By Features Editor
Congratulations, on making it back to school! You will now be completely broke until winter break. This is how just how it goes, but don’t fret, just grab your trusty smart phone and behold the wondrous world of money saving apps that’ll help you keep a little cash in your pocket and a little pep in your negative-balance step.
Textbooks.com
Like everyone else the first thing you are going to do when you get back to school is drop half a grand on your textbooks. Or is it? Head down to the campus bookstore and let the price comparisons begin. Textbooks.com is an online hub where you can buy, sell, rent, or download your required texts at the dirtiest of dirt-cheap prices. Pop the ISBN of that 50lb Econ tome and watch as the Textbooks.com database cascades discounts before your eyes. As a bonus, Textbooks.com guarantees to buy your book back when you no longer need it, and even provides a return envelope with every book you order. After your last test, slide your book inside, drop it in the mail and wait for a refund. Consider the system beaten!
Dealmap
Dealmap app for iPhones lays a warm blanket of savings over any geographical area. Search your location by way of 10 categories of businesses and 8 types of deals and Dealmap shows you where to get what you need for how much you can spend. This thing is a Rolodex of bargains. Save deals you like, get special offers from businesses in your area, share deals with friends you know could use them directly through Facebook or Twitter. The Dealmap app will give you more valuable guidance than all the academic advisors in the world.
Coupon Sherpa
Coupons aren’t just for old ladies any more. Coupon Sherpa is bringing penny-pinching to the cutting edge with its iPhone app. Even if you’ve never used a coupon in your life, this app is so ridiculously useful, anyone who’s ever been a few bucks short at the register will be a believer in no time. Coupon Sherpa compiles and categorizes hundreds of coupons daily. Search by business type or store name, cross-reference with your location and voila: your iPhone is a magic discount wand. A barcode pops up on your screen, you scan it at the register and the deal is yours. And to think of poor grandma clipping all those coupons out of the circular with her arthritic fingers.
Mixology
Let’s get down to business. Going out to the bar will break you. You will wake up with empty pockets and (hopefully) only a headache to show for it. Bars are fun, but they are much more fun when you don’t have to choose between going to one and eating for the rest of the week. But what’s a co-ed to do? The opposite sex is not interested in sipping skunk beer on your bunk bed. The cocktail connoisseurs at Mixology have created an app that let’s you BYB—bring your own bar—wherever you go. The app contains almost 8,000 drink recipes with 8 categories of drinks (including Jell-O shots and punches for the house partier in you). You can find the closest liquor stores using GPS and GoogleMaps, or even have Mixology randomly create a delicious combo of ingredients as a neat party trick. But wait, the best part is yet to come. Let’s say your lady/fellow wants to go out and drop a bunch of dough because all you’ve got around is a few half bottles and stray mixer. Mixology’s genius stroke is that it allows you to enter whatever ingredients you have on hand and tells you all the possible combinations of cocktails you’ll be able to impress your special guests with. Friends, being broke never fixed you so good.