Best Apps to Save You Money on Black Friday

Black Friday is only a week away with many stores and specials beginning Thanksgiving evening, and all shoppers want to make sure they are getting the best deal possible. Many stores say items are marked down, but how can we be sure? Luckily, there are apps that are designed to aid consumers on Black Friday and Cyber Monday so they don’t have to do all the work. While looking through sale ads and making your list, consider these apps:

Camel Camel Camel – There are few stores that can even compete, let alone beat Amazon this time of year. With thousands of deals, this online retailer is going to be a main destination for shoppers all across the globe. However, Amazon can be known for changing prices daily, and in the past, have been accused of raising prices before a huge sale to appear cheaper. Camel Camel Camel, a free Amazon price tracker, can help you with this. After entering the item’s URL, the app will show you how the price has fluctuated over time. You can look at the price history, compare the highs and lows, and determine if the “sale” is actually a sale. 

Flipp – Gone are the days when consumers would pick up the latest sale ads from their weekly newspaper. While they were informative, it was not convenient to carry all those around. Using Flipp, a mobile app that collects all of the latest weekly ads from the biggest retailers, you can see them all in one place. In addition, it also provides coupons, and lets you load a deal directly onto your loyalty card at places like CVS, Walgreens, etc.

Santa’s Bag – Many people, myself included, have spent almost all their savings during Black Friday or Cyber Monday, mainly because of a lack of self control and the huge discounts you can receive. However, this does not have to be the case. If you are a constant over-spender, you may want to consider apps like Santa’s Bag. This allows you to stay on budget and make a gift list of how much you want to spend. As you shop, you just add the amount of an item you just purchased and keep a running total. When you reach the cap of your budget, it till let you know how much you have left and what items are still on your list to compare and decide. 

While this time of year is always huge (especially for me), it is important to shop smart. Using these apps will not only save you money, but they will keep you on track for what you are planning on buying and how much you are planning to spend.

"A[?]"OS 11 Glitch

Earlier this week, it was reported the new iPhone iOS 11 update has a glitch that is causing a capital “A” or an exclamation followed by a square box with a question mark inside instead of the letter “i”. It is messing with people’s texts and tweets and are angering Apple users everywhere. It is not only affecting newly purchased phones, but all with the new iOS 11 update from iPhone 6 and up. However, this glitch is only viewable by fellow iPhone users. Those with Androids or other smartphones view this text as normal.

As this glitch has continued over what many view as way too long, people have now been forced to be creative and when typing “i”, they have spelled out “eye” or used the eye emoji. Others have avoided the issue if their autocorrect changes it to an uppercase “I”. Apple has addressed this issue by saying that it will be fixed in a future software update, which has strongly angered longtime Apple users. Instead, they are prompted to go to Settings – General – Keyboard – Text Replacement and add an autocorrect replacement for the lowercase “i” with an uppercase one.

While they did say it would be resolved with a future software update, it has yet to be determined when exactly that will be. Apple users are growing tired of the waiting and with a company as technologically advanced as Apple, you would think they would be faster at resolving this issue. It will be interesting to see just how long this takes or if people will ultimately give up and switch to the technologically better, but far less popular Android.