Leininger Homestead

Have you ever been between jobs, crashing on someone's couch, and trying to buy groceries with the four-year-old pennies previously cemented to the bottom of the cup-holder in your sister's car?

I have. (Sorry, Haley.)

Then I started to pay more attention to how I was using my time and money at the grocery store.

I've tested and used a lot of apps promising gift-cards, rebates, and coupons, but these seven work the very best.  It's always important to me to be frugal with my money and save up for the times when life is not predictable. Thanks to the cash I earned from these apps, our first grocery shopping trip as a married couple will cost us absolutely nothing.

Can't beat that with a stick.

If you want save some money on groceries, download these apps. Using them to save even a little money every month can help you bounce back from tough situations (without getting into debt.)

1. Ibotta

Ibotta is a grocery rebate app. This means that after you buy certain items and scan them into the app, you get a rebate of anywhere from .25 cents a couple of dollars. You can also earn bigger rebates on some household items like vacuum cleaners, and even at restaurants. The app is very user friendly, and the rebates are high-value.

Ibotta is free to download, and if you can get your friends to join too, than you can earn monthly bonuses for working together! In fact, if you join and redeem a rebate using my referral link, you earn $10 right away, and I earn $5. That gets you half-way to the cash-out minimum of $20.

My favorite part of this app: any-brand rebates of .25 cents for staple items like bread, milk, and veggies. These rebates score me free produce items all of the time. I bought two carrots the other day for .17 cents, and Ibotta gave me a .25 cent rebate on them!

Cons: sometimes you have watch an advertisement before redeeming a rebate on an item.

2. Checkout 51

This grocery rebate app offers excellent and high-value rebates. It's very easy to use. Save offers that you want to a list, go shopping, scan in your receipt, and then pick the offers that you want to redeem. Ibotta and Checkout 51 both require a $20.00 balance on your account before you cash out. Checkout 51 does not have inactivity fees. They offer fewer rebates than Ibotta, but they are for commonly purchased brands. They also have bonuses for shopping at certain stores, like WalMart.

Favorite part of this app: produce rebates!

Cons: A smaller list of rebates than some of the other apps.

3. MobiSave

This grocery rebate app has a lot of any-brand rebates! It's my favorite rebate app. It often offers free items, where users can purchase a bottle of shower gel, or a bottle of juice, and be fully refunded for it.

Not only that, but there's no cashing out because the moment your rebates are approved, they send money to your PayPal, .10 off bread may not sound like much, but .10 off pasta, sauce, chips, milk, eggs, and most of the other stuff you buy? It adds up fast! I've actually made more money with this app than most of my other ones, because they offer so many any-brand rebates for stuff I already buy.

4. WalMart

If you shop at WalMart without using this app, than you are throwing money away. The WalMart app has an amazing savings-catcher feature that compares what you payed for your items to the other sales in town. If you are consistent and scan in all of your receipts, you will catch some savings! you can redeem them in the form of WalMart gift cards!

Cons: You will only catch savings on the brand name items that other stores carry. I buy mostly generic store brands, unless I have rebate or coupon combo that brings it down in price.

5. Shopkick

To earn gift cards with this app, you don't even have to buy anything. Walk into stores to redeem "kicks" and scan items while you are in the store for market research. You can choose from a wide variety of store gift cards. I have already earned a $7 of WalMart gift card with this app, and half the time, I don't even remember to use it when I am in the store.

If you join using my referral link, I get 250 points.

Cons: sometimes in order to earn a lot of points, you have to go to other departments in the store. That can be really exhausting. I normally only redeem points for the departments I'm already shopping in.

6. Krazy Coupon Lady

This app is not like the others. I use this app as an educational tool. KCL posts excellent combos on how to get freebies and moneymakers at different grocery stores. It helps to browse through the feed once and a while and see what kind of overlapping rebates you can get on certain items. She also posts articles on store coupon policies, rewards programs, and apps you can use to save on groceries. It includes formulas on great combinations for each sale, and you can save sales you want to redeem to a list!

7. ReceiptHog 

The ReceiptHog app gives you "coins" when you submit your receipts and answer two quick questions about your shopping experience. You can redeem the coins for money via pay-pal. The more coins you earn before cashing out, the more they are worth. Here's a list of the potential earnings for your reference.
1000 coins = $5
1800 coins =$10
3200 coins = $20
4500 coins = $30
I hope that these apps prove to be as useful for you as they are for me. Just remember that a little bit of planning and discipline can go a long ways when it comes to using these money-saving tools.

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Happy shopping!