Are you looking for the next budgeting app to replace Mint? As a former Mint user, I recently switched to Rocket Money and think you’ll find this budgeting app is just as easy to use, intuitive and affordable.
Rocket Money (formerly Truebill) is a budgeting app that helps you manage your cash flow, monitor your spending and set savings goals to take the hassle out of budgeting. It’s available as both a mobile app and an online platform, and syncs to your external bank accounts to track your income, monthly bills and other expenses easily.
Rocket Money’s free version is limited but may be enough for some users. Its Premium version is $4 to $12 per month — you choose how much you want to pay — and has a seven-day free trial to test its features.
How does Rocket Money work?
The Rocket Money budgeting app links to your bank accounts to track your income and spending. It can automatically sort your transactions into specific categories, such as groceries or housing, to take some of the legwork out of budgeting. You can also edit individual transactions and create rules for sorting future transactions.
Rocket Money allows you to set spending goals and shows you how much you’ve spent to date in each category. You can adjust your budget at any time to account for unexpected expenses.
The free version of Rocket Money is limited but provides basic budgeting functions like expense tracking that may be sufficient for some users. The paid version, which costs $4 to $12 per month, offers advanced features like custom budget categories, automated savings, and credit report and net worth tracking.
What we like
- Affordable price: Rocket Money Premium costs $4 to $12 per month, with the $4 to $5 options billed annually. How much you pay is up to you, and you’ll enjoy the same features regardless of the amount you choose.
- Easy to use: Rocket Money’s mobile app and online platform are both intuitive to use. Information is presented in a clean, easy-to-understand way that tells you what you need to know without overwhelming you.
- Lots of notifications: You can choose to receive a wide variety of notifications to stay on top of your finances, from bill increase and bank fee alerts to identity theft and credit score alerts.
- Savings goals: Rocket Money Premium offers a Smart Savings account to make setting money aside easier. You can set savings goals and schedule regular automatic transfers to this account. Smart Savings accounts are held by an FDIC-insured partner bank, so your money is safe up to $250,000 per account holder.
- Credit score and net worth tracking: Rocket Money Premium offers credit score viewing and credit report and net worth trackers. (The free version offers credit score viewing only.)
- Bill negotiation: Rocket Money also offers a bill negotiation service that’s available to both free and paid users. Rocket contacts your service providers — like your cell phone or internet provider — for you to try to lower your bill. You’ll pay a fee if they succeed, but it may be worth it for you if you hate haggling with customer service reps.
What we didn’t like
- Free version is limited: You may be able to get away with using Rocket Money’s free version, but it’s pretty barebones. If you want features like custom budget categories, you’ll need to pay for the premium membership.
- No debt payoff planning: Some budgeting apps, like PocketGuard, provide debt payoff planning to help you reduce your debt load. Rocket doesn’t. You can link your credit card accounts to monitor your balances, but that’s about it.
- No investment tools: You can connect your investment accounts to Rocket Money and view your balances, but if you want help with investment planning, you’re better off with an app like Empower, which provides tools to assess and adjust your strategy.
- Budget sharing in beta testing: You can share your Rocket Money budget with a partner, as you can with many popular…
Read More: Rocket Money Review March 2024