Pros & Cons
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- Exceptional design and navigation
- Good budgeting and transaction management tools
- Provides excellent, targeted feedback
- Top-notch mobile apps
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- Premium subscription can cost a lot
- Weak investment tracking
- Limited bill negotiation features
- Minimal online help
Rocket Money Specs
| Android App | |
| Free Credit Report/Score | |
| Free Version | |
| Income/Expense Tracking | |
| iOS App | |
| Web Interface |
Rocket Money is an all-purpose personal finance solution that won't steer you wrong about your money. It organizes helpful tools for automating savings, budgeting, checking your credit score, and tracking your financial accounts and transactions in a colorful and lively user experience that is quick to provide feedback. It’s also a good option if you are trying to get out of debt, thanks to its features for cancelling subscriptions and negotiating (some) bills. However, Rocket Money's investment management capabilities are underwhelming, and the pricing for its Premium tier should be more consistent. Our Editors’ Choice winners for the category are Quicken Simplifi, which offers similarly advanced tools for less, and YNAB, which teaches a highly effective and unique approach to budgeting.
Pricing: An Unusual Premium Model
Rocket Money provides basic account management features and balance alerts for free, but most of its advanced capabilities require a Premium account. Among those are advanced budgeting and transaction management, a great dashboard, subscription cancellation assistance, and shared accounts. This tier also lets you check your credit score and get a breakdown of its contributing factors. Note that some Premium tools are available only via Rocket Money’s mobile apps.
Oddly, Rocket Money's Premium plan has atypical pay-what-you-wish pricing. But if you go by what the app suggests, you pay anywhere between $6 and $12 per month, depending on where you look in the app and on the website. Other budgeting and finance apps are more straightforward about subscription costs. Quicken Simplifi is just $5.99 per month (billed annually, while Monarch comes in at $8.33 per month (billed annually). Credit Karma and NerdWallet are free, though they lack Rocket Money’s wealth of features and exceptional user experience.
Getting Started and Ease of Use: An Enjoyable Design
Rocket Money offers a 7-day trial, but there's no option to simply start with a free account. You have to enter a credit card, and then cancel after seven days if you just want to use the free features. The site’s setup is similar to most other budgeting apps. Basically, you connect your online financial accounts so you can import transactions. It uses Plaid, a secure and well-known third-party service, to create these connections. Once you complete that step, you're ready to start working with the app.
Rocket Money's interface is attractive and intuitive. Its designers managed to include the most important data on the main Dashboard without making it feel crowded. Links from the Dashboard take you to more detailed pages with information, such as account balances, budget data, and recent and upcoming transactions. The Dashboard on the mobile apps is more sophisticated. It shows your credit score and “Smart Recommendations,” which are suggestions for improving your financial management by using tools such as savings goals. You don't get many tools for tracking investments, however.
Transactions and Subscriptions: Competent Tools
Transaction management is one of Rocket Money’s strengths. It automatically sends imported transactions to three places: the transaction register, a list of recurring transactions (like subscription fees), and your budget. The site does a great job of guessing transaction categories, though I still recommend you check them.
From the transaction register, you can mark items as recurring or tax-deductible, as well as remove them from your budgets or anywhere else as necessary. Rocket Money lets you add notes to a transaction and split one if, for example, you buy $100 of stuff from a store and want to classify $60 as groceries and $40 as pet food. You can also create a rule that triggers a specific activity (such as a category assignment, a renaming, or a tax-deductible status change) for every transaction with the same vendor name.
As mentioned, Rocket Money identifies any recurring transactions, such as subscription fees, and puts them in a list. The app asks if you want to cancel any of these—and then it helps you do so. If a bill or subscription is missing, you can add it here. The service provides instructions on how to cancel a subscription in case it can't. In testing, Rocket Money incorrectly labeled several of my active subscriptions as inactive and wasn't able to cancel every single one of my subscriptions.
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Budgeting: Simple, But Effective
Rocket Money takes a fairly standard approach to budgeting. The apps (available for Android and iOS) and the browser-based version provide roughly comparable tools and data, though with slightly different designs. The app allows you to create individual budgets for spending and earning categories, such as Auto & Transport, Charitable Donations, and Pets. Rocket Money automatically starts budgets for you in multiple categories based on your current and previous spending. Each budget gets a dedicated page with charts showing your past spending. You can adjust your budgets as you determine how well they match up with your actual spending.
And, of course, you can create custom budgets; you just have to choose a name, color, and icon. It's even possible to assign budgets to earnings or expenses and mark them as tax-deductible. These tools work well for people who want help assembling and monitoring a basic budget, though Quicken Simplifi and YNAB provide more advanced tools. YNAB, in particular, delivers unparalleled feedback and guidance (once you get past its learning curve).
Rocket Money doesn't have dedicated reports for your budget versus actual spending like Quicken Classic, but it does show you related breakdowns of your finances via charts, lists, and tables throughout the site. It's possible to specify goals in Rockey Money, such as saving for an emergency.
Savings Account: Simple, Yet Innovative
The service also offers a non-interest-bearing savings account (Rocket Money Financial Goals) through NBKC Bank, which is FDIC-insured. You fund it by linking to an external account. You have two options here for transfers. If you choose Smart Savings, Rocket Money will put you on Autopilot, set up a savings plan for you, and make small deposits every few days based on your spending. Or you can choose Custom Savings, in which you set the transfer schedule and amounts for Rocket Money to move.
I like Rocket Money’s automation and concepts here. Still, Credit Karma has a Money Save account that offers a 3.10% APY interest rate at the time of publication.
Bill Management: Solid for Select Billers
If you can't make your regular bill payments, Rocket Money might be able to help. You can ask it to try and negotiate lower bills directly with your billers. The service charges a percentage of the amount you save in the first year, and doesn’t charge anything if it isn't successful. If you're trying to get out of debt, and Rocket Money can cut down more than one of your bills dramatically, splitting your savings might be worth it. However, the list of billers it supports isn't lengthy. I found just three of mine: Comcast (Xfinity), the New York Times, and Verizon.
Help and Support: Sufficient for an Intuitive Application
Rocket Money is short on help resources, but I didn’t feel the need to consult it very often because of the app’s smart design and simplicity. Still, you can access some articles on common topics, as well as reach support via chat or email. You can also explore Rocket Money in demo mode if you want to poke around without connecting your personal data.
Is Rocket Money Safe?
Rocket Money says it uses the most up-to-date industry protocols for storing your data, including bank-level 256-bit encryption. Your online banking credentials never touch Rocket Money’s servers, and the company doesn't store them in any way. Rocket Money doesn't allow any other party to access your financial data, either. Multi-factor authentication is available, and you can read more about Rocket Money's security policies here.
Final Thoughts
(Credit: Rocket Money)
Rocket Money
Rocket Money is a competent, well-rounded personal finance app with a top-notch user experience, but we wish the pricing for its Premium tier was more straightforward (and affordable).