Money Saving Apps (Flipp)

There are many techniques that will allow you to save money on stretch your food dollars. The we use every week and I get the most questions about is 'comparative shopping' or 'comp shopping'. Simply put 'comp shopping' is taking the various grocery adds from your area and looking for the best deals on items you have on your shopping list and or staples that you can stock your pantry with. Finding a grocery store in your local area that will accept competitors adds is a major money saver. Love them or hate them, Wal-Mart accepts all local competitors grocery ads so we do a lot of our grocery shopping there. In fact, it is pretty safe to say that a large percentage of Americans now have or live in an area in which there is a Wal-Mart. This is not an endorsement for Wal-Mart, just simply the way that it is.

In the past, on every Wednesday we would purchase a bundle of the Dallas/Ft. Worth (DFW) grocery ads from a local beautician for $4.00. The printed ads lasted for a week and we always saved more than the $4.00 it cost us to purchase them so it was a no brainier. Then about 8 months, while standing at the check out, someone mentioned the 'Flipp' shopping app that they had on their smart phone. A quick download of the app, and after adding in a DFW area code, and I had most of the major grocery store chains ads on my smart phone. At the time most of the Mexican markets were missing, but the app has a request feature so that they can add more grocery stores and within 3 weeks the Mexican markets began to appear on the app as well.

As I mentioned, we have been using 'Flipp' for more than 8 months and we no longer have to spend the $4.00 each week to purchase grocery ads for shopping which leaves us with $4.00 more to shop with. I realize that it does not sound like much, but over a years time (52 weeks) that's a savings of $208.00.

Flipp On The Smart Phone

It does a lot of things besides display grocery ads, it also collects circulars for general merchandise, sporting stores, department stores etc… However, our primary focus in this article is saving you money add increasing on your families food budget. I do not usually review or endorse any particular item on this blog, but I believe that they features of this app are of such value to our readers that I felt compelled to write my thoughts on using this smart phone app.

Flipp has a lot of features, one of the best is that when you find an item you want, your simply tap the screen and the app circles the item on the sales circular and adds it to a separate folder called “clippings”. You can then access all your clippings through a specific menu so that when the cashier wants to see the sales price you can show them on your phone without having to scroll through each ad.

You can setup the application to show only your favorite stores, a feature which we use. This will save you from having to look through ads from stores that either are not in your area, or ones in which the grocery store in which you shop will not accept. Once you have all your favorite stores then performing a search for an item will give you results only for the grocery stores you choose. You can of course search all the stores on the app, but the more specific the search, the better the results.

In addition, the app is pretty intuitive or setup to know when a particular grocery ad is expired and will notify you by placing the word 'expired' on any clippings that are out of date. Hitting a button on the right side of the screen brings up a pull down menu that allows you to delete expired and sent items. A very handy feature.

The app is not prefect. Some grocery ads on occasion are slightly blurry. My personal opinion is that it is the grocery store or whoever scans the ads into their respective computer that is at fault and not the app, but I could be wrong. It is a small inconvenience and usually you can figure out what is displayed in the ad, but not always. In addition, under the clippings button you have the option to delete 'expired or sent items.' I am not sure what 'sent' items means. It should mean that you are able to send or share your clippings with another smart phone. I use a Galaxy Note 4 (Android OS) and I do not see a way to send my clipping to another user. The option may be available on the IPhone, but as I do not have an IPhone I am unable to verify this minor issue. This may an added feature for the future and they have simply not implemented it yet, I honestly do not know.

Flipp On The Computer

If you do not have a smart phone, you can also use Flipp on your computer by logging onto their website (www.flipp.com). Simply enter the area code you want to use and you are off an running. It is obviously not portable, and I see no way in which to link or send items from the computer to your smart phone (a future feature that would be nice). The computer makes it easier to see the ads, but the major disadvantage is that there is no print option at this time and about 50% of the time the cashier wants to see the ads, and they have the right to do so. So if you need to show your clippings to the cashier, you need the mobile app.

Conclusion

Just remember that each Wal-Mart is different. Our Canton Wal-Mart takes competitors adds from up to 70 miles away (DFW Metroplex), including all of the Mexican markets. While I current have 25 grocery stores listed in our Flipp app on our smart phone, we probably only use about 8 to 10 on a regular basis. Your store may accept less. In fact, they only have to take local competitors adds, which in our area is Brookshires, and Dollar General, but they amazingly take all corporate grocery ads within about 70 miles as I mentioned earlier.

Flipp is not perfect, but it is pretty darn good and the fact that it is free is even better. In fact, I never pay for apps on my smart phone or tablet, but I would definitely purchase this app if there was a way to share clippings with another phone, or sync the computer with my phone, and or print the clippings from the phone or computer to take to the store.

The bottom line is that if you are not using this tool to help stretch your food dollars, you might as well throw your hard earned cash out of the window. As always, if you have enjoyed this article, please share it with your friends and don't forget to send us a friend request on Facebook and Google+ so that you will not miss out on any of our new articles.