Subscriptions are not small

A subscription is the only purchase that keeps happening after you stop wanting it. That is not a moral failing on your part — it is the product working exactly as designed. The decision was made once, cheaply, and it renews without ever asking again.

The arithmetic is the part people avoid. Nine-ninety-nine a month is a hundred and twenty a year. Six of them is seven hundred and twenty. Most households have more than six and can name four.

Find them, which is harder than cancelling them

Cancelling takes two minutes. Finding takes an evening, because a subscription hides in the one place you do not read: a bank statement, as a vendor name you do not recognise, between the groceries.

The method that works is dull. Take three months of statements, not one — annual charges hide in the other two. Mark every line that repeats. The repeats are the list, and the list is almost always longer than the guess.

Then sort them into three piles

Used this month, and worth it. Used this month, and not worth it. Not used.

The third pile is easy and usually the smallest. The money is in the second pile, and the question there is not whether the thing is good — it is whether you would buy it again today at that price, knowing what a year of it costs.

The trap on the way out

Cancel at the end of the paid period, not at the start of one, and note the date somewhere that will remind you — many services keep you running until the term expires, and the ones that do not will not refund you for being early.

And write down what you cancelled. Six months from now you will consider buying it again, and the only useful thing you can tell yourself is that you already tried it and stopped.

Where a space helps

If your spending is here, the repeats find themselves: the same vendor, the same amount, every month, is a pattern a screen can see and a human cannot. Nothing moves your money and nothing cancels anything — you get the list, which is the part that was missing.