It’s Time to Check Your Auto-Paid Subscriptions
How much subscription services do you pay for? A study by tech consulting firm West Monroe found that the average American spends $ 237 a month on an auto-paid subscription, or $ 2,844 a year, and most underestimate what they think they owe. If you’re not sure what you’re spending on, it’s time to check your subscriptions.
Separate perception from reality
It is not for nothing that payments for automatic renewal of a subscription are called “evergreen”. At the end of your monthly or yearly subscription, these services will automatically renew unless you choose to cancel. Of course, that’s why they are so difficult to track. If you stop using a service, you forget that it exists and do not notice that the costs for it are increasing. For example, 84% of respondents in the West Monroe survey underestimated their subscription costs, and 51% were mistaken by $ 100 or more.
It seems crazy until you consider the proliferation of subscription services in recent years across all kinds of categories: food boxes, games, fitness apps, media, dating apps, cloud storage … the list goes on. Who will be able to track only by subscription to TV and movies? As an example, try scrolling to the bottom of this Flixed post, which lists every known streaming service available in the US.
Add free trials here too. You may have been planning to cancel your trial before it expires (say Disney + after the end of The Mandalorian ), but you also forgot about it. Don’t forget about the price hike on your existing subscription that you probably missed – it all adds up.
How to control your subscriptions
The first step is to define recurring payments on your credit or debit card and online bank accounts. Take an hour to list all of your monthly and annual subscription costs for the last year. Do you recognize some of them? Or maybe there is a service that you love but rarely use? Go ahead and cancel them. Create a calendar reminder for yourself to do this every month or so if you really want to stay in the loop.
Another quick option is to check your iPhone’s settings for unwanted apps that you might be paying for too. And the apps have dedicated subscription tracking services like TrueBill , Bobby , Subscro, and more. These apps connect to your bank accounts and automatically detect subscription services, which you can then track in a customizable dashboard. But remember that many of these apps are tiered and additional services may charge you monthly fees, making them … just another auto-pay subscription service.