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Automating your monthly bill payments is an easy way to save a little extra time every month, but between automatic payments and forgotten subscriptions, most households are overpaying for services they might not even use. This where Truebill shines.
If you’ve ever been hit with extra fees or found a transaction on your monthly bank statement for something you swore you cancelled months ago or completely forgot you signed up for, Truebill might be just what you need. Keep reading to find out everything you need to know about Truebill and if it’s right for you.
What is Truebill?
Truebill is an app that helps its users save money by finding and eliminating unwanted subscriptions, negotiating lower costs for your monthly bills, and securing credit or rebates when a service you use experiences an outage.
Since its launch in 2015, the app has helped its users save over $14 million with no upfront cost, so if you are looking to trim down your budget, Truebill is definitely worth checking out.
How Does Truebill Work?
Truebill works by connecting to your bank and credit accounts and searching for recurring bill payments, subscriptions, and similar. From here Truebill can help you close accounts, cancel subscriptions, negotiate lower rates for your bills, and get you money back for any service interruptions that impact your area.
The app also provides basic budgeting services, helping you to save even more money by establishing a financial plan and helping you set and meet savings goals.
How Does Truebill Make Money?
Truebill has two main revenue streams that keep it profitable. First, it claims 40% of the total amount of savings its users gain through the service, meaning that if Truebill cuts a total of $100 from your monthly expenses, it will keep $40 as a sort of finders fee.
Secondly, Truebill offers a premium service subscription from between $3 per month and $12 per month. You can also go for an annual package at either $36 per year or $48 per year. The paid plan provides users with access to additional features, such as the ability to have Truebill automatically cancel unwanted and forgotten subscriptions on your behalf. The premium subscription will also provide users with an ad-free version of the Truebill app.
See Also: PocketSmith Review: A Time Machine for Your Money
Truebill Features
Truebill is a versatile app that has a lot of useful features to offer its users. While the main attraction is its ability to keep track of and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, the app has a lot more to offer.
Create Budgets
Within the app you’ll find a “Start Budget” button on the dashboard, from here you can make a budget that’s tailored to your income, goals, and lifestyle. The budgeting feature will help you see how much you are spending each month and in every category, making it easier for you to make changes as needed to achieve your goals, especially because you can use the app to automate your savings contributions.
Track and Manage Subscriptions
The ability to keep track of and manage your subscriptions is one of Truebill’s biggest draws, and the feature the app was designed around. Once connected to your accounts, Truebill will watch for subscription charges and provide you with a list of them under the recurring payments tab — giving you the option to end your subscription directly through the app with a tap. If you’ve opted to pay for the premium subscription, you can even set it up so the app will automatically cancel subscriptions for you.
Reduce Your Monthly Bill Payments
Truebill can help you save money on your monthly expenses by negotiating a lower rate with service providers on your behalf. This doesn’t work for every service, but you don’t pay anything unless they successfully secure you a lower rate, so it doesn’t hurt to try. Should Truebill manage to reduce your bill, the app will take 40% of the amount it saved off your bill as a fee for the service.
Secure Compensation for Service Downtimes
Nobody likes paying for something that they didn’t receive, which is why Truebill will monitor the services you use for outages and service disruptions. If it finds that your cable or internet provider was affected, you can use the app to request credit be posted to your account.
Save Money on Electricity
If you live in an area where electricity costs are unregulated and can fluctuate from month to month, Truebill can help you save money on your monthly utilities as well. The app will keep track of the lowest rates in your area to help you secure the best prices available.
Overdraft Protection
Since Truebill helps keep track of your expenses, it can also save you from over-drafting your accounts by sending you a Balance Alert notification whenever your account balance dips below a level you set, giving you time to top up your accounts ahead of upcoming bill payments.
See Also: What are the Best Alternatives to Cable TV: Cut the Cord Today
Track Spending Habits
Truebill allows you to track your spending habits over time. When you over to the “Spending” tab on the app, you will be able to see your monthly reports and visualize where your money is going. You can also see a full list of your transactions and even search so you can understand trends on your spending.
Smart Savings
Truebill offers a very handy feature called “Smart Savings” to help you save money and achieve your savings goals. You can tap on the “Smart Savings” feature on the app and set up your automated savings plan from there.
How You Can Save Money with Truebill
We’ve already covered a lot of the features Truebill has to offer, but the best thing about them is that you can and will save money with nearly all of them.
Whether you’re putting more into savings after using the app to establish a budget, cutting out subscriptions, lowering your monthly expenses, avoiding overdraft charges, or maximizing the value you get from your services by getting money back after an outage — Truebill is making sure that you hold onto more of your hard-earned cash.
Pros of Truebill
Truebill is a great tool to help you save money on autopilot and it’s definitely worth checking out. It comes with handy features and the app is very simple and easy to use.
No Upfront Cost
The Truebill app is free to download and use without restriction. You won’t be charged unless you opt for a premium subscription which provides you with access to additional features.
Simple to Navigate
The Truebill app has a clean and user-friendly interface that allows you to get up and running with the app without any significant time investment. The features are all clearly laid out, accessible, and easy to use, so you can start saving money as soon as you install the app.
Gets You Out Of Difficult-to-Cancel Subscriptions
While Truebill’s subscription cancelling capabilities are useful even if you are just getting rid of your old Netflix account or ending a subscription to Audible you didn’t realize you’d been paying for since your free trial ended, the app really shines when you need to get out of a subscription that’s a little harder to cancel.
Whether it’s that gym membership you never use or a cable subscription you can’t justify the cost of, Truebill will get you out of it, without leaving you to deal with long holds on the phone and customer service people who don’t want to let you go.
Doesn’t Add to Your To Do List
TrueBill helps you cut down your expenses and put more money in the bank without requiring much input, so you are free to reap the benefits without really doing any work.
Safe to Use
Since Truebill needs access to your bank and credit accounts in order to work, security is a top priority. While the app does need to connect to your accounts, it does so on a read-only level, and it uses 256-bit bank-level encryption to guarantee the safety of your information.
Cons of Truebill
As with any other app, there are some downsides to Truebill. The hands-off approach comes at a price and you should know the negative side of Truebill before jumping in.
Takes a Significant Cut of The Money You Save
To compensate for not charging for the use of the app, Truebill makes money off your usage by taking a 40% cut from any money you save through it. You are still saving money overall, but you could be putting more in your pocket if you negotiate your bills and manage your subscriptions manually or through another app.
Free Users Have In-App Advertisements
Unless you opt to pay for a Premium subscription the Truebill app comes loaded with in-app advertisements. These ads do not affect the usability of the app, but they can be annoying. Who likes being bombarded with advertisements?
Who is Truebill for?
Since the majority of households in North America have trouble keeping track of their services and could use help patching up the leaks in their finances, Truebill is a good fit for most consumers.
The app provides its users with a lot of ways to save and make the most of their money that they wouldn’t have access to otherwise, like the ability to negotiate a lower rate on a number of bills, and the option to unsubscribe from hard to leave services with a single click.
Since the app doesn’t cost anything to use unless it saves you money, you have nothing to lose from trying it out. With that said, if you aren’t the type to use subscription services and feel confident in your ability to negotiate your own discounts on services, you could save even more by making the changes yourself.
See Alos: How to Track Expenses: A Simple Step by Step Guide
Truebill Pricing
Truebill doesn’t charge its users anything to download or use its app, instead, they take a 40% cut of the savings it secures through its bill negotiations, subscription cancelling, and outage credits.
There is a premium version of the service available for between $3 per month and $12 per month. You can also go for an annual package at either $36 per year or $48 per year. The premium subscription offers additional convenience features, like giving users the ability to cancel their subscriptions automatically through the app, it also provides an ad-free version of the app.
Is Truebill Safe?
When you’re giving access to your accounts and sensitive financial information, you want to be sure the service and your information is safe, which is why Truebill uses the same 256-bit encryption used by banks. Additionally, the app only requests read-only access to your accounts, so you don’t have to worry that your information will be compromised.
Truebill Alternatives
Truebill is the only app currently on the market that focuses specifically on cutting down your late and overdraft fees, but there are a number of other promising alternatives that keep track of your subscriptions and will cancel or negotiate a lower price for your everyday bills.
Trim
Trim is another free app that helps users generate savings through cancelling subscriptions and negotiating lower bills. Unlike Truebill, Trim only takes a 33% cut of the savings it secures for its users through bill reductions and it doesn’t take a cut out of what you save from its service cancellations. The only downside is that Trim isn’t able to cancel as many bills as Truebill, so you could miss out on some savings.
Read our full Trim review to learn more about this service, our check out our full Trim vs. Truebill comparison to see which service is best for you.
Billshark
Billshark also negotiates with your current service providers to get you a lower rate. Billshark works with all major cellphone carriers, cable TV and internet providers, and even home security providers. According to their website, they have an average success rate of 90%.
Billshark has a one-time fee of 40% of the money they save you. If they are not able to lower your bills, you will not have to pay any fees, which is cool. Similar to Truebill, they also offer 256-bit encryption to protect your personal information.
Check out our full Billshark review to learn more.
Truebill FAQ
We have found some of the most frequently asked questions about Truebull, here are our answers.
What Type of Subscriptions Does Truebill Cancel the Most?
Truebill can cancel subscriptions in nearly every category you can think of, but it has a strong track record of success with services like Audible, BeenVerified, Comcast, CreditExpert, JustFab, Instant Checkmate, myFICO, Sirius XM, and Verizon.
How Much Does the Average Truebill User Save?
According to the company, the average Truebill user saves $512 a year, but that number will vary depending on a number of factors such as the number of subscription services you have and the cost of the bills the company can negotiate on your behalf, among other things.
How Can I Contact Truebill?
There are two ways to get in contact with Truebill. You can contact them via the app or via their website under the “contact us” page.
Truebill Review Summary
Truebill is a great app that many people could significantly benefit from thanks to its wide variety of money-saving features, the only major drawback is the 40% fee they take as payment on all the money you save with the app. For most people, this isn’t an issue as you’re still saving more with the app than without, but if you don’t need access to all of its features you might be able to save even more with one of its competitors or by doing the work on your finances yourself.
Final Thoughts
If you could use a little help plugging the leaks in your budget, keeping track of your expenses, and developing a budget, Truebill is definitely worth a look. Even if you aren’t sure that the app could help you save, it doesn’t cost anything to try it out and you might be pleasantly surprised.
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Ricardo is an entrepreneur, investor and personal finance nerd who enjoys spending time with his family and friends, travelling and helping others achieve their financial goals. Ricardo has been quoted as a personal finance expert in several online publications including Healthline, Bankrate, GOBankingRates, MSN Money, Yahoo Finance, U.S. News & World Report, Forbes and USA Today.
