Rocket Money Review 2023: Budgeting And Saving Money

Rocket Money is a popular app that can help you budget, save, and even eliminate bills.

Do you remember the last time you paid a bill manually? Is everything in your financial life automated? Do you even know what a checkbook looks like?

Most of the time financial automation is viewed as a great thing. You don’t have to waste your limited brain power and time on trivial tasks like paying bills or setting aside money for retirement.

With the power of automation, you do those things automatically. Which is great, but also a double-edged sword. Companies like Amazon, Spotify, Audible, Netflix, Hulu, Time Warner Cable, your gym, insurance companies, and Sling TV know that when you sign up for the service, you’ll likely continue to pay for the service long after you’ve stopped using it if you’re set up with automated billing.

That’s why new financial apps like Rocket Money are so important. The best way to prevent against the downsides of financial automation is to use personalized data to get your finances back on track. That’s what Rocket Money promises to do. Does it work?

We’ll explore how Rocket Money works to save its customers money, and whether you should take the plunge and download the app.

Who Is Rocket Money

Rocket Money was originally founded in 2015 as Truebill by three brothers - Yahya Mokhtarzada, Haroon Mokhtarzada and Idris Mokhtarzada. It was acquired by the Rocket Companies in 2022, and rebranded from Truebill to Rocket Money.

Their goal was to create a comprehensive financial empowerment tool, and they originally started by focusing on subscription cancellation and bill management. Today, it's a full-fledged budgeting app.

Rocket Money was named the best subscription cancelling app in our annual list of Best Budgeting Apps.

How Does Rocket Money Work?

Rocket Money is a budgeting and money management app that has a lot of integrated features. The end goal is to not only help users be better with their money, but to help them save every month.

Unlike most apps, Rocket Money offers users a few different paths to save money using the platform. 

They include:

• Budgeting and Expense Tracking
• Lowering Bills
• Monitoring Subscriptions
• Electric Saver

Lower My Bills

The first path is called “Lower My Bills.” In this path, Rocket Money negotiates directly with around two dozen service providers (mostly telecom services including cable, Internet, or cell service providers) to lower your bill.

For Rocket Money to lower your bill, you’ll upload a copy of your most recent bill with one of the service providers or connect directly to your online account. Then, you’ll provide information about the service you’re already receiving.

After that, Rocket Money will negotiate a lower rate for you. Often, they’ll help you get onto a promotional plan, cut back on bogus fees, or simply lower the rate. On average, Rocket Money saves its customers around 20% on their existing telecom plans through its negotiation techniques.

When Rocket Money negotiates for you, it will charge 40% of the annual savings. That means, if you save $100 per year, Rocket Money will charge you $40 for negotiating for you. That payment will be required right away (so you’ll actually lose money that first month).

For example, Rocket Money negotiated and lowered my SirusXM bill. They lowered the annual bill from $117 to $85. This was a savings of $32, which I then paid Rocket Money $12.80.

Subscription Monitoring

The more conventional path for connecting to Rocket Money is by connecting your checking and credit accounts to the app. Using the financial encryption service called Plaid, users simply enter their account information into the Rocket Money app. Once you add your account information, Rocket Money quickly (two minutes or less) reviews all your transaction information and flags recurring bills, changes to bills, and determines whether it can lower the bill.

It also “maps” your bills to a calendar, so you can figure out when your automatic bills will hit your account. You can look into each bill to see whether the amount you’ve paid has changed over time.

You can use the information provided to change your behavior, cancel subscriptions, and more. Or, if you really need some help, you might be inclined to upgrade to Rocket Money Premium ($4.99 per month or $35.99 for a year of service).

With Rocket Money Premium, you can simply click on a recurring subscription, choose “Cancel Service,” and Rocket Money will cancel the service for you. It will also automatically request refunds for overdraft fees or late fees. Although you might not get the refunds, people who infrequently overdraft or infrequently pay late may find that they can get a fee waived with a simple request.

Lest you wonder whether Rocket Money is worth $4.99 per month, it might be worth telling one story. I ended spending 30 minutes researching how to cancel an unused gym membership and another 10 minutes making it happen (thankfully, I had stamps to mail the letter). With Rocket Money, I could have saved about 38 minutes by tapping a few buttons. For me, that’s a worthwhile cost.

Electric Saver

This feature is only available in some areas, but in locations where your electricity is deregulated, Rocket Money and their partner Arcadia Power will shop around and find the lowest price per Kw of electricity to save you on your power bill.

For some users, that adds up to a 30% savings on your electricity bill! That's huge! 

Rocket Money Premium

Rocket Money is a free app to download, but it’s not free forever. If you want to upgrade to Premium, you’ll have to pay $3 to $12 per month or $36 to $48 per year. If you opt to pay monthly, you can cancel a few services right away, and then downgrade to the free service.

If you use the part of the app that helps you lower your bills, Rocket Money charges 40% of your annual savings the first year you use it. It will charge this fee as soon as the negotiation is complete.

Does Rocket Money Sell My Information?

Rocket Money won’t sell your information to third parties, but it does advertise insurance and credit cards through the site. If you choose to connect to the insurance or credit card comparison sites, your information will be passed through to these companies.

Other than that, your information is kept private and secure.

What Alternative Apps Can I Use?

Rocket Money is the only app that is specifically targeting late fees and overdraft fees, but there are other free and low-cost services that you can use to cancel or negotiate lower bills. Also, Rocket Money is the only service I've seen with the Electric Saver program.

Billshark is an app that charges you 40% of your savings to lower most cable, Internet, cell service, and home security services. Since this matches Rocket Money's offer, it’s no better to use one service vs. the other.

Trim is another free app that works to cancel subscriptions and lower bills. Right now, Trim charges 15% of savings to lower bills and it does not charge for its cancellation services. However, Trim isn’t able to cancel as many bills as Rocket Money, and it doesn’t request bank fee refunds.

Final Take on Rocket Money

With so much money going towards subscriptions rather than one-time purchases, I think most people (even careful spenders) should use apps like Rocket Money or Trim. Rocket Money offers unique insights (especially regarding changes to your monthly subscription fees) that can help you stay on top of your spending instead of assuming you’re getting the best deal.

It’s tough to say if the premium service is necessarily going to be worth the cost. Trim offers bill cancellation services for free, but its services are more limited in scope than Rocket Money's. It may be worth upgrading to the paid premium service for a limited time to take advantage of the cancellation option even if you revert to the free service after just a few months. Likewise, Rocket Money charges more for its bill negotiation service than Trim does, but Rocket Money has a more in-depth process that may be worth the fee.

To start, I think it’s worthwhile to download the free Rocket Money app and see whether it prompts any behavior change. If it doesn’t, it probably makes sense to pay for the negotiations, and upgrade to cancel subscriptions. In relatively short order, Rocket Money could save you hundreds of dollars per year.