Through my work on this site I get to see a lot of interesting financial tools that people have created. Some of them are more useful than others.
A while ago I discovered a tool called that allows you to not only stay on top of your money situation, but also helps you to save money by canceling unwanted subscriptions, alerting you to large transactions, or by giving you statement credits for doing things you're already doing.
I signed up for the tool, Trim, a couple of months ago. Here's a quick look at how Trim works.
Trim Savings Assistant
So what is Trim? Trim is a helpful savings assistant/bot that you use via Facebook Messenger, or if you don't have that, via SMS.
Trim will enable you to save money by helping you to cancel unwanted subscriptions, alerting you to any fees on your accounts, negotiating lower rates on your bills (like your Comcast bill), and even putting in a price protection claim with your credit card company if an item you have purchased on Amazon drops in price.
It's super easy to use once you set it up, and I can honestly say that in the months I've been using it I have saved a decent amount of money. Here's a look at my visa statement showing multiple Trim credits that have come through recently.
So what do you need to do to set up Trim? First, you need to sign up using either your Facebook account or an email address. Sign up via the link below.
Sign Up For A Free Trim Account Here
After you sign up, all you have to do to enable all the functionality of Trim is:
- Link your Facebook account (so that the Trim bot can send you messages).
- Link your checking account (so that Trim can check for unwanted subscriptions, fees and large transactions, etc).
- Link your Visa account in order enable additional savings and account credits.
No worries about security as Trim uses 256-bit encryption and read-only access to check your accounts.
Once the accounts are all linked, the Trim bot will scan your accounts and look for ways to help you save.
Cancel Unwanted Subscriptions
The first thing that Trim will help you to do is to cancel all of your unwanted subscriptions.
Once you supply your login credentials, Trim will connect to your bank and download your transactions. It will scan your activity and find your subscriptions based on known subscriptions. Right away they'll send you a partial list of subscriptions you might want to cancel, via Facebook Messenger. You'll get a full list once the bank information fully syncs.
If you see a subscription in the list supplied to you by Trim that you want to cancel, you just tell Trim to cancel that account.
Trim will contact the biller by email, phone or even certified mail in some cases to make sure the billing stops. Why pay for a service you're no longer using?
Once your account has synced you can view your subscriptions in your account on the “Subscriptions” page.
If you have a subscription not showing that you believe should be, you can go to the “Spending” menu item on the site, and from that page you can view all of your account spending. Just find the ledger item you want to add as a subscription, click on the gear icon on that line, and select “This is a subscription”.
Lower Your Comcast Bill
If you're a Comcast user, you can now securely link your Comcast account, and Trim will look over your bill in order to see if there are any applicable promotions or discounts. If there are they will negotiate to get you a better price on your bill, without making any changes to your current plan.
How much will this cost you? You'll be charged 25% of the first month's savings that Trim gets you. If they aren't able to find you any savings on your bill – you pay nothing.
So let's say they save you $10 on your bill. In that case you'd be charged $2.50 for the savings they find you. That's it.
Link Your Visa And Get Account Credits
If you add your Visa card to your Trim account you can get statement credits and savings when you spend money at certain restaurants, grocery stores and other retailers.
Visa credit or debit cards can be added to your account, just add the one you use most. When you use the card at an eligible retailer where there is an offer or coupon available, Trim will apply it automatically and you'll get a statement credit.
For example, right now when you open an account, the first two times you spend over $25 at a grocer, restaurant or retailer, you'll get a $5 statement credit.
In my account, I'm currently seeing offers that will give you a $10 credit if you spend $20 or more at any U.S. movie theater (I just used this one tonight, see below!), or get a statement credit of $1 for $5 in spending at any U.S. restaurant. Both of those are things that most people will do on a regular basis anyway, so why not save?
Get Credits On Amazon Purchases That Have Dropped In Price
Another cool tool that Trim has added recently is a tool that allows you to put in a price protection claim on items you've purchased at Amazon.
Here's how it works. First, you connect your Amazon account to Trim. They'll securely connect and scan your order history. They'll look for items that have decreased in price since you purchased them.
If they find a purchase that has become cheaper, they'll file a price protection claim directly with your credit card company. Once the claim is approved, the credit card company will send you a check in the mail for the amount of the price drop. Easy peasy.
Get Account Alerts
Trim can help you stay on top of your accounts by sending you alerts about your finances. It can alert you to things like large transactions hitting your account, deposits showing up, low balance alerts, unexpected bank fees and more. Just set up which notifications you'd like to receive via the “Settings” menu item.
Trim can also contest overdraft or late fees with your bank if it sees one come through.
Find Cheaper Auto Insurance
Another thing that Trim added recently was the ability to get quotes on cheaper auto insurance. Just go into their “Auto” menu item and enter the details for your car. It will then help you to get a quote from a third party on auto insurance that may be better than what you've already got.
Trim Helps You To Save
Trim is a free service that is worth far more than it's cost.
It helps you to save money in a myriad of ways, from canceling subscriptions that you may have forgotten about, to finding coupons and savings that you can take advantage of via your credit card.
While I wasn't sure I could save very much using the service, I've come to find that the automatic coupons and account credits that Trim offers just keep showing up on my Chase statement. $1 here, $10 there. It all adds up, and since it's a free service it doesn't take very long before you've gotten your money's worth.
I'd highly recommend giving this service a try. What have you got to lose? Maybe a few unwanted fees and subscriptions?
This is a cool app! It’s crazy how many of us, myself included, allow some of these monthly subscriptions continue on when we rarely use them. I can think of magazine and TV subscriptions for myself where I’ve wasted money.
Thanks for sharing, Peter!
We’ve all had that random subscription or service that we no longer use and we’re just to lazy to cancel. What’s cool about Trim is that in a lot of cases they can just cancel the service or subscription for you. I like it when they make my life easier. :)