The “lemon law” should be to keep track of your spending.
When I first moved into apartment-style living, I was very excited to have my own kitchen where I could cook and not have to eat the same food at the dining hall all the time.
I would go to the supermarket, like Shaw’s or Trader Joe’s, and have a great time buying food.
This led to a very peculiar habit, some might say.
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I began collecting my supermarket receipts. It’s true; I kept them in a little drawer by the bed. My roommate made fun of me for it, and you can too. At the end of the semester, I would calculate the receipt totals. Then, a friend told me there’s an app for that.
Of course there is.
It’s called Lemon.
WHAT IT IS
Lemon Receipts is a free app available for iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone. It was developed by Lemon, Inc., based out of Palo Alto, Calif.
Lemon allows you to see exactly how you spend your money by letting you scan each receipt. In a way, Lemon acts as entire digital wallet on your phone. It’s a perfect way to store receipts without clutter.
I decided to finally download Lemon, and it has definitely helped me learn a lot. I’m living at home now and don’t need to go food shopping, but here the small purchases I made within the past 8 days:
Au Bon Pain
- Chipotle turkey sandwich: $7.29 + tax $0.51 = $7.80
CVS
- Milk chocolate bar: $2.19 + water bottle $ 1.27 = $ 3.46
Starbucks (my weakness)
- Tall pumpkin spice latte: $3.75 + soy $0.60 + tax $0.27 = $ 4.65
- Tall salted caramel mocha: $3.75 + soy $0.60 + tax $0.27 =$ 4.65
Lemon rounds up to a whole number, so my total from these receipts comes to $19.00. I’ve only been using this app for 8 days, but my all-time total is $38.00. Yes, I can tell you that it was all on food.
I wish I were back to grocery shopping (my total for a week of food was less than that!) Although living at home does come with free dinners.
WHY LEMON IS SWEET
- Helps you stay organized. Lemon breaks it down for you: If you click on “Food,” it breaks into subcategories, like “Coffee Shops” or “Fast Food.”
- Saves you from the clutter of paper receipts.
- Easy, clear layout. No trouble finding any feature or past receipt.
- It’s free!
- You learn what you need to stop spending money on.
WHY LEMON IS SOUR
- Remembering to take pictures of your receipts can be difficult.
- If you’re looking for instant lemonade, you won’t find it here. After scanning a receipt, Lemon took about 10 minutes to update my totals.
- The nature of the store determines the purchase’s category, which can be misleading. For example, I bought a coffee at Barnes & Noble Café, and it placed that amount under the Education subcategory. My CVS purchase went under Health and Fitness.
PREMIUM LEMONS: THE PRO FEATURE
Users also have the option of purchasing Lemon PRO for $9.99 a month, or $99.00 a year.
Going PRO is ad-free, gives a line-by-line detailing of each receipt, and can track expenses for up to 5 people. For a college student, the free version is perfectly adequate—unless you’re splitting expenses with roommates and want a single place to keep track of everything everyone spends.
Overall, I’d say Lemon is pretty sweet. I’ll keep it in my apps for a while. Now, if someone gave me real lemons, I might just start a lemonade stand, and make back all that money I spend.
Do you use Lemon or know of any other financial apps Alex should review? Let us know in the comments.
(Photo: Lemon.com)
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