Have You Tried Cozi Yet? Save Money and Save Time

This is a guest post from Becky S.! She has so many GREAT tips for saving money and managing your time!

Have any of these things ever happened to you?

• Accidentally scheduled 2 doctor appointments on top of each other because you didn’t have the first one handy when you scheduled the second?
• Shown up for your child’s orthodontist appointment a day late?
• Written down your work schedule on the wrong spaces on your calendar and then received a phone call asking why you weren’t at work?

All of these things and more have, to my embarassment, happened to me.  With 4 kids, a puppy, a husband who works 3 jobs, and unpredictable hours at my job, I have been having a hard time keeping everything straight.  What gets written on the wall calendar also needs to be put into my phone, and also needs to be emailed to my husband…you get the idea.  I think most families are just as busy as mine, and I recently found a great and free tool to keep everyone organized!  It’s called Cozi.  It has changed my life, and that is not an exaggeration!

Here’s how it works.  You go to their website and sign up.  You create a single family account, and register everyone’s email addresses so they can log in themselves.  Everyone uses a single family password, which is super convenient.  It helps my husband and I make sure we keep each other informed of our commitments, with no more, “I KNOW I told you about that!”  You pick a color for each family member, and that colored dot appears next to each of their calendar items.  Then you start entering your commitments.

Some schools put their calendars in Cozi, and all you have to do is import them!  You can set up sports schedules, carpool schedules, and anything else you want on a repeating basis.  You can add location, notes, and reminders if you want.  Your calendar might look like this:

The best part is that everyone can use Cozi from any computer, smart phone or tablet.  That means that your kids can use their Ipods to enter their events.  Your husband can use his work computer to add an evening commitment to the calendar.  You can access it from anywhere.  And if someone loses their phone or other device, no problem because it is on the secure website.  You can also set it up to send weekly emails to everyone in your family with the calendar for the upcoming week.

Other useful features of Cozi include To Do Lists, Shopping Lists, and a place to journal moments you want to remember as they happen.

All of this is FREE!  If you choose to update to Cozi Gold, the cost is $29.99 per year.  They offer different promotions at different times.  A couple of weeks ago, they offered a $29.99 credit to make a Shutterfly book, which cancelled out the cost of the subscription since I was going to make one for my mom’s birthday anyway.  So I went ahead and upgraded.  You get a 2 week trial period before they charge you, so you can change back if you don’t like it.  By upgrading, you get rid of the ads that show up on the free version, in addition to having a Birthday Tracker, which I have set up for family anniversaries as well as birthdays.  You can also set multiple reminders for a specific event, and send out a notification to anyone involved when you add an event to the calendar.

FYI, I receive NO compensation for referrals and have not been paid by Cozi in any way for writing this post.  I just wanted to share something that is working really well for my family with all of you!