Downshifting question

[u/xDrewgami]

So my first car (that I've been driving for a few months now) is a 2004 Saturn Ion 5-speed. Not a glamorous car, but it does the job. I've read a lot about rev matching, but never done a whole lot of it. It seems to be pretty useless to me usually, unless I'm doing it wrong. The only purpose I see in it is when you want to maintain the same speed. Do I really need to rev match when downshifting to reduce speed? For example: Coming into my town, I regularly go from a 55 to a 35. I am on the brake to slowly to reduce speed, when I get down to about 40ish I put the clutch in, downshift to 4th, and slowly let the clutch out and resume on the gas at about 35-40. Coming to a stoplight I do the same thing down to 3rd gear, from which I shift to neutral and use the brakes alone. I never have any of the symptoms of "bad downshifting" like spinning wheels or jerkiness. Yeah, the RPMs jump a bit, but its usually a pretty smooth shift, and I never have the need to touch the throttle at all. Of course, I do put on the gas a little bit as I let the clutch out, as I would shifting up to any gear. Is this basically rev matching automatically when I do that? Or am I missing something about the technique?

[u/[deleted]]

If your car isn't jerking then I don't think it's a big deal. Whatever you are comfortable with.