Apple Pay: Kiss your cards goodbye
Over the years, Apple has rolled out a lot of great ideas and some really bad ones (Anyone remember the travesty of Apple Maps?). Apple Pay is definitely one of the better ideas. Currently, it’s available now to American customers and will soon be rolled out to Canadian customers in the fall (October or November).
Apple Pay stores your bank card and credit card information on your Iphone 6/Apple Watch and allows you to pay instore using the touch ID security feature. You can read more about all the security and convenience features on the Apple Pay website for more details.
I don’t know about anyone else but this shit sounds amazing. I love the idea of being able to leave my cards at home. Anything that is able to reduce the amount of crap I have to carry around is A-okay in my books.
While many might have concerns with security, I’ve already trusted ITunes with my financial information (they store your credit card info) for years without any adverse effects. In addition, this technology has already been guinea pigged on the Americans for a year (sorry Americans) so by the time it comes to Canada, most of the kinks will be worked out.
Instacart: Never slog through another grocery store
This cool app has been taking the grocery shopping world by storm. Since its inception in 2012, it has grown its grocery-shopping delivery services to over fifteen cities and is currently worth two billion as a company.
What is Instacart? It can best be described as the Uber of the shopping world. Instacart employs thousands of independent contractors to provide on demand grocery delivery services to people who don’t have the time themselves. Everyone one from the soccer mom , and young urban professionals, to the elderly and infirm have been taking advantage of this new service. The best part? It offers delivery between one and two hours.
Instacart is still growing so is not widely available to all American cities (not available in Canada yet) but I’m not sure that I would use this service on a regular basis. For me, I think I’d rather save the delivery fee and just do the grocery shopping myself. It might be one of those things that really is helpful in special circumstances. For instance, I’m deathly ill and can’t make it to the store for something that will bring the sweet release of coma-like sleep (aka NyQuil). I queue up Instacart and I’m enjoying a drug-induced sickness stupor for the rest of the day.
If you’re not sure what you need for groceries, make sure you shop your pantry and google-fu that can of beans to get recipes and save money.
You can also work for Instacart as a contractor, go to their site and apply as a shopper to make some extra cash!
PostRope: Crowdship and save money
If you’re anything like me, you go internet shopping and spend a lot of time gazing adoringly at junk you can’t buy because it’s not available in Canada, Australia, England, wherever. Or maybe it is available but not for a reasonable price. Never fear because #crowdshipping is here! PostRope is about connecting shoppers with hard to buy items around the world.
More specifically, PostRope give you a chance to create a shopping list of items (Star Wars Death Star Lego kit available at an American Toys R Us for twenty times cheaper, for instance) and publish it on the site. Shoppers will then contact you with their rates to purchase and ship the item. Once you have a few offers, you choose the best one. All the money transactions are handled through Paypal and you check on the shipping status of your delivery through PostRope’s dashboard. Once you get the item, rate the shopper and enjoy your purchase!
Personally, I haven’t tried this yet but I think I’m going to give it a go for Christmas shopping. I’m not sure how prevalent this cool app is but this idea has a lot of potential. There are some other companies out there that also do similar things like RideShip but PostRope appeals to me the most. If you’ve tried one of these crowdshipping companies, let me know. I’m keen to hear about your experience with it.
You can also work with PostRope as a shopper/shipper. Go to their site and learn how to get started! Make some money on the side with your new side hustle!
Inbox Dollars: Make some money while you lounge
This one is a little different than the other cool apps I’ve been talking about. This app is more about making money than it is saving it. PennyHoarder explains it best: “The way that it works is that advertisers pay Inbox Dollars to promote their site to their members. Inbox Dollars, in turn, offers you a part of their profit in exchange for visiting an advertiser’s website or signing up for their offer. Most of the offers are free and it’s a great way to make some extra pocket change online.”
Personally, I’ve never really tried some of the apps/programs out there like SwagBucks or Inbox Dollars but it could be a cool way to earn a little extra cash if you’re laying in front of the television on a Sunday afternoon. Take the extra step and open your computer to do some mindless form-filling while you’re solving murders with the Criminal Minds crew. Better yet, use a form-filler like Roboform and it auto-populates the form fields for you. If you like points programs, check out this other post to find out how to earn rewards without a credit card.
What do you think? Is there something here that you love or hate? Tell me everything. Don’t worry, I’ll wait.
Still waiting….
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