How has the iPhone changed your financial iLife?

So, there is an App for everything these days! Mobile banking, Mint.com, Mobile investments, etc. Even an app for discount shopping. Has anybody actually found an App that makes the phone or iPod touch financially worthwhile to them?

USAA has a check deposit app that you can use the camera to take a picture and upload it for deposit.

I have a financial calculator app that I use in finance class.

it saved me time and money by waiting for the Droid to come out and sticking with VZW.

DavidScubadiver said: So, there is an App for everything these days! Mobile banking, Mint.com, Mobile investments, etc. Even an app for discount shopping. Has anybody actually found an App that makes the phone or i-pod touch financially worthwhile to them?There is an app that will look up an item by barcode and give you online pricing info by comparing to Amazon/etc. I haven't actually used it but I imagine it could be extremely useful in quickly deciding if it worth buying locally now or ordering online and waiting for delivery

Personally, I'm still evaluating the iphone to determine if it is worth jumping on board with the full phone plan.

If I were to buy it, I'd definitely want to jailbreak it and use the crappy AT&T network to its full extent (like data tethering, using Skype on the 3G network, and using gvoice).

I often check Amazon.com (they have a nice iPhone site) to look up prices before I make a purchase at retail. Also use BoA mobile banking app to check balances & pay bills. And, check FatWallet Hot Deals on the road when I'm bored.

My cellphone bill went from $12/month to $75/month. I'd say that's the biggest change financially.

Increased cost, decreased coverage. Only 20 months to go until I can tell them to KMA. I wish I had read the contract that it is $175 - $5/mo early termination fee PER LINE. If it was only $175 I would have eaten it and moved on. Until then, I carry pay as you go verizion phones with the Iphone.

Chalk this one up to a big F-Up on my part.

After being stuck with the bad interface, Interactive Brokers has put up one of the better iPhone stock trading apps available. This has allowed me to do a better job of managing my portfolio, along with the individual bank applications. I haven't used an aggregator like Mint on the iPhone though.

I feel the same way about texting. Why is it so hard to use teh damn phone to actually make phone calls these days. People care less and less about voice quality and more about apps.

Cell phones are for making phone calls. Right? Man, I so miss the 80's and 90's. Does the iPhone have an iTimeMachine (not backup)?

comptalk said: Cell phones are for making phone calls. Right? Man, I so miss the 80's and 90's. Does the iPhone have an iTimeMachine (not backup)?

And computers are for data processing via punch cards, right?

Ok i am a PC guy but Apple got my business on the iphone for one app only. "iSwim" I can monitor all my stocks and trade exactly when the time is right! Even if I am on the crapper. I used to only do prepaid with T-Mobile costing me $100/year, but I am averaging up $300/month being able to trade when necessary. I also joined a car pool to work so I can read PDF books and review the market before it opens on my way to work. I can't say enough good things about it.

mewannaxbox said: I feel the same way about texting. Why is it so hard to use teh damn phone to actually make phone calls these days. People care less and less about voice quality and more about apps.

People who try to carry on conversations through texting are very annoying, but it's very useful for texting something quick that doesnt require a response... or for texting something that you would otherwise have to write down (phone #s, dates, exact $ amounts, etc...)- saves having to keep up with another scrap of paper.

cameron2003 said: I don't carry a cell phone at all. How much money have I saved the last 10 years? $5,000 or so? I think I have had to find and use a pay phone twice in that time.

You my friend are my idol!

Reading everyone's comments, I can see your point - my work pays for majority of my AT&T plan. I pay a whopping $25 dollars a month for the entire bill which includes my wife's iPhone too in the family plan.

I would be singing a different tune if my work wasn't covering it.

The iphone has changed my life by helping me save money. When I realize there's a lot of douchey mac people willing to pay $1600 for a laptop that's just a relabeled PC with Intel hardware and $120/month for a cell phone it helps prevent me from getting caught up in the consumption.

Let me provide another perspective- I need to be connected, not 24 hours a day (I'm not that important), but let's say 8-12 generally. I have a blackberry. Before I got it, I'd actually cart my laptop everywhere in case I needed to respond to an email, make last minute changes to documents, delegate on the fly or handhold a client.

Now, I leave my laptop at home when I'm out and about, because I can access nearly all my work resources on my blackberry. And I'm not the obnoxious guy who shows up to parties with a bottle of wine and my computer bag.

TheMeliorist said: The value just hasn't gotten high enough, although the prepaid offerings are getting closer.

Three things to consider:

T-Mo-2-Go, pay $100 upfront for 1000 minutes and gold level service, with a renewal date a year away. Now that you're gold, every time you add a $10 airtime card your due date is extended to one year from the present date. That's $10 a year until you use up your initial 1000 minutes. The bad news is it's T-Mobile, and there are way to many places within 20 miles of my home where T-Mo doesn't work.

Page Plus, you can use any Verizon phone. Works on the Verizon network including roaming partners, but you have to pay $0.59 a minute when roaming. Expires 120 days after last adding airtime. Cards range from 83 (well, actually 67) minutes for $10 to 1400 minutes for $80 (they seem to be phasing out the 1400 card, the next highest is 700 for $50).

Tracfone, which is what I'm using. I have one on AT&T (almost as many dead zones as T-Mo) and one on Verizon. Free roaming. With double minutes for life and bonus codes, you get 150 minutes and 90 days for $20. The only prepaid I know of that stacks days of service, the due date gets extended by 90 days every time I add a card. I've still got cards from the days of the two-fer, so two phones cost me $22 every ninety days. That will go up to $30-35 when I have to start buying time cards at the best currently available discounts. Worst case, $140 a year for two phones, I can live with that.

Nothing valuable to add to this thread since I don't own an iphone.
But, OP can you please change thread title to - iThread about iPhone changing iFinancialLife.

Getting the original iPhone changed my financial life because I never owned any Apple products before the iPhone. Now i'm on my third iPhone (3GS), my second iMac and second Macbook. It got me hooked on Apple and all their products and am pissed it took this long to discover them. It hurt me financially in the wallet at first, but i invested some money in the company last year at it's low and it's more than doubled so all i can do is say " Thank you iPhone !! "

I have made over $30,000 an apple stock. I do not have an iPhone, though I did buy one for my wife and she is a speed demon with the on-screen keyboard. She loves the urban spoon, yelp and scrabble apps. And she likes the mint app as well because she does not like having to use the compter to look at her accounts.

I think its pretty darned cool myself and want one, however, I have a work-provided blackberry (which sucks in comparrison) and I am not about to pay for cell phone service if work is providing it for free. Nor do I want to carry multiple phones with me. The point of the thread, for me, was to see how people were using it. Not sure why it gets so much red, but frankly, not really caringe either.