Today I’d like to take a look at an app that can help automate your savings and thus make you happier and your wallet healthier. In this Trim review, we’ll take a look at why this is an app that everyone should consider trying at least once.
I love saving money, but I have two philosophies when it comes to doing so: start from the top and make it as easy as possible. While Trim won’t necessarily be a huge help with the first one, it will definitely help with the second.
Why is that? Because Trim helps you save money automatically and intelligently. Rather than having to sniff around trying to find savings here and there, Trim does it all for you.
But how does it work? Let’s find out!
What is Trim?
According to AskTrim.com:
Trim is a financial health company. Our mission is to solve your financial problems so that you can live the life you want.
Pretty simple, right? We all have financial problems (as far as I know, anyway), and Trim wants to help with those problems.
Trim is a relatively new service, having started in 2015. It works by automatically finding ways you can save money, such as on a subscription you may have forgotten about, or an over-inflated monthly charge.
Or, at least that’s what it did in the beginning. As crucial as those things are, now it’s focusing on some more complex problems.
How Much Does Trim Cost?
If you sign up for Trim Premium, it will cost you $10/month.
Trim does allow you to sign up for free and gain access to some basic features without paying anything, though. Let’s quickly cover what the free signup allows you to do before covering the premium features.
Trim Free Features
When you sign up for a free account on AskTrim.com, you’ll get the following:
- A personalized dashboard in which you can set up custom alerts, such as for overdraft fees and for finding old subscriptions.
- Set reminders, such as to remind you to pay those pesky bills.
- Set spend alerts that notify you when you have a transaction over a certain amount.
Considering Trim lets you do all this without spending a dime, it’s really not bad. But if you want to reap the full benefits of what Trim has to offer, you’ll have to upgrade.
Trim Premium Features
As you might expect, Trim’s most useful features are reserved for its paying customers. Considering the cost is only $10/month, though, the value is quite good.
Here’s what you get when you become a Trim Premium customer:
- Bank negotiation
- Bill negotiation
- Automated card payments
- Trim simple savings
Dashboard
When you sign up for Trim Premium, you’ll have a quick view of all of the features Trim has to offer. You’ll also be able to see whether those features are enabled, indicated with a check mark.
Bank Negotiation
Bank negotiation is a really nice feature. If you are anything like me, you don’t love negotiating. So, being able to pay a small fee and have someone do it for you is great!
You’ll still have to chat with someone from the Trim team about the details, but once that is done, they do the negotiation for you.
Now, whether this will be beneficial for you will depend. What trim negotiates for you is:
- APR
- Fees
Depending on your situation, you could have any combination of credit cards, personal loans, and any other miscellaneous fees. So this will only benefit you if you have those things with your bank.
Bill Negotiation
If you have a complicated setup for your phone or internet, Trim might be able to help by negotiating these bills for you. At the moment I am not paying for internet myself, and I know my phone bill can’t be negotiated, so I wasn’t aable to try this feature.
However, if you have several lines on your cell phone plan, or a TV package with lots of little features added, Trim (Premium) might be able to negotiate to get these bills reduced. It’s worth a try.
Automated Card Payments
This feature may or may not be useful depending on your bank. Most of my credit cards are Chase cards at the moment, and Chase already allows you to set up automatic payments.
However, if your card doesn’t have an automatic payment option then this would certainly be helpful. Being able to make payments automatically is really nice, especially if you have a running balance.
Automated Savings
Trim’s automated savings is a bit of a diamond in the rough. I say that because, as you’ll notice in the snippet above, you earn 4% its automated savings. Pretty sweet.
Now there is a major caveat: you only earn 4% on balances up to $2,000. After that, the interest rate drops to 1.1%, which below what other high-yield savings accounts offer, as of writing this.
Still, that 4% almost covers the fee for Trim Premium – 4% interest on $2,000 works out to $6.67 per month. So if you really love the other features of Trim, this is an amazing little perk.
What Are People Saying About Trim?
Trim is Better Business Bureau-accredited, although it is not rated by the BBB. There are a lot of complaints as well, but it’s difficult to verify the legitimacy of those claims.
It also doesn’t have a mobile app (yet), so it’s hard to get feedback from a wide group of users like I normally would from Google Play and Apple.
All I can say is there do appear to be people who express concerns about “intrusiveness” and those who say the service appears better than it is.
Those who say it appears better than it is make claims about how they never got their negotiated discounts. Others say they will negotiate without informing you.
These claims sound iffy to me, but I don’t want to flat-out dismiss them. I am using Trim myself, so if I ever have such issues, I will update this post with that information.
Trim Review: The Verdict
Despite claims about how Trim supposedly does all kinds of shady things, I cannot rate it based on some unverified claims from a handful of users.
As a result, the main reason I am not giving it a perfect rating is the lack of a mobile app. In today’s mobile world, not having a mobile app is a definite issue. Especially for this particular service, since we often spend while away from home.
The only other potential negative would be that you have to link your financial accounts, and some people seem uncomfortable with that. But here’s the thing: it can’t be automated if you don’t do that.
Overall, Trim is an excellent service that I intend to use going forward. I hope to see the benefits that seem possible with this service.
I may update this review later on with my findings, but for now, I’m liking what I see!
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Trim Summary
Free or $10/month
Pros
- Bank and bill negotiation on your behalf
- Automatically finds unwanted subscriptions
- Includes savings account with excellent APR
Cons
- No mobile app yet
