The seven best apps for holiday shopping
These free mobile apps can help you find deals, manage your shopping list or even locate your car in a crowded parking lot.
A Samsung Galaxy S5 is demonstrated at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain.
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Apps can help smart consumers make holiday shopping more manageable. But with so many to choose from, how can you pick the best?
Here鈥檚 a list of our favorite shopping apps. These mobile tools 鈥� which are free to download 鈥斕齝an help you find deals, manage your shopping list or even locate your car in a crowded parking lot.
ShopSavvy
ShopSavvy helps you find the lowest price available on gift items. If you鈥檙e in听a store, use the app to scan a product鈥檚听barcode, and ShopSavvy will locate the best deal locally or online. If the store offers听, show a salesperson your ShopSavvy research to request that lower price.
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CouponCabin
CouponCabin is a coupon and听听app. Members can search for offers听from more than 4,000 stores and brands, and earn up to 10% cash back on online purchases from more than 1,800 stores.
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Retale
Retale is like flipping through a retailer circular without the paper. This location-based app presents听weekly ads, coupons, store locations and more in an easy-to-navigate digital format. Users can also create shopping lists and set alerts for specific products.
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Discount Calculator
Avoid sticker shock at the register with Discount Calculator, an ingenious app that figures the real prices for all of your items, including store discounts and applicable sales taxes. The Discount Calculator apps for Apple and Android听devices are made by different companies, but both have easy-to-use interfaces and positive user reviews.
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Santa鈥檚 Bag
If you want to be organized and stick to your holiday budget, use Santa鈥檚 Bag to combine a shopping list, budget tracker and Christmas countdown clock. The app is only for iOS users, but there鈥檚 a similar app for Android users below.
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Christmas Gift List
Android users can manage their shopping list and budget with a fun, holiday-themed interface using the Christmas Gift List app. It鈥檒l help keep you on track, especially if you鈥檙e like the 42% of respondents from a survey in听听who didn鈥檛 stick to their 2015 holiday budgets. The app also lets you set reminders for things 鈥� for example, to set aside time to wrap your gifts.
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Find My Car
Find My Car can be useful to help figure out where you parked in a gigantic shopping center lot. The app shows the GPS location of your car. The iOS and Android apps are made by different companies, but they share the same name and they work well, reviewers say.
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This article first appeared in 听