Do me a favor. Stop reading this article for 30 seconds and count up all the paid subscriptions you have in your life today. Count the Apple Music/Spotify, the TV streaming, the food delivery, the online shopping, the travel credit cards, the magazines, the gyms, the rideshares, and anything else. I counted 8 for me.

Was this somewhat eye opening? Did you recall ones that you had previously forgotten about, or ones that you very rarely use? Are you getting the full value out of them, or are you underutilizing them? Could you consolidate or even get rid of some of them?

We live in a world full of subscriptions. It seems like everything is a subscription in life – Microsoft Office, our gyms, our meal delivery, our music, our TVs, grocery delivery, swim lessons for the YMF family as of late, and of course our online ecommerce subscriptions. While in theory subscriptions aren’t bad but depending on your budget and your usage of them, it might be worth downgrading, cancelling or consolidating! However, this is easier said than done!

How they are sneaky and stick around

Subscriptions are pretty sneaky in how they so quickly become ingrained in our budget, and are either forgotten about, or become convincingly important to the point where we couldn’t imagine life without them. Businesses know this and take advantage by turning their services or products into subscriptions, and also by making free trials readily available.

Subscriptions take advantage of two common traits many of us share: we’re lazy and we don’t like change. Firstly, we’re lazy. Companies make it super easy to signup, but very difficult to cancel. Who wants to call and go through the sales pitch or hassle to cancel? Who has the time to follow-up on an email to make sure the subscription was officially cancelled? It’s almost not worth the $5 or $10 monthly fee to go through the hassle. Secondly, we don’t like change. After we get over the fact that we’re lazy and get up the energy to cancel, we are then presented with the FOMO (fear of missing out) on actually losing the service. “Well, I did watch x hours of TV last month, or I do think I’ll use it more in the future, or I just can’t really imagine going back to life before” – how many of those excuses have you said? Change is hard, and the fear of the unknown makes it difficult to imagine life without ____ subscription.

With both of these factors fighting against us, we often find ourselves putting off cancelling the subscription and continue paying for another month…and another month…and another month!

What we can do about it

I fall right there with you on it being hard to cancel subscriptions. I’ve written about this in my post, “My big credit card problem”, in which I revealed I was paying some $959/year just in credit card annual fees. Change is hard, cancelling is hard and I more often than not just let them continue to make things easier for me. If you find yourself in this category, here are 3 ideas I have to better manage your subscriptions:

1. Be very careful before signing up. It’s far too easy to signup for a new subscription. It can be done with a few clicks and you get that nearly instant gratification of trying something new. However once you do signup, even for a free trial, it’s very difficult to cancel and stop once you start! To avoid falling into this trap altogether, be very careful and consider long and hard before signing up for a new subscription. I fought off paying for Apple Music for years before I finally grew tired of all of YouTube’s advertisements interrupting my music. I’ve had my eyes on the Amex Platinum credit card for years but have resisted the urge. Be sure you can long term afford it and that the service or product will add value equal or greater to the price before signing up!

2. Find a way to keep track of the value received. Now, I know that not everyone is as intense as I am and you probably won’t create a spreadsheet to keep track of every time you use a product or service, but it’s an idea! At least try to be more aware of everything that you are paying for to ensure you’re taking advantage of it. Pay for the fancy Uber membership? Keep tabs on how often you’re taking Uber. Paying for a meal delivery like DoorDash or Grubhub? How many times are you doing takeout vs. dining in, and how many of those times should you have actually been cooking at home? How often are you actually watching Disney+? Keeping tabs will help ensure you’re a) getting value and b) getting enough value!

3 Do an annual gut check. Once a year or so, have a heart to heart with yourself to re-evaluate your subscriptions. How often did you actually use them? Did you find value and enjoyment out of them? How does your budget look and should you be cutting back on expenses moving forward? Will the coming year be different than the last in terms of your usage of the product/service? COVID 2020 and 2021 was a big one for me. I ended up downgrading several credit cards due to my lack of travel. We are however getting a lot of use from YouTubeTV, which is a no brainer for us to keep. Be honest with yourself and when you commit to cancelling/downgrading, or even signing up – hold yourself accountable!

Subscriptions are a great part of life and in many ways will make our lives better and more enjoyable. However, sometimes our lives change along with our habits and usage of subscriptions. Make sure you’re getting full value out of them and if you’re not, don’t be afraid to cut it out of your life! No sense in putting your hard earned money towards something you’re not using!