It’s way too easy to get carried away with holiday gift purchases. The next thing you know your credit card is maxed-out and you’re eating ramen noodles throughout January. There’s also the stress of receiving a gift from someone when you haven’t budgeted one for them, and the horror of sending someone a present, only to hear that it never arrived. To stay on track this holiday gift-giving season, check out some of these iPhone apps to get organized, stick to your budget, and ensure all gifts arrive in a timely manner.
mGifts – Gift List Manager
Do you have any endless holiday shopping list? Don’t stress this Christmas, get the mGifts – Gift List Manager app ($2.99) for your iPhone. It’s like having a hundred little elves helping to organize your holiday shopping in the palm of your hand. You can actually use this handy app to organize gift giving all year round for birthdays, anniversaries and more. My favorite features include tracking your holiday gift spending and adding a security pin code to keep out snooping loved ones.
Related: Use these iPhone apps to manage your weight during the holidays
Gift Plan
Big families can cause otherwise sane people to go crazy with shopping stress overload during the holiday season. If you take a little time throughout the year to organize your gift-giving profiles with the Gift Plan iPhone app ($2.99), you will save yourself a lot of troubles come December. This app even integrates with Facebook to keep track of birthdays and anniversaries. I love that you can keep track of gift ideas throughout the year so you have a list of possibilities when a special event arrives. You can also view adorable photos of your nieces and nephews while browsing their gift profile.
The Christmas List
Are you a visual organizer? I absolutely love the way The Christmas List app ($0.99) displays your gift profiles by budgeted items and your progress towards procuring each gift. It also offers a quick reminder of how many days you have left to shop to get said gifts. It rounds gifts up by store so you can organize your shopping trips across family members. This is a delightful app with great visual appeal.
ShopAdvisor
Are you a holiday bargain shopper that didn’t finish your Christmas shopping haul on Black Friday? Check out the free ShopAdvisor iPhone app to search for the best deals on all the gifts you missed. The best part is that you can set up an alert to tell you when the price meets your ideal present budget for each missing item on your holiday gift-giving (and -getting) list.
Delivery Status Touch, a Package Tracker
If most of your family and friends are away this holiday season and you are sending Christmas gifts far and away to them, you must get the Delivery Status Touch, a Package Tracker iPhone app ($4.99). This shipping tracker app keeps all your package tracking in one convenient spot and alerts you when packages arrive at their final destination. If your busy sister forgets to let you know when your nephew’s holiday gifts arrive, give her a call when the app says the package was delivered to follow up. I wonder if Santa has this iPhone app?
