While it’s easy to fall down the rabbit hole of social media and gaming apps, our smartphones actually give us many beneficial options in terms of mobile apps. There are apps that motivate you to be productive, get active, keep track of your health, and make money easily, and if you haven’t tried them yet, then you’re definitely missing out! The best part of all is that all of these apps are free to use!
- Treecard
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Treecard is an app that motivates you to go outside and walk. For every 10,000 steps you walk, you get to plant a virtual tree on your own little island, which in turn gets planted in real life by an organization called Ecosia. You accumulate points every time you plant trees. You can exchange these points for cool rewards like houseplants shipped right to your door, money vouchers towards products like Apple Watches and iPhones, and even exclusive trips like hiking with a rescue dog or whitewater rafting in Colorado. This app is a great way to better yourself and the Earth at the same time!
- Flora
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Flora is an app intended to keep you off of your phone when you should be concentrating on other, more important tasks. This is a great tool for college students who are easily distracted while doing homework. You set a timer for how long you want to stay focused and you grow a virtual tree for successfully staying off of your phone for that set time. If you exit the app at any point during your focus session, you can risk the death of your tree, and there’s also an option where you can link your Apple Pay/credit card and get charged $5 or more every time you exit the app. You can also set break times for in between focus sessions and allow pauses if you must leave the app for some reason.
- Bearable
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Bearable is a daily mental health tracker app. You can log your moods, emotions, sleep, energy levels, menstrual cycle symptoms, and even nutrition and exercise. You can see weekly reports of your logged information and see common cycles or averages in your data. This a great app to stay in touch with your body and needs, and they will even send you notification reminders to stay on top of your journaling.
- Finch
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Going along with the daily tracker idea, this app is more focused on taking care of a virtual pet bird while completing tasks in real life to take care of yourself. You start by hatching your bird egg, and then picking some basic goals to complete. There are tons of suggested goals, some more simple than others, ranging from surviving the day, drinking water, or taking a shower to performing a short exercise or creating a weekly budget. You always have the option of creating your own goals or doing daily reflections and journal prompts as well. Each completed goal/prompt gives your bird energy points to go on its own virtual adventure, and you help your bird grow up by gaining more energy. Your bird can even become a widget on your homescreen to motivate you to keep up with your goals!
- Upside
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Upside is a really cool app that allows you to earn cash back when you get gas or shop at certain stores. All you have to do is go to a participating store/gas station, link the credit card you’ll be using there, and select ‘claim’ on the cash back offer in the app. Once your transaction goes through and the app receives the information, you’ll get a certain percentage of your money back. It’s really as simple as that! I mostly use this app when I’m getting gas at Circle K, but the offers are also valid at select grocery stores and restaurants as well. Your accumulated cash back amount stays in the app and can be saved up, transferred to your bank account, or used towards gift cards for a large variety of businesses like Target, Starbucks, Amazon, Nike, and Texas Roadhouse.
- Fetch
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Another really cool app that rewards you for spending money is Fetch. This app has no limits in terms of participating stores. The only thing you have to do is save a print-receipt from wherever you shopped at and scan it on the app to earn points. Each scanned receipt is an automatic 25 points, and certain purchases in the “Offers” tab, such as General Mills products or purchases at Casey’s, earn you even more points. The point system works similar to Upside where you can rack up thousands of points in order to earn gift cards to certain places. For example, with 28,000 points, you can get a $25 gift card to places like Ulta, Bath and Body Works, or Amazon. This may sound like a lot, but you can easily earn a couple thousand points on each receipt from grocery trips! If you’re spending the money, why not benefit from it in the long run?
These apps do not get the credit or exposure they deserve, so if you’re looking to improve any aspect of your life, I’m sure some of these will do the trick! I’ve definitely created some healthy habits all thanks to these apps, not only in living but in spending too. I’m sure you’ll find yourself using some of these apps almost daily!