Pretty In My Pocket (PRIMP)

There’s an app for everything these days, and as sensible fashion and beauty lovers, we feel obligated to learn everything about those that serve us best in that department. Here are three retail-related apps that have the potential to save you oodles and oodles of cash.

SuperDuper

Everyone loves a good dupe (beauty-speak for identical products), especially when that means you can save heaps of money at the end of the day. One area of the beauty world where price doesn’t always correlate with quality is nail polish, where prices for a single polish can be as much as $50 a pop. And seriously, if Essie and Bourjois polishes were good enough for Princess Kate’s wedding day, drugstore polish is good enough for the rest of us.

Enter new app “SuperDuper”, available on iOS for free, which reveals the best, most accurate dupes for high end polishes. It reveals the best, under $10, “dupes” for luxe designer nail polishes from Chanel, MAC, Christian Louboutin, Dior, NARS, Tom Ford, and YSL. Skeptical at first, we tested SuperDuper’s dupe for Christian Louboutin’s limited edition Scarabée II that comes with a heart-wrenching $50 price tag. The winning dupe? Covergirl’s Teal on Fire, which costs $45 less was an exact match.

We appreciate that the SuperDuper team tests every potential match on nails that take a typical beating and only accept true color and quality matches. You’ll find many more dupes on the app, and with fall officially here, we can’t wait to check out their subs for Tom Ford Plum Noir, the classic Dior Rouge, and the ever-popular Chanel Particuliere.

Pretty In My Pocket (PRIMP)

Let’s say you’re standing in the drugstore aisle, or you’re salivating over the products at Sephora or Ulta. Maybe you’re torn between two different items, or maybe you’re trying to determine if a splurge is worth it. The Pretty In My Pocket app is here to help.

Simple take the product, or products, up for potential purchase and scan their barcode. You’ll instantly see loads of product reviews and even swatches from other app users, which includes some notable beauty bloggers. From there, you can read the pros and cons and determine whether the product is a slam dunk or a womp womp.

You’ll save money on products that would have left you wanting. And hey, that’s money you can spend on products that’ll actually serve you well. We can totally get behind that.

Slice

One of the worst feelings in the world is finally throwing your cash down on an item you’ve been watching, only to check back days or weeks later to see that it went on sale. Insert angry fists shaking at the sky. Or what about those products you buy that get recalled. In those cases, you may not even realize there was a recall, causing you to use either a subpar product and/or lose out on a refund.

The Slice app aims to calm your mind. It creates a protected database of all your receipts and product purchases. First, the app tracks your purchases as they’re shipped to your door, sending you notifications. Most importantly, though, they send you friendly, informative alerts if a recent purchase has undergone a price adjustment or was recalled. The best part is that you don’t have to do anything — the app does the “haggling” with the retailer for you. This, of course, means savings for you, and all without requiring an extra mental energy.

Other things the app does: streamlines returns, frees up your inbox and tracks your spending (we could all use a little bit of this).

By Wendy Rose Gould