They call Missouri the Show Me State, and sometimes I feel like I am from Missouri myself.

I have a busy life and sometimes I just do not have time to even shop for what I need, much less figure out what my friends want for their birthday, Christmas, Hanukkah, graduation, or anniversary.

I have had Penless now for a short time and I am trying to figure out how I did without it for so long.  The point is that no app does what this app does when it comes to making it fun and easy to shop and to be a good gift giver.

For one thing, some really great department stores have personal shoppers and I have friended a couple of personal shoppers in stores that I really like.  What my personal shopper does is to share items on the app through the Wish List feature that they believe I will like.  So instead of having me go through the process of finding things to put on my Wish List that I like, they put things on their Wish List for me that they think I will like, and then they will share that item with me.   If they have other customers that might like that item, they can share it with that other person as well.  It is actually straightforward.

Then when I am working with my friends, I simply tell them, “if you want a good gift from me can you please get on Penless. “ The My Stuff feature is only on part of the app.  I would encourage everyone to try this app, even if you are not a big shopper.  All my friends are on Penless now, and it is going really well from a gifting prospective.

What I do is set up my friends in Friends Stuff.   Then the app alerts me a week before any of my friend’s birthday.   What I do next is to look at that friend’s Wish List. I may compare it to some things I might have saved on my Idea Board that I have been thinking about getting that person.   But this is only if I know them well enough to have such a list.  When I have decided on my gift, if it involves a size, I go to my Friend’s sizes and get their size from there.

I then go to the website attached to the image on their Wish List item, or the one I have on My Idea Board.  The website is automatically saved with the image. If the image is a photograph, I will surf the web, for the item.  I have a few stores already bookmarked that I like to shop, so it is easy.  If they took a picture in a store instead of on the web, and it is convenient for me to go to the store, that is what I will do.  It has a field in the app to put in store location, so that is pretty straightforward as well.

In this busy crazy connected world, there are few apps that I have found more useful than Penless because I view Penless as an app with a purpose.  It simplifies my life because shopping and gifting is not always the easiest thing for me to do, and this is easy, and to be honest a little bit fun. So if you are looking for a really good gift from me, I say, “show me what it is.”