Money-Saving Smartphone Apps for Your Road Trip

​As you get ready to embark on this year’s road trip, here’s a quick list of smartphone apps that can help you get organized, find great deals, and save you money along the way.

• Waze (https://www.waze.com) – Whether your trip involves a lot of road travel, or you just want to find a faster way to get to places in your own city, consider Waze. Purchased by Google in 2013, it uses social media input to give real-time updates on traffic situations. So, for example, if there’s a game downtown in the city you’re visiting, as you’re trying to navigate that same area to get to a restaurant, Waze will let you know where the traffic jams are so you can avoid the tangle and the time (and fuel) wasted waiting for game-goers.
• GasBuddy (https://gasbuddy.com) – GasBuddy is another app that takes advantage of the constant updates and interaction of crowdsourcing. People input gas prices and keep an eye out for low prices, so users can quickly and easily search for gas stations nearby and compare prices to ensure the best deal in their area.
• AroundMe (http://www.aroundmeapp.com) – Ever find yourself in an unfamiliar city, and you just want a decent cup of coffee or a place to buy a hairbrush? This application tells you all the points of interest that are located near you. It detects your current location, and lets you select from categories like bars, coffee shops, hospitals, pharmacies, and hotels to filter through the results.
• RoadTrippers (https://roadtrippers.com) – This is a fun travel tool for iPhone and Android. This is how it works: you type in your starting and destination points and it tells you distance, time and estimated gas costs. This is great for day trips – think of a great tour of Napa while staying in San Francisco (or vice versa!). While the distance-finding feature in itself isn’t necessarily groundbreaking, RoadTrippers goes one better and tells you about all the attractions worth seeing along the way, from the obvious to the wonderfully ridiculous.

There are tons of apps to explore, of course, and this is just a glimpse – but these should add some fun and help you plan and save a few dollars. Once we’ve worked together to plan your awesome vacation, give these apps a try and let me know how it goes!

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