Breadth of Services

Rocket Money acts as your personal negotiator to realize savings on the services you already buy. Upload your bills through the app and Rocket Money gets to work to find ways for you to save, from securing more favorable contracts to having unwarranted fees removed from your accounts. Tired of paying for spotty internet service? Rocket Moneyl keeps track of your ISP’s downtime and gets your money refunded accordingly. 

Rocket Money also helps you budget more effectively. By connecting as many accounts you like, including checking and savings, retirement, and brokerage accounts, the app provides an opportunity to view all of your income and expenses all in one place. Expenses are automatically categorized for you so you always know where your money is going. From there, you can target specific categories where you’d like to spend less. The app reminds you when bills are due, helps you manage cashflow, and avoid late payment and interest charges.

Screenshot from truebill.com, August 24, 2020

In addition to Rocket Money’s standard service, under which you pay a commission on the savings the app is able to secure for you, Rocket Money also offers some add-on premium services. These include canceling subscriptions you signed up for and no longer want—or may even have forgotten about. 

With a premium subscription, you can also enable Rocket Money’s SmartSavings feature, which authorizes the app to automatically transfer money from your checking to your savings account according to rules you can customize according to your needs. (We should note that many banks offer the same type of automatic savings features through their online banking features and don’t charge a fee for this service.) Other premium features include balance synching, live chat, customizable budget categories, unlimited budget creation, and more.

Pricing

How much you pay for Rocket Money depends on how much the app is able to save you. As the company puts it, you and Rocket Money “split the savings.” But to get a little more real about it, you pay Rocket Money a 40% commission on any savings they negotiate. Of course, receiving 60% of any money is better than no money at all. So if you don’t want to go through the hassle of researching savings opportunities or arguing with service providers over unwarranted fees, Rocket Money is practically a magical solution. What’s more, the company boasts an 85% negotiation success rate. Few consumers know the ins and outs of service contracts, understand the difference between legitimate and illegitimate fees, or possess the dogged determination it takes to get a customer service representative to acquiesce and authorize a refund. One of the most important things you save with Rocket Money is time.

One feature of Rocket Money’s pricing structure that you should be aware of is how you pay the company its commissions. To use the app, you must authorize Rocket Money to charge your credit card. Once Truebill secures your savings on a service contract, they will charge you a 40% commission on your savings over the life of the contract all at once. That means you are paying for savings before you actually realize them. Some users might object—particularly those who for whom cash flow was a problem to begin with. But others, who can manage a large lump sum payment without trouble, may just view that as an investment that will pay itself back fairly quickly.

After Rocket Money negotiates a bill reduction for you, it’s your responsibility to monitor your statements to make sure the billing company makes good on the savings promised. If they don’t, Rocket Mortgage will refund any commission you have paid. 

Premium subscriptions to Rocket Money cost between $3 and $12 monthly.

Educational Resources

Rocket Mortgage publishes a blog on its website that's comprised of about one hundred articles. Some of them cover Rocket Money company news and are self-promotional in nature. That’s not uncommon in any industry. The remaining articles cover topics of general interest to consumers, such as research into consumer behavior, everyday savings tips (batch-cook and freeze, entertain at home instead of going out for dinner), and more.  One category of articles we found pretty interesting was the group of reports Rocket Money offered on consumer protection lawsuits and regulations.

Customer Experience

Rocket Money negotiates bills from a wide range of well-known service providers including AT&T, T-Mobile, Fios, and Spectrum. The app helps you cancel unwanted subscriptions in many categories, including music and TV streaming services, fitness clubs, meal delivery, and even dating websites. Rocket Money also connects with over 15,000 financial institutions. Chances are, the banks and credit cards you use will be among them. 

Rocket Money offers users three options for submitting bills for negotiation. You can either enter them manually in the app or upload a photo. Or you can authorize Rocket Money to monitor your bills automatically by giving the company access to your various accounts. To so, you must enable the TrueProtect feature of the app. If the company spies an opportunity to save you money, they will negotiate on your behalf. If they are successful, you’ll be notified and invoiced for 40% of the savings.

Other similar apps work a little differently. They provide you an opportunity to review the better deals they recommend and approve any changes proposed. Once you connect your various expense accounts through TrueProtect, the app automatically makes changes to your account and bills you for the savings. Some users might prefer not to relinquish that much control. While Rocket Money earns high marks overall with consumers, one of the more common complaints we’ve read about the company is that sometimes in the course of negotiating savings for you, they make changes to the services you use. Most people wouldn’t choose to lose access to their favorite TV channels or put up with slower internet speeds to save a few bucks. According to some users, that’s a risk with Rocket Money.

Rocket Money appears to be a very secure platform. The company partners with Plaid, a well-known financial technology resource that consolidates data for many companies, to store your banking and other credentials. Rocket Money does not store your data itself. The company uses banking industry standard 256-bit encryption to protect the data you transmit to them. Rocket Money’s privacy policy also states that the company never sells users’ data, which protects you from a potential barrage of unsolicited marketing emails and the like.

Reputation

Rocket Money earns a 4.5 out of 5 star rating from Trust Pilot. The app gets a lot of praise from iOS users at the Apple App Store, who give it a 4.5 out of 5 rating. Android users are a little less enthusiastic but still give it a 4.2 out of 5 rating. Rocket Money’s BBB profile was not available at the time of review because it was being updated.  

Rocket Money Summed Up

Rocket Money is not the most sophisticated personal finance app out there but it does provide a handy level of insight into your financial life. By corralling a wide range of accounts in one place, it can help you assess your financial status from day to day and manage your money more effectively. Its superpower appears to be in the realm of negotiating lower service rates for users and it has a very good reputation for doing just that.