Let’s face it – we’re all out to save a buck whenever we can, right? Especially living this full-time RV lifestyle – income is much less than it used to be when we had a full-time business in our sticks & bricks. But, we were miserable living that lifestyle. It’s not all about the money!! Enjoying our everyday experiences is so much more enjoyable for us, which is why we chose this lifestyle in the first place.
So, for the first time pretty much ever, I’m pinching pennies. And it’s kinda fun!! It’s become a sort of game to me, to see how much money I can accumulate on these apps. Here are a couple of them that are my favorites:
My all time most favorite app is M+Places. With this app, every time you go to a store or even get near stores, you collect points for “checking in” to the stores. Some stores are worth 10 points, some 30 and some 50. You also collect prize boxes worth points, and you can watch ads for extra points. There are also games you can play to collect points, which I found to be mostly kind of dumb and not worth it (but I’m not much of a game player anyways). You can also download the 
“MThoughts” app and collect additional points by answering surveys. These are totally worth it because each survey will net you 1000 or more points. Once you collect a bunch of points, you can trade them in for store gift cards or other prizes. For example, I just traded in 62,500 points on a $25 Walmart Gift Card. Hey, I’ll take $25 worth of free stuff from Walmart any day!!
My second favorite app is one I recently started using called Ibotta. With this app, you pick what items you are purchasing at the grocery store, scan the items and the receipt after you purchase, and Ibotta pays you CASH back. Right now they are having a $10 bonus just for signing up, so go scoop that up while its good!! I’ve only had this app for about a month, and as of right now I have $24 in my account. Just for grocery shopping! Easy peasy!! You can have Ibotta send the cash to your Paypal account, or you can use it to purchase gift cards to major retail stores.
I also use a survey app called “OnGo Surveys”. This app has you do surveys for cash, but you have to qualify for the survey in order to take it. The nice thing about this app is if you don’t qualify for the survey, they will still pay you 10 cents for the time it took you to answer the few qualifying questions. I don’t make a lot of money with this app, because most of the time I don’t qualify for the surveys, but its worth it to try since they pay you a little bit even if you don’t qualify.
Then there are a couple of gig apps that I’ve tried, although with being full-time RV-ers, I find that most of the time we are camping far away from major shopping areas, which is where most of the gigs are located. The two gig apps I have installed are Easy Shift and Gig Walk. They both work about the same – they put up gigs, such as a shelf check in a store. For example, there is a gig up on my Easy Shift app right now to check the on-shelf availability of certain products in a Walgreens store. The gig pays $18 when completed, which is pretty good money! You just have to make sure the gig is at a store close enough to your campground to make it worth traveling there to get it done. Once you accept the gig, you have 24 hours to complete it. These apps would be promising for folks that live near shopping centers or can access them quickly, as most gigs in larger urban areas get snarfed up fairly quickly so they are difficult to get.
So there you have it! My favorite ways to earn or save a few bucks here and there while shopping for what I would normally shop for anyways. Go ahead and give these apps a try! I find they are well worth the small amount of time that I spend on them. Happy earning!!
Nancy Hays
Enjoyed reading some of your blogs. I hope to go ft rv’ng in about a year. My honey and I just bought a Class A, Monaco Diplomat, 2001. In fantastic shape. I am learning, or should I say practicing to drive it. My concerns involve getting rid of my crap. LOL I am a great grandma and have crap my grand kids, and kids have given me throughout the years. I have two footlockers filled with stuff from my youth and my first marriage. I really want to keep those, heaven knows why. I don’t mind getting rid of the furniture, the Noah’s ark ceramic collection, the music boxes, and jewelry boxes with crap in them. Just the thought of going thru it all is exhausting. In a way I’d love to gather up my footlockers, my papers, my paintings(I paint as a hobby) a few things my grandmother gave me, and just leave the rest. I am already going thru my thousand pounds of clothes. Bought new neuwave pots and pans, plus the induction burners (plates) for RV. Also stocked with paper plates and saved a few cups(mentally) I think I am venting right now, as by writing this I have solved two problems I was “worried about”. LOL I want to so do FT. I am on SS and do direct deposit. So does my honey. So as long as we are careful, we can do this. Both of us are researchers and have more knowledge than I can retain on campgrounds, maps, GPS, Cummings transmission and Allison engines than I need to know. Water, electric, solar, clean tanks, gray tanks, and black tanks whirl thru my head. hahahaha
Anyhow, thank you for letting me vent and comment. Maybe someday will meet up with ya on the road.
Julie
Here are a few more apps for you to try:
Checkout 51 – similar to IBOTTA in that you scan your receipt in and check the items on their list that you purchased.
SavingStar – They have a list of items that are on sale and you will get a small portion back via PayPal. They have stores that they work with so you can add your grocery store rewards cards to it and it will automatically get recorded when you use your store rewards card.
EBATES – This is a club that you join. They have deals where if you go through their website to purchase items at certain stores that they have deals with, they will pay you a percentage back. It is good if you are purchasing things on the Internet.
SavingStar – If you are shopper at Walmart – their Savings Catcher app is great. What this app does is let you upload all of your Walmart receipts. After you upload, it will scan all of the stores within a certain distance and if they find the same item you purchased at a cheaper price, they will pay you back the difference. GROUPON / LivingSocial (2 different apps with same type of purpose) Groupon and Living Social are also good apps to have. If you are planning on visiting a certain area, look at Groupon or Living Social for that area and see if they have any deals on discounted tickets for those activities.
Find & Save – With this app you will be notified of deals that they have going that are at stores near you. This would work well if you are staying in an area for a while. The different stores will have deals where they ask for you to purchase $50 to get a percentage back. It can be anywhere from 1-4%. Sometimes the amounts are $100. However, at Costco, when purchasing groceries, we can get to that amount quite rapidly. Once you reach $25 in savings, they will pay you through PayPal or by sending you a check.
Cartwheel – If you shop at Target at all, this is a good app to have. Also, Target has mixed in with all of the regular priced items, clearance items. They are usually on the ends of the aisle nearest the wall or on the inside not off of the main aisle. You can find some really good deals by looking at their clearance items.
Hope that some of these are helpful to you.
Julie
I forgot one of my favorite apps – Shopkick. It is an app that will give you points for walking into certain stores and also give you points for purchases.
Happy saving!