By Adam Maguire
Business Journalist
Whether it's the price of the devices themselves, the phone or broadband bills
that come with them, or even just the cost of powering the things - there's a
lot about tech that is a drain on our wallets.
However there are ways to make your tech work for you as you try to save money.
Many of these things are completely free, too, and even where investment is
required - the return will come fairly quickly.
It may not come close to shielding you from the current wave of price rises -
but it will help to soften the blow.
After all, every small step taken to save means there's more money staying in
your pocket each week.
What are the free tech tools that will help us to save money?
The first thing that people are always told to do when trying to save is to
draw up a budget.
Itâs not sexy, but it's really the only way of knowing where your money is
going, how much you have left to play with after the essentials are covered,
and where you might be able to make savings.
There's nothing wrong with doing that on pen and paper, of course, but it can
get messy very quickly. You might also like to use a spreadsheet on the likes
of Excel, if you're that way inclined, but you need to have a handle on the
software to do that properly.
So a far easier option is to use one of the many budgeting apps that exist for
smartphones and tablets.
They do all of the hard work for you, and they tend to do a better job of
visualising your budget, so you can see what's going on and where you're at, at
a glance. It's also right on your phone, so it's much easier to track and
monitor your spending as it happens.
And some of these apps can even connect to your bank account, if you want them
to, so they can automatically track what you have and what you spent.
It is the case that many budgeting apps require a subscription fee for some of
the features, or they're only free to use for a trial period. But there are
some good, free options out there.
One example is Daily Budget - which is full of great features at no cost.
There is a paid-for upgrade option, but the features it adds are just nice
extras rather than essentials, so you don't need to pay if you don't want to.
So you have your budget done up â whatâs next?
Well now it's about trying to find ways to shave whatever you can off your
spending. And there are lots of apps out there to help you do that.
TooGoodToGo and Olio are two apps that are primarily focused on reducing food
waste, but they can save you money too.
TooGoodToGo lets shops, cafés and restaurants sell surplus - but still
perfectly fine - food at a steep discount.
You can see what's available nearby, place an order and collect it minutes
later.
The catch is that you don't know exactly what you're going to get - but the
shop youâre buying from will help to give you an idea.
This could serve as a way of getting a cheaper meal here and there, or even
some fresh baked goods for the next few days.
Olio, meanwhile, allows people to offer their own surplus items - be it food or
household goods - to people in their neighbourhood.
It means you can share items that you know you won't be able to use.
But you'll also find that a lot of what's offered is also coming from Tesco,
because it partners with the app to make its own surplus-but-in-date food
available to people for free at the end of a day.
When it comes to supermarkets, if you're a member of one of the grocery chains'
loyalty schemes, they all have apps now. Using them makes it easier to ensure
you have whatever coupons or vouchers they're offering on hand when you're at
the till.
There are also apps like Vouchercloud that pull together the various offers and
vouchers being offered by different retailers around the country.
The key to getting the most out of a voucher is to only use them on things
you're already planning to buy. If you go looking for something to buy because
you have a coupon, you're not saving money.
But if you've a purchase planned, it's worth checking these apps to see if
there's a voucher that will help bring down the cost a little bit.
And when you're making a big purchase another app to check out is Pricespy â
which is a price comparison service.
They don't do Irish-specific comparisons anymore, but you can still see the UK
or mainland Europe comparisons, which will generally be available to Irish
consumers too.
What if you're trying to stop yourself from spending money online?
One of the curses of tech is that it has made it far too easy to spend money.
But, again, you can turn it to your advantage to try to reduce that urge.
Of course nothing is going to replace good, old-fashioned self control - but
you can take steps to make the task that bit easier.
For example, most new-ish smartphones have built-in features around 'Screen
Time', which are designed to make it easier for people to limit the amount of
time they spend looking at their phone, or specific apps.
Within that you can set restrictions on the amount of time you can spend on an
app - or put restrictions on the time of day you use it.
So if you know you're prone to a bit of impulse shopping in the evening, you
can set a time block on the shopping apps, or even the internet browser on your
phone or tablet.
That won't completely block you from accessing it â but it will force you to
click past a little reminder in order to get in, and it will regularly remind
you that you've set a limit on using the app.
Think of it as a little nudge encouraging you to do the right thing.
If you want to go a step further you can even set up your phone so that certain
apps disappear from your home screen at certain times of the day, or when
you're in certain locations.
You can do this through the 'focus' setting on an iPhone, for example.
Again, it won't delete the app altogether - it just hides it from view, and you
have to go looking for it if you want to use it.
It's all about trying to make it that little bit more awkward to spend money.
Energy bills are the big concern for many now â can tech help at all there?
Yes, there are a couple of ways you can use tech to cut your bills. Some are
cheap, or even free, and even when you're spending money you should get a
return on investment fairly quickly.
A smart thermostat is a great example of that - it works like a normal
thermostat, triggering your boiler when the temperature in a room falls below a
certain level - but the 'smart' bit can help to make your heating system far
more efficient.
For a start you can control it through your phone or tablet, so it's much
easier to adjust the temperature and set up schedules to suit your needs.
So whatever about the advice of lowering your thermostat by a degree, you could
now adjust it by the day or the hour so you're really only using what you need.
And because it's controlled by your phone you can also set it remotely - you
could even set it up to turn off the heating altogether when no-one is home,
but turn on when you're on the way back, so you won't be coming back to a
freezing house.
The thermostats themselves can cost â¬100-200, depending on the brand, but
it's worth checking with your utility company first. That's because most of the
big providers here offer discounted, or even free smart thermostats to
customers.
Some also offer them as incentives to people switching over which, as we know,
is something people should be doing regularly anyway.
Failing that, you may be eligible for an SEAI grant for heating controls
upgrades, depending on what you currently have - that's up to â¬700 towards
the cost.
And if you want to go whole-hog on this there are systems that will let you add
remote controllers to every radiator in your house, so you can manage the heat
on a room-by-room basis without getting off the couch.
That will cost a lot of money, though, so it's not going to save you money in
the short-term.
Is it just smart heating that can save you money?
No - you can also save money with smart lighting.
For a start, smart lights are generally LEDs, which are the most efficient type
of lighting.
They use about 14% of the energy of the supposedly eco-friendly halogen bulbs
that are generally available in shops.
So if it costs you a bit over â¬18 a year to use an eco-halogen for an average
of three hours a day through the year, an LED will cost you about â¬3.
They also last a lot longer - well over ten years, even if you have them on for
half the day, every day.
But where the smart lights can add to your savings is in the fact that, once
again, they can be controlled from your phone and remotely.
That means you don't have to traipse around the house to make sure the lights
are out - you can just glance at your phone and switch off what you donât
need from your couch.
If you have a smart speaker in the house you can even tell it to turn the
lights on or off, so you can be very lazy while still saving money.
They're also dimmable - even if you donât have a dimmer switch - so you can
use a bit less energy even when they are on.
And they're really easy to set up on a schedule â maybe automating a light so
that it only comes on at sunset, or goes off at midnight. You can even link
them to motion detectors, so they go on or off depending on whether someone is
actually in the room.
A â¬15 saving per year, per bulb may not seem huge - but if you multiply that
across the 10, 15 or maybe more bulbs across a house, it quickly becomes a
â¬100-200 saving from an annual bill.
And there's an added benefit to using them beyond money.
Because as we head into the winter, and the longer nights, they give an extra
bit of peace of mind by letting you turn lights on and off in the house
remotely, so you can make it look like thereâs someone home even if you're
out.
What about the cost?
This is where it gets a bit tricky - because thereâs a huge variety in price
depending on the brand and bulb type; you can also opt for white only bulbs, or
bulbs that can also give you various different colours.
The ones made by the likes of Philips are on the pricier side - but Ikea do a
range that start at â¬8 a bulb, so only a few euro more than an equivalent,
"dumb" bulb.
The advice would be to move over to smart bulbs as your old ones burn out, so
you're not wasting money by throwing out bulbs that are working fine at the
moment.
It's recommended that you also stick with recognisable brands.
There are a lot of cheap options available online but they may not be
particularly well-made, and if you have to replace them after a year or two it
really undermines whatever savings you hope to make.
Anywhere else we can smarten up our homes?
Another potential energy-saver are smart plugs. These work like those old timer
plugs that have a dial on them, only with these you - once again â control
them through your phone.
This means you can set up an on/off schedule â or you can just turn them on
or off through an app, as you need them.
These may be particularly useful for those devices that drain away power when
in standby mode â the so-called electricity vampires, like your TV, microwave
or games console that are said to cost households somewhere in the region of
â¬180-200 a year.
They can be easy to forget about - or maybe the plug is just a little awkward
to get to - but if youâve a few of these you can have them all switch off in
the push of a button.
Some of the fancier smart plugs can even track the amount of energy being drawn
through them, so it might help if you're trying to pinpoint which device is
adding the most to your bill.
RTÃ Technology.
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