for 30 days. One extra benefit of this approach is that you can use those 30 days to keep an eye out for sales or discounts for things on your list.
Tracking Spending
If you are trying to get a handle on where your paycheck is going, the best thing to do is to just keep track of every single expenditure for a month or so. An easy way to do this is to save every receipt you get and to just tally them all up at the end of the day, the week or the month. If you find yourself spending money on something where you don't get a receipt, make a quick note in your phone or just take a picture of what you bought to remind yourself later.
If you want to keep even more detailed records, you can use a spreadsheet to not just record your expenses, but record them in categories (food, clothes, movies, etc.). There are a bunch of spreadsheet applications for all of the phones and PDAs. Pick one that works best for you.