Brigit App Review

Brigit is a payday loan app that is mainly known for its payday advances that customers can get up to $250 from. However, Brigit is more than a paycheck advance app. Brigit has many other features like budgeting and overdraft fee protection that can make it an awesome loan app to have. However, it will cost you some money to use Brigit to its fullest extent. 

What is Brigit? 

According to some estimations, there are nearly 100 million Americans that live paycheck to paycheck which is close to one-third of the entire population of the U.S. Each of these Americans rely on their next payday to make payments on things like utilities, rent, loan and credit card payments as well as buying essentials like food, clothing, and transportation. If you are living paycheck to paycheck or ever have, you know how difficult it is and how stressful and overwhelming it can be. By living paycheck to paycheck you are also subject to increased risk of overdraft fees and a necessity to get loans which can be expensive and hard to pay back. 

The fact that close to a third of the population reportedly lives like this is a surprisingly gigantic and extremely disheartening statistic. To make it worse, companies like payday loan lenders take advantage of and offer unfair loans to borrowers in an attempt to keep them in a vicious cycle of debt known as a payday loan trap. A payday loan trap can financially ruin someone and put them in a hole that can take years to dig out of. Debt can be necessary for these people living paycheck to paycheck but some lenders that offer it only want to harm you. 

How Does the Brigit App Work?

Brigit is a loan app that works to combat this by aiming to help customers not get charged an overdraft fee. Brigit is a payday alternative app that helps to “bridge” the gap for users between paychecks, hence the name. By bridging this gap, users hopefully do not need to overdraft their account or take out these unfair loans to help them make ends meet. Brigit accomplishes this through paycheck advances as well as a feature that aims to limit overdraft fees. 

Brigit app’s paycheck advance feature allows users to request a cash advance if they are falling behind. Brigit works to make sure you can avoid overdrafts by automatically analyzing your checking account and advancing you the cash if it deems you are most likely going to overdraft your account. Brigit advances up to $250 dollars and takes a day or two to get your money to you. When you are done paying back this paycheck advance, there is no interest associated and there is no “tip” feature that apps like Dave try to pressure you into paying more for your cash advance with. Along with this overdraft or late fee protection feature, Brigit also offers a budgeting tool that allows its customers to get their finances organized. Unfortunately, while Brigit has some features that are free, the bulk of Brigit’s will cost you $9.99 a month to use. 

There are many apps that offer cash advances and it can be hard to differentiate between them. However, Brigit separates itself by working harder to prevent their users from overdrafting their checking account than their competitors. While it can cost you money, using Brigit can save you more in overdraft charges than it costs you each month. Over time, it can seriously save you some good money that you can put towards important things like your savings goals. 

Pros and Cons

While the Brigit app is an awesome program, it comes with its downsides. However, this does not mean that you shouldn’t use Brigit. It is important to know as much as you can about an app like Brigit to know if it is the right fit for you. Let’s take a look at both the pros and the cons of Brigit so you can be fully informed to make this decision! 

Pros 

• Prevents overdrafting: The main feature of Brigit is the paycheck advances. While it can be helpful to make purchases you really need or can help pay off unexpected expenses, the core of the paycheck advances are that they prevent you from having to overdraft your account. Not only does Brigit alert you when you are in danger of likely overdrafting your account, but they will automatically advance money to you to prevent this from happening. By doing this, Brigit helps to cover your back if you run out of money or just simply forget that your account is being dangerously close to overdrawn. This can also help to save you a lot of money. Overdrafting can be expensive and the overdraft charges have to be paid in a time where you just had less than zero dollars in your account! Brigit can help you prevent these and in the process save you a lot of money over time. 

• Budgeting: Budgeting apps can do a world of wonder for your personal finances. They can help you to not overspend, can make sure you have enough money to make all your payments at the end of the month, and can help you save for things like your spending goals or for a vacation down the road. However, these apps are often their own standalone apps and still require you to use other apps to manage your money. Brigit offers their own budgeting app right within Brigit. WIth this, Brigit can be your one stop shop for budgeting and paycheck advances. There is definitely something to be said for the ease of use Brigit gives its customers with products like the budgeting feature alongside their main product. 

• Completely online: Thanks to an increase in mobile banking, an increasing amount of personal finance resources are available completely online. Brigit is one such thing. Unlike some payday lenders, you do not need to go into a brick and mortar store to get the money you need. With Brigit, you can get a cash advance from anywhere at any time, right from the comfort of your home. In times of limited traveling like the current Covid-19 pandemic, this can be a huge plus. Along with this, the app is easy to use. 

• No interest or tip fees: Something that separates Brigit from its competitors like Dave and Earnin is that the Brigit app charges zero interest on their payday advances and does not prompt the borrower to “tip” Brigit. While something like not asking users to tip might not seem like that big of an issue, apps like Dave and Earnin are able to make good money off of their customers by using this. While you don’t have to tip, most people do and it ends up greatly increasing the APR of their cash advance. With Brigit, this is not a worry as they do not even ask you to tip to them. 

• No credit check:  One of the best features of the Brigit app is that Brigit does not check your credit score when they are looking at whether to approve your cash advance or not. If you have a poor credit score, this can be huge for you. If you have bad credit you understand better than most that it is extremely difficult to get the cash you need. If you have a bad credit score, lenders are less willing to lend you money. Even worse, you need access to debt to build your credit score in the first place! While Brigit doesn’t build your credit score, it can give you the money you need without ever looking at your credit score. Brigit checks other factors like a consistent income but will not deny you your money if you have a bad credit score. 

Cons 

• Cost: As you already know, nothing in this world is really free. Brigit offers a free version of the payday advance app that has certain features but is still very limited compared to the paid version of Brigit. While Brigit does not profit off of any interest or “tips” given to them from the paycheck advances, they do make their money off of the membership fee they charge every single month. Compared to its competitors, the $9.99 per month price tag of Brigit is actually higher than most. In total, you’ll be paying roughly $120 a year for this service. If you have many other subscriptions, you know that they are worth their monthly subscription cost if you are constantly using them. However, you might not be overdrafting your account so much that this will make it worth it. Unless you find yourself overdrafting your account frequently or anticipate that you might need some cash down the road, Brigit can be a fairly expensive service to use. 

• Lower withdrawal amount: While there is a chance that $250 is enough to cover your potential overdraft or to cover a certain expense, you may need more than $250. With other apps like Dave and Earnin, you start with a lower cash advance limit and can then get more advanced money down the road if you have proven you can be trusted to pay your money back. As of now, Brigit has no such feature that allows you to do this. If you need a cash advance that is more than $250, you will likely need to look elsewhere as Brigit cannot provide you any more than this. 

• No instant direct deposit: In the world of expenses, something always seems to come up. Just when you thought everything was going smoothly, you might get hit with an unexpected expense or emergency payment that you do not have the cash for. If this is the case, you may need money fast and without delay. The Brigit loan app gets you your money somewhere between roughly 1 and 2 days. If you don’t desperately need the money from the cash advance as soon as possible, then this time frame can work for you. However, if it does not, you will need to find somewhere that offers direct deposit capabilities like Possible Finance does. 

How to Qualify for Brigit

While Brigit does not check your credit score, you are not necessarily a shoe in for getting approved for cash advances from Brigit. Aside from needing to be older than 18 years of age and needing some sort of identification, here are the things you will need to be ankle to qualify for a payday advance from Brigit: 

• Average paycheck must be over $400
• Receive $1,500 + a month from the same company 
• Have three or more recurring deposits from your company 

**Side note: these three requirements are very important and depending on your job, you might not be able to qualify for Brigit. For example, if you work a gig-economy job for a company like Uber or Lyft you might be getting paid in various frequencies since you are deciding how much and when you want to work. This irregularity with work could be a reason you don’t get approved. Here’s the rest of the list: **

• Bank account is currently above $0
• Frequently use the bank account you are hoping to use with Brigit
• Bank account is not a joint account 
• Account has been open for longer than 60 days

Alternative to Brigit: Possible Finance

We here at Possible know that we have a product that is just as helpful as these payday advance apps like Brigit and does not have many of the drawbacks that can make these apps favorable. 

We here at Possible offer installment loans of up  to $500 for our customers, which is twice as much as you are able to borrow with Brigit. Likewise, unlike Brigit, you can get approved with our loan in minutes and can have the money directly deposited into your account soon after. If you need a sizable amount of money and you need it quickly, Possible can give you the money you need quickly while apps like Brigit cannot. 

We call our installment loans credit builder loans. Unlike Brigit, when you borrow from us and successfully make payments, we report your payments to credit bureaus which helps to build your credit history and boost your credit score over time. Like Brigit, we don’t check your credit when you apply for our loans. If you have a poor credit score but need money, Possible can give you the money you need while simultaneously building your credit. 

We understand that it can be difficult to make payments. We actively see the financial injustices that are being done to the millions of Americans that live paycheck to paycheck. In order to combat this, we offer loans that are much easier to pay off than our competitors. Our loans are paid back over the series of four payments, once every week. If you are struggling to make a payment, you can extend your payment right within our app by up to 29 days. Here at Possible, we don’t want to see you fail. We want to build value for you and help you to graduate past the need for companies like us. 

Interested in a credit builder loan at Possible? Download our app today and get started!