- Change your database RDS instance security group to allow your machine to access it.
- Add your ip to the security group to acces the instance via Postgres.
 
- Make a copy of the database using pg_dump
- $ pg_dump -h <public dns> -U <my username> -f <name of dump file .sql> <name of my database>
- you will be asked for postgressql password.
- a dump file(.sql) will be created
 
- Restore that dump file to your local database.
- but you might need to drop the database and create it first
- $ psql -U <postgresql username> -d <database name> -f <dump file that you want to restore>
 
- the database is restored