Happy holidays! I hope you are getting enough chicken and rest ahead of 2021? The word around town is that this December cannot be detty because it has been soaked in hypo. More people are concerned about maximizing their money and washing their hands. Lol.
A study by UK-based financial educational hub, Buy Shares shows that an average of 48% of global consumers will ‘significantly’ cut their Yuletide holiday spending in 2020 compared to 2019.
Widespread economic uncertainty has characterized most of 2020, a situation that has impacted traditional habits like holiday spending. A comparison between this year’s holiday spending and 2019 shows a great disparity.
Buy Shares
The figure could be higher in Nigeria where the pandemic, a shattered economy and the resulting recession has presented individuals, organisations and indeed families with economic downturns and huge revenue losses.
TechNext understands there’s a need to massively cut down on spending and we have found 5 solutions that can help you spend less and get the best this season.
Honey
This tool is not an app but an extension that can be installed on your browser. When checking out after shopping on e-commerce sites, Honey brings up coupon codes that you could get discounts on your purchases with.
Honey is free and does not sell your data to third parties. To get it, you download and add the extension to your chrome browser here. It is available for Firefox and Opera browsers as well. Once it is set up, you will be prompted to create an account which you may or may not create. You can then start using the extension to find coupon codes and save money.
PricePally
So, there is going to be a lot of buying of foodstuffs and mini-parties this season. This means that we need a place to buy essential stuff at the best prices. PricePally is one of these places.
Pricepally is an online market that can be accessed through a web and mobile app. The platform allows you to buy goods in small quantities but at wholesale prices.
You can read our full review of the platform here to find out all you need to know about it.
Pricepally gives a platform to people who can’t afford a full item on their own so they can come together to buy foodstuffs in bulk. In doing so, the individuals get the item at wholesale prices as against retail prices.
It achieves this by bringing a number of people together to buy small chunks of one big item in a process called pally. You do not have to wait until everyone in your pally group pays for their share, yours is delivered when you pay.
JumiaPay
JumiaPay is Jumia’s payment gateway through which customers can pay for items on its e-commerce platform as well as make other purchases. As this period would witness a high rate of calling people and giving them your wishes, paying for utilities like airtime and data with JumiaPay will ensure you get some cashback.
On the occasions when Jumia partners with other brands during festive seasons like this time, those who pay via the JumiaPay app enjoy discounts that are exclusive to them. An instance is the Jumia Brand Festival that happened earlier in the year which offered discounts to those that paid via JumiaPay.
This can help shave off some cost for you.
Reach
Spending less on expenses requires some amount of planning, and for this, you need a budgeting tool. A very recommendable tool is Reach, a financial app that also has a budgeting feature. With the app, you could create a budget for your holiday spending and personalise a financial plan for each of the expense categories based on your income.
Read our review of the Reach app below
To use Reach, you have to allow it to read your SMS and access your bank alerts so it can track your income and expenses. If you are wary of sharing your bank alerts, you can check out other budgeting apps like iSaveMoney. This alternative also has great budgeting features like creating a monthly budget, calculating income and expense and budget forecasting.
Palm pay
Like JumiaPay, this app also gives users cashback on purchases like airtime purchase. You can get as much as 15% cashback on purchases made on the app. However, it depends on the frequency of your purchases and the amount of airtime you buy. The more you buy, the more your cashback from the app.
You can download the app here and set up your account if you prefer this option to JumiaPay.
…And that rounds up our top 5 software that can help you reduce cost during this season. Happy holidays!
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