Remember to regularly audit your subscription services! You may be letting anywhere from $5 to $20 slip out of your wallet each month

by believe0101

This video about the hidden costs of monthly subscription services by the Wall Street Journal just popped up on my YouTube recommended videos list.

 

Ironically, the top comment is from someone joking about how they need to cancel their digital subscription to the WSJ!

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This video prompted me to do a self-audit, generating a master list of all my monthly subscriptions and annual fees (excluding things like my electric bill, internet, cell phone, etc.). Seems like a good exercise for most people to try.


Monthly Subscriptions:

  1. Cocofloss, $7/month for two packs – premium floss that has motivated me to floss every day
  2. Spotify Family, $15/month – shared with my siblings/spouses-in-law, so the net cost to my immediate family is $6
  3. New York Times, $4/month – I recently got a 6 month promo rate for digital access, but honestly I rarely have time read the news….I might end up canceling this!
  4. Netflix, $0/month for now…..using my friend’s account for free! I dogsit for him occasionally, so it’s a good barter system. Even before the rate hike, I was tired of paying each month for this.
  5. Ring Doorbell 2, $0/month because I refuse to pay for storage when companies like WyzeCam (which we use as a travel baby monitor) offer cloud video storage for free
  6. Google Drive, $1.99/month for 100GB of additional storage (my S/O works in design and needs a reliable cloud backup service. We all have Pixels, so this is pretty seamless integration) ___________________

Annual Fees:

  1. Hyatt Credit Card, $79/year – gets us one free night in a Category 1-4 Hyatt property each year….this is our third year with this card and it easily pays for itself
  2. Costco membership, $55/year – honestly we might cancel this one — we can get almost everything from Target/Amazon, and we don’t eat that much lol)
  3. Amazon Prime, $119/year – split between my family. My dad is the primary account holder, and we only pay $30/year
  4. AAA, $100/year – mostly a peace of mind thing at this point. I’ve needed towing once in the last few years. I don’t know if my spouse has ever utilized their services. Maybe I could use more of their discounts on other services — I heard they do museums?
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