5 Best-In-Class Apps To Save College Students Money  

There are a mind-boggling number of apps on the market that claim to make life easier, but few of them work and even fewer work well. If you had to choose just one app to track your spending, shrink your bar tab or pay back your friends, here are a few “download this, not that” picks that will better save you money in just a few clicks.

Level Money

The most popular budgeting app on the App Store, Mint, tracks your income and spending and gives you a mess of pie charts and graphs that can be hard to make sense of. Level is a much simpler money management app. It does away with the fancy diagrams and gives it to you straight. Your homepage features three bubbles, which show your monthly allowance and how much you have left to spend for the day and month, ensuring you don’t overspend.

Price Per Pint

Hanging out can be a huge money-suck, especially when you’re buying drinks. Instead of relying on Yelp’s dollar signs to tell you the price range of a particular bar, try Price Per Pint instead. With information for over 50 cities, Price Per Pint locates the cheapest drinks near you. Why get a $12 locally-brewed craft beer served to you by a bearded guy wearing a beanie when you could find a similar-looking guy to sell you a $2 PBR?

SideChef

Better yet, save money by eating out less—and that includes takeout. GrubHub and Seamless are undoubtedly a convenient way to get your meals, but they are less than economical. Instead, prepare your own meals with the help of SideChef, an app that takes the intimidation and time suck out of learning how to cook. SideChef not only includes guided videos of how to cook your meals, but it also teaches you techniques like chopping and sets timers for you.

Square Cash

Venmo, PayPal , and Google Wallet can save you money by allowing you to easily split checks and pay friends while avoiding ATM fees. A lesser-known and superior payment app is Square Cash. Headed by Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, Square Cash has all the same functions as its competitors, but in a sleeker package. One simply enters a value, picks a recipient, and that’s it. A huge benefit is that payments are deposited directly into a friend’s bank account almost instantly.

Digit

If you’re reluctant to deal with account minimums and fees associated with opening a savings account with your bank, Digit is the answer. The app, once linked to your bank account, tracks your income and spending patterns and determines a small amount to transfer to a Digit FDIC-insured savings account every few days. Your money won’t earn interest like it would in a normal savings account—but, because interest rates are so low, you won’t miss out on much.