Top Mobile Apps to Reduce Your Daily Expenses

Since the invention of the telephone, life has been good. I do not need to exaggerate this because I believe you’re also a living witness. Alexander Bell so far in history has been one of the greatest inventors known to man but however if we had stopped where he stopped we won’t be where we are today.

But before we go into how far the mobile phone has gone in terms of development and tech. Let’s quickly talk about the beginning.

How Telephone was Invented

Reading up a little history on Alexander Graham Bell, I discovered the journey was not easy for him just like it’s not easy for today’s man to invent something.  This particular problem was not faced by Alexander Bell alone; it was faced by every other inventor that has passed through time.

Thomas Edison the inventor of the light bulb was no stranger to this likewise Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen the inventor of the x-ray machine. All these people faced hell in not just inventing but also selling their inventions. I mean thank God for the thick skin they had, and their never give up attitude.

If they had stopped just inventing, their inventions will have been left at where it was created, their dorm room or store, dusty and crooked. Let me get on your nerve here. How many of us can really invent something, make sure it’s used in all homes, work hard to market the product to investors, and make sure it sells? It’s only someone with a thick skin that can do that!

There was a time I saw on the internet a private university guy (OK I just searched it on Google now. His name is Ayokunle Adeniran. He was from Covenant University) invent a pressing iron that uses gas. Reading his story then was highly inspirational but where he is today and where is his product?

Did he give up because there was no support in going into full production of these pressing irons? I don’t know. Is he dead? I pray this is not true but I don’t think so. So where is he? No one knows or should I say I really don’t know…

Brief History Of Mobile Phones in Nigeria

Anyways let’s move on. You’ll agree with me that before the mobile phone came to Nigeria, there was the telephone, which we usually call landlines. I hope you still remember what they look like and the way we dial numbers on them. I still remember this vividly. Then I usually put my finger in the number holes and I drag down (smiling as I write this part).

Mobile phones came into Nigeria around 2001 or thereabout through the regime of Former President Olusegun Obasanjo with sim cards costing about 31,000 – 35,000 and with just one major line “MTN”. It was after this period other lines like Econet came in and some other network providers like Glo and the rest.

During that time all you could use your mobile phone to do was to make calls and receive calls, send or receive text messages and probably listen to the radio if your GSM is enabled with radio. Fast forward to today, you can use your mobile phone (android) to do almost anything. So today I want to show you or should I say want to tell you apps that can reduce your day-to-day expenses.

We all know cutting costs is important especially if you want to survive in Nigeria’s economy today. Just in case you’re reading this from other parts of the world, Nigeria just passed through a recession a while back. I hope it’s all good at your place.

Top Mobile Apps that Help You with Daily Expenses

Here are the top mobile apps that help you to save money daily.

1. WhatsApp Messenger

If you have been living in this world and you are just hearing about WhatsApp, I must say with my mouth wide open. Where have you been? According to stats on Google Play, about 1,000,000,000 (one billion) people use the WhatsApp platform to communicate every day. Now guess what? They have added more features to the app.

You can now make audio calls and video calls asides from the normal chatting and sending/receiving of audio/video files. If you ask me, I’ll tell you Mark Zuckerberg was thinking about the minority in Nigeria when he added this feature to the WhatsApp platform. And if you ask me again I’ll tell you Nigerians have been putting these features into use big time.

Personally, I use WhatsApp to cut costs every day. How do I do this? That’s what I’m about to explain to you. WhatsApp Audio notes: There are sometimes I want to pass a long message to someone and calling that person on the phone might make me have to rob a bank. The best thing I just do is send an audio note by recording what I want to say on WhatsApp audio and send it to the person at the receiving end.

WhatsApp Audio call: Did I talk about this earlier? Can’t say! I use the WhatsApp audio call feature when it is extremely important and I need to hear instant replies from the person I’m trying to talk to.

WhatsApp Video call: Tried this once but the receiver didn’t pick but I’ve seen my friends use this WhatsApp feature to talk with their families, especially the ones overseas. This feature is very good features if you have a good reception where you are.

WhatsApp Chat: We all know this feature. We use it every day.

2. Bank Mobile App

It’s no longer news that all Nigerian banks now have their apps on mobile phones. They’ve even gone further to create USSD codes also known as (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) for those who are not mobile app savvy or don’t have an internet-enabled phone. The advantage of this is to save you extra money and time when it comes to dealing with bank transactions.

With this feature on your phone, you don’t need to transport yourself to your bank to do any bank transactions. You can do your transactions anywhere you are with just a click or let me say with just a few clicks. Although, there are still some issues that Nigerian banks overcharge us for using their mobile app and USSD platform. I’ll leave that for you to decide.

3. Adobe Reader Mobile App

If you’ve enjoyed adobe reader on your PC or Desktop computer, you’ll certainly enjoy it on your phone I mean your Android phone. I know it has helped you read e-books from blogs so I know I can’t wow you on that but I can wow you on this.

Guess what?  The money you use in buying books can now be used for other things, I mean channeled to something else because you can download any book you want to read freely on www.dpfdrive.net and read it with the Adobe reader on your phone anytime, anywhere.

One of the reasons why I enjoy this particular app is that I get to use it to read books in traffic and before going to bed. The disadvantage of the adobe reader mobile app is you can’t read anything if you have a flat battery.

4. Opera Mini App

Opera Mini has been an app that has been in existence since the time of Java phones and Symbian phones. So it was no big deal for me to see them on Android phones. For those of us that know opera mini very well, we know it’s an app that has served and is still serving Nigerian youths in terms of saving (managing) their data.

A long time ago I discovered opera mini was able to do this (saving data) because it is not a responsive phone browser. I also discovered that it has other data-saving features like managing the way it displays images when browsing. If you are wondering how this is possible, you can go to your Opera mini settings now and click on data savings.

There you will see images (low quality, medium quality, and high quality). Set it to whatever you want but reducing your image display to low will make this feature work at its maximum best. We all know in Nigeria that our data don’t serve us so doing all these things will at least give us some edge.

 Disadvantage of Using Opera mini

It is certain that everything that has advantages (good side) also has disadvantages (bad side). Opera Mini has its own Achilles heel and that is It can’t display responsive websites or blogs well. Just yesterday I still visited a blog that uses a 100% responsive template and everything was just scattered.

I had to zoom my phone screen before I could get the information I was looking for on that blog. Even TheInfoWorth Blog doesn’t display well because we also use a 100% responsive template. You’ll have noticed this if you visit the blog often. Just in case you’re wondering the popular websites opera mini works well on. It works well on Facebook and Twitter.

Conclusion

There’s a popular saying in Yoruba that “if a man doesn’t know how his friends are making it, he keeps on doing the wrong thing”. Most of the apps I mentioned here were introduced to me by friends when was looking for ways to save money and save data and still do the things I need to do.

Please keep asking, don’t stop knowing because this has helped me a lot. I hope these apps work well for you as they have for me and my friends. Please enjoy them the way I enjoy mine. Thank you! Share this article with someone you feel needs to get this now.