Bright Money Review 2024: Is Bright Money Legit or a Scam? (Pros & Cons Revealed)

In the ever-evolving landscape of personal finance management, Bright Money emerged as a good solution for individuals who want to regain control of their financial well-being. This innovative app has a wide range of features designed to assist its users in paying off debt, improving credit scores, and building a more secure financial future.

Bright Money has all the features and benefits, from optimized debt payoff plans to credit score tracking, goal-based savings strategies, and personalized recommendations. However, the question lingers: Is Bright Money legit, and does it truly deliver on its promises?

To answer the above question, in this article, we delve into Bright Money’s features, benefits, pros and cons, user feedback and reviews, and many more about this personal finance app.

What Is Bright Money?

Bright Money was started by two entrepreneurs Avi Patchava and Petko Plachkov in 2019. In 2021, the company raised $31 million from funding from ventures like Humming Bird, Falcon Edge, and Sequoia.

Bright Money is a personal finance management application that helps its users pay off credit card debt, raise credit scores, and build wealth. It connects with the bank account, automating the debt payment seamlessly, and building the credit. It has all the tools to help its users in budgeting, money management, and more.

By leveraging the power of AI, it is creating personalized plans for its users. The company’s main mission is to help middle-income consumers make better financial decisions. It accomplices its goals by creating a financial target that users can implement, it includes paying off debts and improving credit scores.

Features of Bright Money

• It provides personalized financial plans for each client based on their credit score and debts.
• It offers customizable debt payoff strategies, there are 3 payoff strategies available on Bright Money, they are,

1. Debt snowball – By this users can pay debts from the lowest balance to the highest balance
2. Debt avalanche – By this users can pay off debts in order from highest to lowest charges.
3. Customizable payoff order – By this users can choose what order they want to pay the debts.

• It also provides saving goals for its users, they can use it and achieve their saving goals for their future Vacation funds, House down payment funds, New car funds, etc..,
• Users can improve their credit score with Bright Money.

Products offered by Bright Money

Bright Money offers three products that are designed to further its goals in different ways, they are,

1. Bright Plan
2. Bright Credit
3. Bright Builder

Bright Plan

Bright Plan, a flagship tool offered by Bright Money, analyzes users’ current financial status and goals and recommends the fastest and most efficient way to get where the users want to be. 

It typically means creating and automating the spending plan that optimizes getting out of debt and saving funds for future emergencies. The most practical aspect of Bright Plan is it will enable regular transfers from users’ checking accounts to Bright Stash Accounts. For that checking account Bright Money issues and automates the plan, so users no need to manage themselves. Users can also withdraw from this at any time, they can also adjust and modify the information in Bright Plan.

Bright Credit

Bright Credit is a line of credit, that offers relatively low interest rates. It helps users refinance their most expensive credit cards and save interest charges. It doesn’t need security deposits, but when they are applying for the first time, users need to undergo a hard credit checkup, so it is not recommended if they are looking for cash advances with bad credit.

To qualify for Bright Credit users need at least a fair FICO credit score which starts around 580. If the user’s credit score is lower than that, they do not need to worry, they will still get the account with a bad score. Bright Money considers more than just these raw scores like user’s credit utilization and balances.

To determine the user’s terms including Limit and interest rate, Bright Money will analyze their bank accounts and credit cards to get an insight into their finances. It usually ranges from $500 to $8,000 and 9% to 24.99% respectively.

Once the users have this, they can use Bright credit to pay as much as credit they like, it will reduce the overall interest rate saving users money. Users have to make a minimum payment of at least at least 3% of their balances.

Bright Builder

Bright Builder is more like a Credit builder loan. To access it users need security deposits, after this users receive credits that will be equivalent to their credit limits. Whatever the users withdraw, they need to repay it monthly in installments, which Bright Money reports to two of the major credit bureaus.

It requires a security deposit of at least $50. Users can pay the deposit in a single payment or a series of monthly payments. Till then they cannot borrow against the line. Once they have done it they can withdraw the available credit limit at any time because it is also considered initially as their security deposit. Bright Money suggests users keep their balances low because it is reporting credit utilization to the credit bureaus.

User’s monthly payments towards the account should be at least $10 or 50% of their balances. Because it will build the payment history, it is important for credit score.

Like other credit Builders in the market, Bright won’t require credit checks when users apply so they can apply even with bad scores. It shares its data only with Equifax and TransUnion not with Experian which reduces the effectiveness of Bright Builder.

How Does Bright Money Work?

Bright Money was created for those struggling with debt and credit card scores. When users are signing up in Bright Money, it will show two options, they are,

1. Paying Off credit card debt
2. Improving credit card scores

Users can also choose to save as an option later like saving funds for emergency needs or funds for future vacations. Once the user’s account is connected to Bright Money, it will analyze their spending habits and income.

From there Bright Money will automatically transfer a small amount of money from the user’s checking account to the Bright Money account (Bright Stash account). Then the system will use that money to pay off the user’s debt or save money, it will help the users to achieve their financial goals.

If the user’s checking account has a low balance, Bright has their back, and it will use its MoneyScience AI to automatically react. If the user has a financial shift or any upcoming bills, Bright Money will adjust how much and when it withdraws the money from the checking account.

These little steps will help the users to break their paycheck-to-paycheck lifestyle. 

[Note: Bright Money only helps its users to manage their debts. It is not offering any loans or any other ways to increase the funds]

What is a Bright Stash account?

It is an interest-bearing account, that will store the transfers made from the user’s checking account. Its MoneyScience AI will analyze and determine when to use the funds to make the payments for debts.

It will also determine when to add extra payments to saving goals or investment funds. Bright Stash is FDIC-insured, so there is no need to worry about security.

How to sign up and use Bright Money?

To sign up for Bright Money follow the below steps,

Step 1: Visit the official website of Bright Money or download the mobile application from Google paystore or Appstore. [Click here to visit the official website of Bright Money – Link]

Step 2: Next create the account Bright Money using your email ID and password and verify your mobile number.

Step 3: And then you need to verify your identity, it requires the following documents,

• Picture of government-issued ID,
• Social security number,
• Copy of utility bill or bank statement with your local address.

Step 4: The final step is, Bright Money will ask you to verify your income and connect your bank account and credit card. It will analyze them and create your customized Bright plan.

Bright Plan is based on a debt avalanche strategy, so it first suggests its users pay off the most expensive debt to reduce the interest charges.

Bright Money Pricing

Signing up for Bright Money won’t require any fees, it is completely free but when the users sign up, they are forced to choose Bright Plan which requires a subscription.

It offers three membership plans, each with the same features, but users can save membership fees by choosing long-term plans.

Membership plans,

1. Monthly
2. Semi-annual
3. Annual

Each of the membership plans comes with a 10-day free trial and a money-back guarantee. The monthly plan costs around $14.99 per month. The semiannual plan costs around $53.94 twice a year which averages out to $8.99 per month. The annual plan costs around $83.88 per year which averages out to $6.99 per month.

Bright Money Pros and Cons

Here are the list of pros and cons of Bright Money,

Pros:

• Provides personalized combinations for each user in debt refinancing, budgeting tools, and credit building.
• Users can get debt consolidation loans ranging from $500 to $8,000
• Provides a low-cost credit builder to improve the credit score of its users.
• It uses cutting-edge AI technology to provide customized plans for its users in debt repaying and saving plans.
• It has automated saving accounts by which users can round up their everyday expenses.
• The products offered by Bright Money don’t have origination fees, late fees, or any prepayment fees.
• Users can choose their debt payoff strategy based on their preferences.
• It also has 10 days free trial.
• Easy to use and data personalization.

Cons:

• It requires users to connect their bank account and credit card information, even though it is a con of Bright Money it is essential for it to provide a customizable plan for its users.
• Another con is its pricing, its subscription plan ranges from $7.42 (annual membership) to $9.99 (monthly membership).
• It is not very useful for users with low credit card debt.
• It has only limited banks and financial institutions.
• It also has issues of delayed payments and the withdrawals taking more time.

What do people think about Bright Money?

Bright Money is rated 4.7 out of 5 on the Trustpilot website by more than 5 thousand people. Here are some people good and bad reviews from people posted on the Trustpilot website,

Shane Reeves one of the users of Bright Money appreciated its customer service because of their friendliness and dedication towards the customers.

Dario “Río” Reyes from the US said, customer service was top-notch and a support team rep named Hope Walker was fast and responsive and she solved Dario’s issue in no time.

Even though most of the users highlighted and praised Bright Money’s customer support, some of them were also not satisfied with the app and its support team, here are some of them,

Zack from the US on Trustpilot said, the app is glitchy, and customer service is horrible, he also noted there are some bugs in the app that stop payment at times. he said, there has been no response from customer support for over 48 hours regarding his payment issues. For this issue, the Bright Money team replied on Trustpilot, and they told him to reply to his issues to their email ID.

Blanca said, there was an issue with the app while linking her accounts, she reached out to the customer service assistants, but she was not satisfied with the app feature because was not able to sync all her accounts, so she asked for cancel the service, but there is no reply from customer service and also money was withdrawn for her membership fee.

Also, read our other article about the 15 Most Powerful AI Answer Generators of 2024 – AI Answer Generators

Is Bright Money Legit?

Bright Money is a legitimate personal finance platform founded in 2019 by a group of experts. It has received significant funds from investors, it includes $31 million in its series A round after establishing it as the leading platform in personal finance management.

Bright Money has been rated 4.7 out of 5 on the Trustpilot website by thousands of its clients and 4.6 on the Google Play Store and received over 53k reviews from its customers. It has received 4.8 out of 5 on the App Store from over 104.4K Ratings. Even though it has rated high on mobile apps, it also has consistent complaints, many users have stated that in their reviews.

Is Bright Money safe?

Bright money has bank-level encryption, so all the transactions made through it are secure and safe. It also has FDIC-insured up to $250,000 for all deposits made in Bright Money.

Bright Money never shares or sells user’s data, it uses it only to provide customized plans for its users.

Alternatives to Bright Money

Frequently asked questions about Bright Money