Today is a departure from the typical home improvement topics of this blog. Instead of focusing on home improvement, we are going to look at Rocket Money and their claim of saving you money.
I want to put the disclaimer in early that this is not a paid review. Furthermore, I am not getting any compensation for my editorial input. If you are like me and enjoy buying new power tools, having the ability to save money is helpful to this goal.
Rocket Money Overview
Let’s start with what rocket money is to give context to this review. Rocket money is an app with a monthly subscription that claims to save you money. Basically, the app allows a person to spend a little money to save a lot of money, or at least that is the goal.
I am writing this review because I was shocked to find how useful the app actually is. I heard of Rocket Money through the sponsor segment of almost all my favorite YouTube channels. Typically, when a product is marketed this hard, the service is a let-down or worse, a complete scam. An example that comes to mind would be the Honey extension. Thankfully, unlike the Honey extension that claimed to save money, Rocket Money stays true to their claims.
How I Budgeted in the Stone Age
For my budgeting needs, I used a subscription tracking app called SubX. SubX requires all information to be put in manually, which eliminates a lot of the privacy risk of Rocket Money.
Despite SubX being more privacy focused, manually inputting everything in was very time-consuming. Additionally, whenever a bill changed I had to go in and update it.
In early revisions of this review I had stated that SubX and Rocket Money are for different people. Due to the two apps being so different in how they complete the budgeting goal.
For example, I think the only real reason a person would not use Rocket Money is due to one of three reasons. The first reason would be a person cares deeply about their privacy and wants to limit information going to a third party.
Second, a person does not want to buy into another subscription. Lastly, a person wants to have full control of their budgeting.
I think the surprise of liking Rocket Money comes down to me not being the core target audience. I normally care deeply about privacy, which is why I manually tracked my money. Furthermore, I also hate additional subscriptions and I like having full control of stuff (see my oil change post for proof).
Going back to my comment of how Rocket Money is for a different type of person I would say now that Rocket Money can be helpful to any person. I would love to say that my change of mid came from added privacy features or an eliminated subscription cost. However, what really changed my mind is how frequently I found myself using the app. Rocket Money has been helpful enough for me to ignore my normal core values.
What stole the show
What makes Rocket Money good enough for me to ignore the privacy risks and subscription cost? First Rocket Money assists in something I have been struggling to manage for a little while now
For some reason, I did great balancing two credit cards, but ever since I obtained a third, I have had a difficult time managing them.
The selling point that got me is the ability to see all of my credit cards in one place. Not having to log into each individual app to track my spending is such a time saver.
With Rocket Money, not only are the balances available to view for each credit card, but also a master list of transactions (pending and posted) from all checking and credit card accounts.
The Spending Tab
Although not as life changing as the first feature, breaks down every dollar spent into categories. I will preference that not all bills are categorized correctly.
However, I still find the feature useful as I can see a complete summary and know where I spend too much of my money on, such as shopping.
While I know every credit card has the same spending feature and even do better with categorizing, they don’t really compare unless all your spending is on one credit card.
Having all three credit cards and my checking account show up in the spending tab gives the fullest look yet at my spending habits.
One feature I have mixed feelings about are the email and push updates. While I typically do not enjoy getting push and email updates, I can turn on and off every type and even change parameters to fit my needs.
For example, I often do not keep a lot of money in my checking account, and so having alerts when my account falls below 200 is not helpful. However, I can change the threshold to say 100 dollars, which is more helpful to my needs.
Since some notifications are helpful and the others can be disabled I am inclined to still say the feature is helpful.
Additional Bonus Features of Rocket Money
Looking at the extra bonus features Rocket Money provides is relatively difficult. I have found only one of the additional features rocket money provides to be useful for my needs. I will try however to give my honest opinion of the additional features, but first let us go over the actually useful bonus feature.
Some websites make you jump through so many hoops to just to cancel the subscription. So when I found out I can cancel straight through the Rocket Money app I was excited to try it out.
I tested this feature using a streaming service I no longer use and while the app stated it would take up to 10 days to cancel, it really only took a couple of hours.
As a disclaimer, you do have to provide the email and password for the subscription cancellation feature to work.
More Gimmick Than Feature
Some of the more gimmicky features I find is saving money on utility bills such as Internet and electricity. The electricity saving goes through yet another company and was not available for my specific utility company I have.
I also already have the lowest amount on my internet, so they could not save me money on that bill either. I also like to know what I am paying for, and I am not sure if they do negotiate the cost down on the internet, how transparent rocket money is.
For example, does Rocket Money let you know that they negotiated the cost down but also sacrificed in the case of the internet bill the speed. I am not sure since I was unable to test this functionality, but I would be careful giving a company that much control over your utilities.
Another lowering the bill functionality is a third party service to lower insurance. Despite normally using The Zebra, I did try to use Rocket Money to see if I could lower my insurance.
I do not have a screenshot of the result but basically the service stated I was already insured through the cheapest insurance
Much like the internet bill lower feature the insurance lower feature is not very helpful. I also do not like that both features are outsourced to a third party service as this adds more privacy risk.
To Conclude On Features
To summarize, Rocket Money’s features are helpful primarily when the feature is directly from them. For example, the only money saving feature that actually saved me money was the subscription cancellation feature, which did not involve a third-party service. If a person would like to use one of the other money saving features, it might be best to shop around to find a better alternative, such as The Zebra in the case of insurance.
The Not so Sunny Side
Privacy Concerns
Rocket money doesn’t handle connecting to the financial institute directly. Rather, it relies on a well-established third-party platform called Plaid. While Plaid is secure and has been around for a while, it is another company with your financials. In addition, as mentioned previously, any cost saving feature outside of the subscription cancellation feature require connecting with a third-party service.
Rocket Money and Plaid use end-to-end encryption and should be safe. What they do with that information is another question. From my little bit of research Plaid has been in a class action lawsuit for selling user information. Overall, like anything that is convenient it comes with a cost. I find that the cost is worth it in regards to the privacy I give up but others may not (which is completely understandable).
How Much Do I Owe??
The only other real negative with rocket money is the bills are generally not context aware. Rocket money only sees transaction history and not directly what the utility company charges each month. With the weather getting warmer, my gas (I have a gas furnace) bill went down. However, rocket money was unable to see this change, so it states I will owe my gas company $20 more than I actually will.
Moreover, if you paid the bill early, it will show the bill due date as the date paid instead of the actual bill date. One such example is with my electric bill, where I paid it a week early last month. Now rocket money is saying it’s due a week earlier than it actually is because I paid it early.
Lastly, rocket money cannot break down what some charges are. For example, I was paying Aurora for identity protection and because it was going through PayPal the charge was listed generically instead of being a recurring subscription. Other times, Rocket Money will simply just get the category wrong, which is not always an issue but in rare cases could make it seem like you have fewer bills (more money) than you do.
Conclusion
I have not compared other budgeting apps, but if this post does well, I could attempt to use other popular budgeting platforms. I do like rocket money as it does what it claims to do. However, I do feel as though the app needs some refinement.
I think eliminating the” lower the bill” feature or create a way to do the feature completely in house much like the subscription cancellation feature is. Additionally, If Rocket Money could connect directly with my bank accounts without requiring Plaid I think that would go a long way to bolster the apps privacy. Lastly, having better auto categorization feature and a way to connect with bill companies for more accurate bill management would be very helpful.
I have been extremely impressed with Rocket Money for my first ever experience with an automated budgeting app. I do recommend people give it a try and see if it can help save them money if privacy is not a huge concern. Lastly, the app allows a person to set the price of how much they pay with a minimum of $6 a month if price is a concern.
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