The Telegraph has posted some of their favourite money saving apps for smartphones (iPhone, Android phone or Blackberry).

As ever, the Apple iPhone dominates the list, and sadly, they’ve failed to give any links to the apps to make it easy to find out more and download them (not even their own app!), so here are some useful links for you:

1. Vouchercloud – iPhone [official site] [iTunes]
2. iXpensIt – iPhone [official site] [iTunes]
3. Find Free Parking – iPhone [official site] [iTunes]
4. Sccope2Save – iPhone [official site] [iTunes]
5. Tip and Split – iPhone [official site] [iTunes]
6. Homebudget with Sync – iPhone [official site] [iTunes]
7. ATM Hunter – iPhone [official site] [iTunes]
8. British Gas Meter Reading – iPhone [official site] [iTunes]
9. 0870 – iPhone [official site] [iTunes]
10. Cookit – Android (no links found)
11. Morethan Car Claim – iPhone [official site] [iTunes]
12. Petrol Prices Pro – iPhone [official site] [iTunes]
13. The Telegraph – iPhone [official site] [iTunes]
14. Shareprice (Live) - iPhone [official site] [iTunes]
15. Tesco Clubcard – iPhone [official site] [iTunes]
16. MobileAllowance – iPhone [official site] [iTunes]
17. Paypal – iPhone [official site] [iTunes]
18. Parker’s Price Checker – iPhone [official site] [iTunes]
19. Toptable Restaurant Finder – iPhone [official site] [iTunes]
20. Ocado – iPhone [official site] [iTunes]

Don’t forget, you can keep up-to-date with the most popular personal finance apps for the iPhone on Money Watch.

photo credit: abundantc

20 Money-Saving Apps For Your Smartphone was originally published at Money Watch a UK personal finance blog. Sign up to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter.

The Walletpoppers have been busy finding the best sites for selling and swapping your unwanted, secondhand stuff – just in time for you to make or save a bit of money this Bank Holiday.

Firstly, they’ve listed the best websites for selling secondhand stuff, which includes Gumtree and Preloved, amongst others.

eBay gets a mention of course, but where the other sites have an advantage is that in some cases they are niche sites, with a more focussed audience for your goods (and therefore they may be more likely to sell than on eBay), and they also do not charge a fee for listing your items, eBay does.

Secondly, they’ve gone on to the best sites for swapping your unwanted items, including Swapshop, Swapit and iSwap.

What better way to spend a wet (or even snowy) Bank Holiday than searching for old stuff to sell up your loft or at the bottom of your wardrobe? Happy hunting!

photo credit: jeffedoe

Websites For Selling & Swapping Your Secondhand Stuff was originally published at Money Watch a UK personal finance blog. Sign up to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter.

Vouchercloud is one of the more impressive and slickest apps I’ve downloaded for my iPhone so far, as it solves a problem I normally find with discount vouchers – finding relevant, valid voucher codes is often a frustrating and time-wasting process.

By offering discounts for a wide range of local retailers and restaurants, Vouchercloud gives you on-the-go access to some great deals, and can even be used even if you’re already sat at a restaurant table.

Finding deals

On start up, the app looks for local offers, and categorises the deals so you can narrow down the choice to just restaurants, casual dining (such as pizza shops), bars & pubs, leisure & entertainment, or one of several other categories, should you wish.

You can also browse the deals in alphabetical order, or see where all the deals are located on a map. In the app settings, you can also specify a radius for how far away from your location you want it to look. Plus, you can search for specific vouchers too – so pretty much all bases covered when it comes to finding the voucher you’re after.

Redeeming vouchers

Once you’ve located a voucher, to redeem it, you need to have registered an account with Vouchercloud. Luckily, the sign up process is pretty simple:

Unfortunately what isn’t made quite so clear is that to redeem some of the better vouchers, you need to subscribe to Vouchercloud, and there are various subscription levels available.

The top subscription level costs £34.99 for a years total access to Vouchercloud, whilst at the other end of the scale you can pay £1.79 for a single use. Personally, I wouldn’t want to hand over £20-£30 for 6 to 12 months worth of vouchers, but it could be worthwhile paying the odd £1.79 for a one-off voucher when the saving from the voucher is going to be more than that:

Not all vouchers require a subscription though, but whether it’s a premium voucher or not, once you’ve logged in, you can go through to redeem the voucher using the code or barcode shown when paying at the retailer/restaurant.

Merchant coverage

One problem with locally-based services such as these is the amount of offers available in smaller locations.

The big cities such London, Birmingham and Manchester are normally well catered for, but come to a small town or city such as Wolverhampton (which isn’t exactly a hive of good eateries, nightlife or shopping), and suddenly the coverage disappears. However, I’ve been very impressed with the merchants on offer through Vouchercloud, finding a variety of deals in the locality for places I’d never have thought would be offering such discounts.

Conclusion

All-in-all, this is a very slick app and it’s clear that a lot of work has gone into the production of the app, and probably more importantly, the network of merchants supplying the discounts. The one drawback is the poor communication of the need for a subscription which simply isn’t clear enough (and it’s impossible to find on the Vouchercloud website too). But it’s a free download, and there’s no obligation to use the premium vouchers, so I’d still recommend you give it a go.

Vouchercloud is available for the iPhone right now, with other platforms likely to follow soon.

Vouchercloud: iPhone Voucher App was originally published at Money Watch a UK personal finance blog. Sign up to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter.

Conspiracy

If you’re not one of those conspiracy theorists who believe that supermarket clubcards are the work of some sort of data devouring devil and are the route of all retailer evil, then chances are you have a Tesco Clubcard lying around somewhere.

If not kept in your purse or wallet, it’s probably to be found along with rolls of Sellotape, random batteries and a few old curtain hoops at the bottom of that “miscellaneous item” drawer that everyone seems to have in their kitchen.

If that’s the case, and you’re a regular shopper at Tesco, then you may be missing out on some decent money-off vouchers every few months, as well as those “scary” targeted deals that the conspiracy theorists above will tell you are the work of witchcraft.

But worry no more.

If you’re an iPhone user, you can now turn it into a Tesco Clubcard that you’ll always have with you by downloading the new Tesco Clubcard app from iTunes.

Providing you have  a Clubcard number starting 634004, which most do, you can enter this into the app and then use it when it’s time to be scanned at the checkout.

Sadly, it doesn’t look like it works on the self-service checkouts and some other scanners, but this is likely to be fixed in time. It also can’t yet be used for petrol, so there are already a few improvements that would make it more useful.

Lacklustre

As an iPhone app, it’s a little lacklustre. It would be good to see some more features, such as being able to check how many points you’ve earned, and eVouchers delivered direct to your phone, but I’m sure these sorts of features will be added in time, as Tesco uncover the value of knowing your every move, as well as every purchase. As it is, it is literally a straight replacement for you plastic card.

The app also works on the iPod Touch, and a similar application should also soon be available for Blackberry and Nokia phones.

Turn Your iPhone Into A Tesco Clubcard was originally published at Money Watch a UK personal finance blog. Sign up to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter.

If you’ve ever watched the bidding on an eBay item and wondered how some people manage to put the highest bid in just a couple of seconds before the auction closes, outbidding everyone else before they have chance to react, chances are they’re using some eBay sniping software.

According to Wikipedia, auction sniping is:

the process of watching a timed online auction (such as on eBay), and placing a winning bid at the last possible moment (often seconds before the end of the auction), giving the other bidders no time to outbid the sniper.

Interestingly, Wikipedia also has some research on why this might be a good idea on certain auctions:

Economic analysis of sniping suggests that it is a rational gain-maximizing (i.e., price-minimizing) strategy for bidders in auctions which fulfill two criteria: 1) the end time is rigidly fixed (such as those on eBay), and 2) it is possible to gain additional information about the “true” value of the item by inspecting previous bids. For example, a novice antiques buyer may prefer to bid in auctions which already have bids placed by more experienced antiques buyers, on the grounds that the items which the experienced buyers are interested in are more likely to be valuable. In this case, more informed buyers may delay bidding until the last minutes of the auction to avoid creating competition for their bids, leading to a lower winning bid. Analysis of actual winning bids on eBay suggests that winning bidders are more likely to have placed a single bid late in the auction, rather than placing multiple incremental bids as the auction progresses.

Anyhow, enough of the economic theory behind it, rather than sitting at your PC waiting for the end of the auction to submit your bid, how can you do a bit of eBay sniping?

eBay Sniping Software

As with many things, the hard work has been taken out of this thanks to some software which can sometimes be found for free, although more sophisticated snipers will probably require software with greater functionality, which often require paying for.

Techradar has a run down of some of the sniping tools available to you, including both desktop and web-based tools, such as Buyertools, Goofbay and Auction Sniper.

As you’re required to hand over your eBay username and password for these tools to place bids on your behalf, it’s worth reading some reviews of each tool before entering your account details.

For more auction sniping tips and tools, head on over to Techradar.

photo credit: Ryan Fanshaw Photography

eBay Sniping Tools was originally published at Money Watch a UK personal finance blog. Sign up to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter.

Bitterwallet has posted a warning for Sky Broadband users to keep an eye on their forthcoming bills following that last couple of months which are likely to have seen an increase in broadband usage.

Apparently, if you exceed your usage allowance twice in a 6 month period, you’ll automatically be upgraded to a more expensive tariff with greater usage limits.

As many parts of the country have been under snow for the past couple of months (an exaggeration, but sometimes the news would make you think that was the case), and because of Christmas holidays, chances are you’ve been at home more than normal, and your broadband usage will probably be at its peak.

If December and January have seen you exceed your usage limit, then you can expect Sky to put you on the higher tariff. Of course, although the move to a higher tariff is automatic, if you stay below your allowance for a couple of months you won’t automatically return to the lower tariff – this has to be done manually, so you’ll have to give them a call.

You can monitor your broadband usage with this tool from Sky, although if you’re a Sky Broadband Connect customer, which is what you get if Sky don’t have their own kit in your phone exchange, and hence pay more than other Sky customers in the first place, the tool won’t work. As an alternative, you could try NetMeter to monitor your usage – this will also come in useful if you’re comparing broadband packages, as it will give you an idea of what download limits you’ll require.

photo credit: DeclanTM

Sky Broadband: Watch Your Usage was originally published at Money Watch a UK personal finance blog. Sign up to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter.

Techradar has been taking an in depth look at free downloads to come up with the best websites for free movies, TV, music and books.

Whilst many internet-savvy readers will probably know of less-than legitimate (OK, blatantly illegal) sources of digital content such as this, there’s more and more sites offering mainstream and legal downloads, all for free:

• Best free eBooks
• Where to download free music legally
• Watch free TV online
• Where to download free movies

The articles mention some sites we’ve flagged up here on Money Watch before, such as Classic Movies Online, where you can watch, yes you guessed it classic (or possibly more accurately “obscure”) films online.

photo credit: Horia Varlan

Best Free Movie, TV, Music & Book Downloads was originally published at Money Watch a UK personal finance blog. Sign up to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter.

We’re approaching 14th February again, and that can mean only one thing in the personal finance blogosphere – lists of cheap Valentine’s Day ideas!

Now, we’re not immune from this here at Money Watch either, check out a previous post featuring more than 1o0 cheap Valentine’s day ideas from last year, and for more ideas, check out these hundreds of ideas for a frugal Valentine’s day.

But this year we’d like to do something a bit different, and spare a thought for all those singles who have to put up with this soppy nonsense each year.

We’d like your ideas for cheap things to do to on Valentine’s day that don’t involve a partner – that’s not to say that they have to be done whilst on your own, though, but they mustn’t be lovey-dovey activities. The more fun and the cheaper the better. It’s a kind of anti-Valentine’s day, if you will.

Let us know your ideas in the comments below.

photo credit: stevefaeembra

Wanted: Cheap Valentine’s Day Ideas (For Singles) was originally published at Money Watch a UK personal finance blog. Sign up to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter.

Cashback site Quidco now gives you the ability to get cashback off products purchased in a limited number of high-street stores.

The new “in-store” service is currently available when making purchases in the following shops/outlets:

• Sportsdirect
• Halfords
• Cineworld
• Little Chef
• The Green King Group
• Austin Reed
• Feather & Black
• Direct Golf
• Dorothy Perkins

As you can see, the list of stores is pretty short at the moment, so it will be interesting to see whether Quidco can get other retailers on board – if they do, then it could become very useful.

To take part in the service, you won’t need to use any special codes in the shops, but you will need to provide Quidco with your debit or credit card details (and remember to use them when buying your items, so that Quidco can match up the transactions with your account, and credit you with the cashback). This may put a few people off, although Quidco do try to reassure about the security issues in doing this:

We never ask you to provide the card expiry date or security code. This means that ‘cardholder not present’ (e.g. internet) transactions cannot be carried out with the data that we hold for you. Of course we do not know your PIN for high street transactions either.

Don’t forget, there are also several credit cards that give you cashback on all of your purchases, and these are worth looking at if you’re confident that you’ll pay off your balance in full every month (there’s little point getting a cashback credit card if you end up paying a load of interest on your credit card balance). You may also be able to get cashback from both Quidco and the credit card to double your saving.

photo credit: Fosforix

Quidco Now Offer “In-store” Cashback was originally published at Money Watch a UK personal finance blog. Sign up to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter.

After several years of resolution failure, this year I have decided on just one New Year’s Resolution: I’m making no resolutions.

That’s right, I’ve conceded defeat already and decided not to make any resolutions, as I’ve never managed to keep them before, so what’s going to be different this year?

Rather than seeing this as a defeatist attitude, I’m actually finding it to be quite refreshing – I’m not fretting over sticking to some rediculous diet, or more relevantly to this blog, tracking my spending meticulously to see where I can save money. I already know that I need to lose weight and save money, these are things that I always need to do, not just because the year has changed from 09 to 1o, and it doesn’t last just for January (or more likely, the first couple of weeks in January).

So this year, I have no resolutions, just an understanding that I need to keep doing the same stuff I’ve always tried to do.

This probably isn’t the best strategy for achieving goals, and if you have your own resolution and want some tips to help you achieve them, have a read of these tips at Monevator.

And here are some ideas for specific, achievable goals you may want to have a go at:

• Build an emergency fund of £1,000.
• Make a will.
• Clear a credit card balance.
• Find the cheapest gas / electricity supplier.
• Freshen-up your CV for the great January job-hunt.
• Start investing in a your company / a personal pension.

Some further reading:

• New Year’s Resolutions Are Bulls****
• Financial New Year’s Resolutions You Can Keep
• How To Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions
• Top 10 Mind Hacks For Making Your Resolutions Stick

photo credit: katerha

My Resolution For 2010 Plus Ideas On Making & Keeping Yours was originally published at Money Watch a UK personal finance blog. Sign up to our RSS feed and follow us on Twitter.