These 3 apps will save you money before, during and after your holiday shopping

For many of us, the most wonderful time of the year is also the priciest.

The gifts, the food, the festive lattes — if you’re not careful, your spending can snowball out of control. (Pun intended.)

Clipping coupons used to be the savvy way to save during the holidays, but these days cutting down your yuletide expenses requires a lot less effort. Take a few seconds to download some free apps and you can potentially shrink your bill when you shop.

Here are three of our favorite apps to help you give like Santa but save like Scrooge.

Find deals before checkout: Capital One Shopping

If the holiday rush stresses you out, you might be inclined to get all of your shopping done in one go. An afternoon surfing on Amazon or wandering around Walmart probably could cross everything off your list, but the convenience comes at a cost.

Big chains don’t always have the best deals, and they’re counting on you to prioritize saving time over saving money.

A free service called Capital One Shopping can help you save both.

When you’re browsing a big site like Amazon, the Capital One Shopping browser extension will instantly price-check the item on other online retailers across the internet. It even takes taxes and shipping costs into account.

Then, when you’re ready to check out, it will automatically try to apply coupon codes to your order that have worked for its other users in the past.

Alternatively, if you decide to brave the crowds and do your shopping in person, you can use the mobile app to quickly check whether an item is available for a better price somewhere else.

Capital One Shopping helped people save over $160 million in the last year. With just a few clicks, you can start saving, too.

Earn rewards after checkout: Fetch

Grocery bills are always higher during the holidays, and with social distancing restrictions in place, you may have to prepare a family feast all on your own. Can’t rely on Mom’s turkey and Grandpa’s fruitcake this year.

So if you aren’t already, it’s time to start using a cash-back rewards app to get a bit of money back every time you shop.

The beauty of the app Fetch is that it’s so simple to use. Just snap a photo of your receipt and you’ll automatically earn rewards points.

Once you’ve collected enough points, you can exchange them for gift cards from your favorite stores and brands, including Apple, Macy’s and T.J. Maxx.

Fetch works at virtually any grocery store, as well as many convenience stores, liquor stores and big-box retailers.

And don’t worry if you’ve been buying most of your groceries online lately due to the pandemic. You can connect Fetch to your email or Amazon account and earn points on all of your digital receipts as well.

Fetch is totally free to use, and it only takes two minutes to sign up.

Earn rewards just for browsing: Shopkick

If you’re planning to do most of your holiday shopping in person this year, an app called Shopkick will earn you rewards points just for browsing. You don’t even need to spend a cent.

You can walk into a store, hunt down one of the products featured on the app and instantly earn rewards points just by scanning the barcode — whether or not you buy it.

Now, you’ll earn more points (they call them “kicks”) by making purchases in-store or online with a connected card, but Shopkick is one of the few apps that lets you earn rewards on a product even if you decide it’s not for you.

Once you’ve collected enough kicks, you can redeem them for gift cards from stores like Target, Walmart and Amazon.

Many Shopkick users find that aside from saving money, the process of scanning barcodes with the app is actually a lot of fun. It’s like a scavenger hunt, where the prize is free gift cards.

Shopkick is free to download, and once it’s installed you can start getting your kicks right away.