With all the technology at our disposal, it's easy to indulge your inner Veruca Salt: If you want it now, you can pretty much always have it—now. And the following shopping apps make it even easier by using your smartphone's camera.
Now you can search for products without having to type their names (how many E's are in Cheetos again?), compare prices, and even take advantage of paper coupons without having to clip and carry them. Just make sure all this convenience doesn't lull you into buying a bunch of stuff you wouldn't otherwise purchase.
SnipSnap can digitize your paper coupons—or you can skip that work and just use coupons other people have entered.
We take digital photos and write electronic mail, so why, in 2013, would you bother with paper coupons like some kind of savings-loving caveman? Use SnipSnap to take a picture of a coupon and it magically becomes digitized—text, barcode and all. Plus, you can use the thousands of coupons other people have clipped into the app, easily found via search, or sorted by topic or store. So even if you don't get the Sunday paper, you'll still find plenty of coupons. Save one, and the app even reminds you to use it before it expires—as well as when you walk into the store in question, which is insanely convenient (once you get past the creepiness of background location tracking).
The list of stores is pretty generous—Babies R Us, Macy's, Petco, Michaels, Kohl's, Sephora, Home Depot, tons of others—and there's a good amount of restaurants too, especially fast food ones. Honestly, wouldn't pulling out your phone at the Burger King counter look so much cooler than digging through your wallet for a little rectangle of paper you shoved in there?
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