Melanie Sheridan doesn't do much shopping these days without her smartphone. As a work-at-home mother and the creator of the blog "Mel, A Dramatic Mommy," Sheridan says she relies heavily on her phone to organize her household shopping and keep a close eye on her spending.
"I've been on a serious mission to slash our grocery budget," says Sheridan, who lives with her husband and son in San Diego. "Now that I've got an iPhone, I told my husband it will start paying for itself in terms of savings."
Tech-savvy, price-conscious consumers have hundreds of mobile phone applications to choose from. Sheridan says she's shaved about $50 off her family's monthly grocery bill by using a combination of five different smartphone shopping apps. Sometimes the savings come from something as simple as making a list and sticking to it. But she says the real household budget help comes from smartphone apps for comparing prices.
Apps take legwork out of comparing prices
Amazon Price Check is one of Sheridan's go-to apps for retail items because it allows her to see if better prices are available online while she's shopping in a store. She scans item barcodes with her phone's camera or types product names into the app's search bar to compare the store's prices to those offered by Amazon and its merchants.
ShopSavvy, Google Shopper and eBay's RedLaser are comparison-shopping apps that work in similar fashion but show prices charged for a particular item across the Internet and at other local stores.
If you're having trouble finding a store selling what you're looking for, apps such as Goodzer can help you source almost any consumer item, whether it's available at a chain store or local mom-and-pop shop.
The Consumer Reports Mobile Shopper allows you to instantly compare prices from both online merchants and local brick-and-mortar stores, plus it shows you the product reviews and insights the magazine is known for.
Shop around for a shopping app
The Consumer Reports app has an annual fee, $4.99 a year, while the others mentioned so far are all free. Often, you won't have to open your wallet for a great app that will save you money.
"When it comes to apps, the adage that you get what you pay for is really irrelevant as a litmus test for consumers to decide if they want to install an app," says Ryan Ruud, a digital media expert in Minneapolis who calls Target's free shopping app his "lifeline."
Ruud says plenty of great free smartphone shopping apps are available, often supported by advertising or provided by a particular store hoping you'll shop there. But understand that while a retailer's branded app may offer the latest deals and list-making features, it likely won't tell you if a competitor has a better price. So it's worth shopping around for the right app before you start doing the real shopping around.
To find a quality app, Ruud advises consumers to look at the reviews in an app store. If an app has several hundred reviews or more and the ratings are high, he says it's probably good. Likewise, regular updates for minor fixes are a good sign the app's maker offers ongoing support. If you pick the wrong app, you can always delete it and find another.
Shopping and talking?
Siri, Apple's voice-recognition tool, has been something of a sensation since it was introduced for iPhone last year. Now a number of popular shopping apps advertise the possibility of speaking to your smartphone instead of typing in a product or scanning a barcode to do a price check. Unfortunately, the more cutting-edge you are, the more bugs you're likely to encounter. Voice-controlled shopping apps -- available for both iPhone and Android platforms -- are still in their infancy, with kinks still to be worked out.
Craig Agranoff, a technology reporter and co-founder of Grip'd, a Boca Raton, Fla., company that develops iPhone and iPad apps, says he's not quite sure Siri is a useful mobile shopping tool just yet.
"Voice for product searching seems to be a bit far off for now since you're really hoping that the operating system recognizes what you said properly," says Agranoff. If the voice app doesn't understand you, you'll be back to manually entering product information or scanning the barcode.
But Agranoff points out that the speed of innovation in the mobile-app space is intense, so better voice recognition is coming.
Caution on privacy
While free apps can certainly help you simplify your shopping and save, they also raise some serious questions about consumer privacy, says Aaron Messing, a lawyer who specializes in information privacy issues at OlenderFeldman in Union, N.J.
"If you have a smartphone, it knows everything about you," he says. "Consumers should understand what types of data they will be sharing when they use a particular app."
Read the terms of service before installing any app. Messing says you also need to ask: Will this app have access to my location, pictures, contact book, and voice or text communications? If so, when will it collect that information, and how will the app use it?
Even people who are extremely cautious about their privacy may decide the benefits of smartphone shopping apps are worth giving up some personal information for, he says. All experts stress that whether a shopping app is free or costs you something, it will track your shopping habits because that's often how customized deals are targeted to specific consumers.
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Petrol costs: Greening may force retailers to pass on price cuts - BBC News
Transport Secretary Justine Greening has said she will consider legislation to force petrol retailers to pass on cuts in the wholesale price of fuel.
The Department for Transport says pump prices paid by motorists have fallen by just 7p despite a 10p fall in wholesale prices since April.
Ms Greening told the BBC she would consider taking further action to ensure motorists "get a better deal".
But petrol retailers said her remarks showed a "lack of understanding".
Petrol prices have fallen back since hitting record levels in March, when unleaded rose above £1.40 a litre.
'Blurred world'The AA said wholesale costs across northern Europe had dropped more than 16% during May, but petrol retailers had been slow to pass this on to motorists.
Its president, Edmund King, welcomed Ms Greening's comments, saying: "Over the past seven years we have asked governments to act against the blurred world of UK pump prices, which every driver knows shoot up like a rocket and fall like a feather."
A Department for Transport source told the BBC the industry would have a matter of weeks to come up with a voluntary code of conduct to ensure wholesale falls were passed on within a fortnight to the motorist.
But if a scheme could not be agreed, he indicated the government would look at legislation, although the source was unable to say how long that might take.
Ms Greening told the BBC she wanted a voluntary scheme to be agreed.
She said: "That's what we're going to look at first, but if that doesn't work we will look at some of the things other countries have done like Germany, Austria and Denmark, who have taken more mandatory action in this area.
"I'm really determined that motorists get a better deal."
VAT callShadow transport secretary Maria Eagle said: "Petrol stations should be lowering their prices when wholesale costs of fuel fall, and it is unacceptable if they are refusing to do so, especially when they are quick to pass on any increase.
"Ministers must also accept their share of responsibility for eye-wateringly high prices at the pumps thanks to their decision to hike VAT on fuel."
She added: "Ministers should temporarily restore the lower rate of VAT to fuel to give much-needed relief to households feeling the squeeze, as well as acting to ensure price cuts are fully passed on to motorists."
Brian Madderson, chairman of the Retail Motor Industry Federation's petrol division, said: "Suggestions that the falling price of oil and wholesale price movements on the continent should dictate further pump price cuts across the UK by independent forecourt operators is damaging to this struggling sector and shows lack of any real understanding of fuel price mechanisms."
A European stress test for Australia's banks - Business Spectator
So, Australian Prudential Regulation Authority chairman John Laker believes Australian banks could survive ‘’a period of months’’ without access to global markets if global funding markets freeze as a result of the turmoil in Europe. That’s not exactly reassuring.
In fact the major banks themselves believe they are holding sufficient liquidity, have termed out their wholesale borrowings sufficiently and have displaced sufficient wholesale debt with customer deposits to survive quite a lot longer than that.
Laker’s comments during his regular appearance before the Senate Economics committee, however, do point to renewed concern within the banking regulator about the potential for another flashpoint in the ongoing instability within the global financial system since the initial crisis erupted in 2007, what Laker described as a ‘’roller coaster ride’’ in financial markets, which was again on a downwards swing after the Greek and French elections and the banking crisis emerging within Spain.
Laker’s checklist for the Australian bank’s prudential health has a number of ticks.
They are solidly profitable; they are holding historically high (indeed very high) levels of (high quality) capital; the major banks have only ‘’very limited’’ exposures to the euro area countries under the most strain; the larger banks have lengthened the maturities of their wholesale funding and they are holding a lot of liquidity. The majors have also established a market for covered bonds and retain significant headroom to issue more and have access to repo transactions with the Reserve Bank if necessary.
Despite all that, Laker believes that any break-up of the euro area or a European sovereign or banking default would create market turmoil and would impact on the major banks because of their continuing, albeit reduced, exposure to global funding markets.
He’s less concerned about domestic threats, saying the prospect was for near-trend growth in the Australian economy in 2012 and 2013, the terms of trade remained high, inflation and unemployment low and the fiscal position strong.
That’s true of the economy overall, although the recent spate of company collapses, significant and continuing job losses, the depth of the anxiety and risk-aversion among consumers and sliding house prices might be emerging issues of concern.
The majors showed in 2008 that, with some assistance from the federal government in the form of the funding guarantees (which they paid for), they were able to weather that storm. Today they are in far stronger shape to cope with a reprise of that seizure in global markets after the Lehman Bros collapse.
The Australian corporate sector generally, with some exceptions, is also in better shape. It has less debt, particularly short-term debt, and more liquidity. Historically the biggest threat to the banks has been their commercial property exposures, but they have reduced their lending to that sector, which has itself reduced its gearing.
If house prices were to continue to slide and unemployment were to escalate as the non-resource economies continue to splutter, however, that might cause the banks some issues, although it would take very large spikes in both to create a material threat.
Earlier this year an IMF working paper looked at the Australian majors through a novel lens, asking what would happen if the Irish experience of an unemployment rate of 13.6 per cent and a near halving of house prices from their pre-crisis peaks were to occur here. They concluded that the majors’ tier one capital ratios would fall by only 1.5 percentage points and remain above the regulatory minimum.
The only scenario where the majors would need to raise new capital would be if their peak corporate loan loss experience of the original crisis –about six per cent of their corporate loan books – were to be repeated in tandem with that surge in unemployment and crash in house prices.
Earlier this month an IMF team arrived in Australia to undertake a rather more formal stress-testing of the majors, so there’ll be another check on the battle-readiness of the system.
Laker did point to another potential source of risk. With minimal growth in demand for credit and the deposit wars maintaining pressure on their margins, the banks’ earnings growth has flattened and their returns on equity are subsiding. There is some potential that a bank or banks might succumb to pressure from the market to chase higher earnings by taking on more risk.
The way Laker put it was that ‘’in this environment strategic ambitions will be crucial in determining how ADIs (authorised deposit-taking institutions) maintain their financial strength and profitability in a durable way and these discussions are a key topic in APRA’s regular discussion with boards and senior management.’’
APRA is known to have, among other issues, let the banks know it would be concerned if, for instance, they were to relax their loan-to-valuation ratios to try to drive more housing loan volumes.
It showed itself to be a vigilant and proactive banking regulator ahead of and during the financial crisis. One assumes it wants to maintain that reputation which, along with the actual resilience of the banks, may yet be tested again if the European authorities can’t devise or agree on a formula for stabilising the eurozone and averting the threat of a destructive fracturing of the eurozone, with banking and sovereign debt defaults, that would give the global financial system an even bigger shake than it experienced in 2008.
Shopping Calendar Gets a School Day - New York Times
The magazine, Teen Vogue, is ready to begin promoting Aug. 11 as a national day for back-to-school shopping. Back-to-School Saturday will offer young shoppers — and the parents who often pay the bills — sales, free samples and events in stores and malls.
Teen Vogue has two dozen advertisers taking part, all of them reliant on the back-to-school season for revenue. The participants will include Aéropostale, American Eagle Outfitters, Express, Guess, H&M, Maybelline New York, Pacific Sunwear of California, Quiksilver, Staples and Vans. Four brands sold by Procter & Gamble, the nation’s largest advertiser, will be involved: Cover Girl, Olay, Pantene and Tampax.
Back-to-School Saturday will be promoted in the typically enthusiastic Teen Vogue tone of voice. For instance, ads and posters will exhort, “Get ready, get set, get shopping!” And social media will, of course, play a big role; Teen Vogue has already called dibs on a hashtag, #btss.
“We’re trying to create a moment of imagination and motivation,” said Jason Wagenheim, vice president and publisher of Teen Vogue, part of the Condé Nast Publications division of Advance Publications. “We saw it as a real opportunity, because for our girls, back-to-school is as important as” the Christmas shopping season, he added.
Mr. Wagenheim acknowledged that the back-to-school shopping period “is a very random 8 to 12 weeks that starts early in the South and later in the North.” But research suggested that shopping for school supplies, clothing and other merchandise “seems to peak in the second and third week of August,” he said, so the Aug. 11 date was selected as one that could be turned into “a galvanizing moment.”
Alison Corcoran, senior vice president for retail marketing at Staples, echoed Mr. Wagenheim.
Although “the season starts in June in some markets and goes all the way to the third week of September in Manhattan,” Ms. Corcoran said that designating Aug. 11 as a special occasion “is putting a stake in the ground, saying, ‘Here’s a day you can rally around.’ ”
And “for value-conscious parents,” said Ms. Corcoran, who described herself as “a mom of four,” it is “great to know there’s a day with the best of the best deals.”
As part of Back-to-School Saturday, she added, Staples will promote, among other offers, its annual Back to School Savings Pass, which costs $10 and offers 15 percent off “all your school supplies for the rest of the season.”
Mr. Wagenheim said he was not daunted by how chockablock the shopping calendar already is with days intended to stand out from the everyday. “Kids are looking for something to do,” he said, “and back-to-school is important to them.”
And “we look to our big sisters from Vogue,” Mr. Wagenheim said, who introduced in 2009 a national shopping event called Fashion’s Night Out. The Vogue initiative has grown larger each year, expanding internationally, and this year is Sept. 6.
Consumers are becoming “increasingly interested in event-based shopping,” said Gary H. Schoenfeld, chief executive at Pacific Sunwear, who recalled how he was “up all night on Black Friday in three or four of our stores, and customers were having a blast.”
“Three o’clock in the morning felt like 8 o’clock at night, as people were with friends and having a great time shopping,” Mr. Schoenfeld said. “The idea of Teen Vogue trying to introduce something like that for back-to-school is a fun idea; why not be a part of it?”
Deborah Marquardt, vice president for media and integrated marketing at Maybelline New York, part of the L’Oréal USA division of L’Oréal, said that for Teen Vogue’s target generation, “shopping is like a sport.”
Back-to-School Saturday represents an “opportunity to get out in front of this key audience,” she added, in a relevant way that “gives shape and focus to something that’s already existed, elevating it, event-izing it and celebrating it.”
“If it doesn’t provide anything of value,” Ms. Marquardt said, consumers will not respond. “But they’re going to get samples, and they’re going to get offers, and there’ll be a fashion show at the Grove,” she added, referring to a mall in Los Angeles, “where 10-to-15,000 are expected.”
Teen Vogue offered advertisers a chance to participate in Back-to-School Saturday if they agreed to do more business with the magazine, in some combination of print and/or digital spending.
For its part, Teen Vogue is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on the initiative, an amount similar to what the magazine has spent on previous efforts like Teen Vogue Fashion University.
Mr. Wagenheim said, “Our long-term hope is that it becomes part of the retail calendar, like Black Friday.”
The August issue of the magazine, on sale on July 3, will have a back-to-school theme, and there will be additional content on teenvogue.com. There are plans for an iPhone app, called Teen Vogue Insider, timed for Back-to-School Saturday.
Shopping around for a bank account - BBC News
Following a speech last week by the future banking regulator, Andrew Bailey, there has been speculation about the possible end of free-in-credit current accounts.
Most people have got used to not having to pay for their current account, unless they go overdrawn. The UK is unique in Europe in enjoying free banking so its demise would cause quite a stir.
One of the features of the current account market is that customers tend to be very loyal. Only about 4% to 8% of customers switch their current account each year, depending upon which estimate you read.
But are they paying for such loyalty? It is quite possible that by changing their current accounts, they could get a better deal elsewhere.
It is also likely that switching would increase dramatically if free-in-credit current accounts disappeared because the imposition of monthly charges would undoubtedly spur many to look for possible alternatives.
In essence, there are four types of current account available.
Basic bank accounts
These do not offer overdrafts. If they have a debit card it tends to have limited facilities.
They can be opened without undergoing any credit check and are offered by the providers as part of the government's strategy for financial inclusion because they enable those who cannot get a full service current account to access banking facilities.
They do not incur a monthly fee. There are 20 basic bank accounts available.
Free-in-credit current accounts
These are full-service bank accounts that are free to use for those that remain in credit. There are 55 free-in-credit current accounts available.
Student current accounts
These are broadly similar to free-in-credit current accounts but tend to offer interest free overdrafts and other goodies to attract students who, the providers hope, will remain long-term customers.
There are 28 student current accounts available.
Packaged current accounts
These are full service current accounts that charge a monthly fee which typically range from about £8 up to £25, although some premier accounts charge as much as £40.
In exchange for the charge, a variety of incentives such as travel insurance, mobile phone insurance and motor breakdown assistance policies are provided.
There are 65 packaged current accounts available.
There are also a number of current accounts denominated in foreign currencies which can be useful for those who have foreign income and expenditure.
ProvidersCurrent accounts tend to be dominated by the banks but there are five building societies that offer current accounts.
There are also a number of foreign banks that offer them such as ICICI, Punjab National Bank and the State Bank of India. Tesco has signalled its intention to launch a current account in the not-too-distant future.
When looking for a new current account, there are a few key points to consider.
“Start Quote
End QuoteA current account does not have to be for life and there are significant safeguards being put in place to make switching a relatively seamless process”
Firstly it depends upon how the account will be used, because the best account will vary from person to person.
Those who never use an overdraft should opt for an account that pays interest on credit balances. Some 63% of current accounts no longer pay interest.
Examples include Halifax's Reward Current Account, which pays £5 (net of basic rate tax) every month that at least £1,000 is paid in. Santander's 123 Current Account charges £2 a month but pays interest of 1% on balances over £1,000, 2% on the entire balance if the balance is over £2,000, or 3% on the entire balance if it is over £3,000 up to a maximum balance of £20,000. It also pays cash back on council tax, utility and communications bills.
Somebody more likely to go overdrawn should concentrate on the overdraft costs. There are a myriad of different overdraft tariffs in the market and this complexity makes overdraft comparisons very difficult.
The size and frequency of overdraft usage and the number and size of transactions can all affect the overall cost. It is also worth noting that the availability of overdrafts is subject to the credit status of the applicant.
Some current accounts offer an ongoing interest-free overdraft. The highest interest free overdraft from a free-in-credit current account is £500 from Citibank's Plus Current Account but customers must pay at least £1,800 into the account every month otherwise there is an £8 monthly fee. By paying less than £1,250, the interest free overdraft is removed.
It is worth noting that interest-free overdrafts are generally more prevalent among packaged current accounts.
Online bankingCustomers should also consider whether they want branch access or would accept doing all their banking online. They should check that the account permits them to operate it as they wish.
Some accounts insist on paying in a minimum monthly amount every month - typically £500, £750, £1,000 or £1,500. This is to ensure it is used as a primary current account.
Failing to pay in the required monthly amount with one of these accounts would probably lead to a benefit or incentive being reduced or removed, or a financial penalty being levied.
Anyone contemplating a packaged current account should make sure they want and need the various incentives and, if so, that they are suitable for their circumstances and represent value for the monthly fee being charged.
Some providers restrict certain other products to their current account customers. Anyone wanting an HSBC credit card or unsecured loan can only get it if they have an HSBC current account. NatWest and RBS have a similar restriction.
Some providers offer special mortgage deals to their current account customers, but do bear in mind that just because a mortgage is a "special" deal, it does not necessarily mean that it cannot be beaten elsewhere.
Enhanced savings, unsecured loan and credit card deals are similarly in evidence.
There is no doubt that providers want you as a current account customer, provided of course that you use it as your main current account.
They regard it as the key way to build a relationship with the customer and it enables them to target customers with other products that are appropriate for their circumstances.
Many providers want to become a one-stop shop for all their customers' financial needs, and the current account is the preferred avenue by which to deepen such relationships.
A current account does not have to be for life and there are significant safeguards being put in place to make switching a relatively seamless process. It is worth taking the time to see if you can get a better deal and it might save you a lot of money.
The opinions expressed are those of the author and are not held by the BBC unless specifically stated. The material is for general information only and does not constitute investment, tax, legal or other form of advice. You should not rely on this information to make (or refrain from making) any decisions. Links to external sites are for information only and do not constitute endorsement. Always obtain independent professional advice for your own particular situation.
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