Essential Apps for Homeowners

There’s an app for just about everything these days. Our smartphones have a variety of sensors and meters in them that make all sorts of innovative functionality possible. For homeowners in particular, there are a variety of apps that make paying bills, performing routine maintenance around the house, and even monitoring your energy consumption as easy as opening an app on your phone. Here are some of the apps that are designed to make being a homeowner a little bit easier.

HomeSavvy for Android and iOS

A free app called HomeSavvy has been hailed as a homeowning essential by its multitude of grateful users. It’s highly-rated and a powerful, comprehensive maintenance planner. You input your maintenance tasks, set how often they need to be completed, and your phone will alert you when each time the task is due for completion. It also has a function that allows you to search for professionals nearby if it’s a task you can’t do on your own.

DocuSign for Android and iOS

It’s becoming more and more common to be sent important documents over the internet, but it feels cumbersome and archaic to have to print

them out, sign them, and snail-mail them back to the sender. DocuSign is the answer to our prayers, allowing us to fill out and sign important documents like bills of sale or insurance forms right on our smartphones. Once a document is signed, it can be uploaded to Google Drive, Dropbox, or simply emailed straight back to the sender. DocuSign is compatible with pretty much any text and PDF files and is free for both Android and iOS.

Billminder for Android and iOSDo you find it a bit overwhelming trying to remember each of your bills’ individual due dates? Tired of paying late fees from letting a bill slip by unnoticed and unpaid? Billminder is an app into which you input each and every one of your bills and their due dates. However, it’s more than just a calendar for your bills, although it does that incredibly well; it also lets generates expense reports so you can see

what your main expenses are, where your money goes each month, and ways to save. You can also pay most of you bills right there in the Billminder app. Available for $1.99 for both Android and iOS devices, Billminder will help make sure you never pay penalties for late payments ever again.

WattBuddy for iOSAvailable for free for iOS only, WattBuddy is an incredibly useful, intuitive, and user-friendly electricity meter reader. By taking a picture of your electricity meter and connecting with your account through your electricity provider, WattBuddy can show your daily,

monthly, and annual usage as well as ways you can save on electricity.

Standby Energy Cost Calculator for AndroidWhile it’s true that the name isn’t very catchy, this app can definitely catch you some savings. Did you know that leaving appliances and even your cell phone charger plugged into the wall while they’re not in use allows them to continue consuming energy throughout the day? Some call this ‘trickling’ while others have termed this ‘vampire energy,’ but no matter what you call it the fact of the matter is that this app can estimate all the trickled energy your appliances, electronics, and chargers are wasting when you’re not using them. The figure can actually be quite alarming. The good news is that this app can help you to eliminate that unnecessary pull on your electricity, and it’s available for your Android smartphone for free.

For more home automation ideas, head to Modernize.com.