The Monthly Subscription Purge
Last year I was listening to Financial Feminist (I can’t remember which episode) and the guest was talking about the temptation/dread of just cancelling all of your monthly subscriptions when you first sit down to make a budget. They argued that getting rid of ones that truly aren’t serving you is great, but you can only reduce costs so much; at a certain point you have to focus on earning more money.
I still totally believe that advice, but yesterday I realized that I was using it too quickly to justify keeping subscriptions I want but don’t really need.
I’m reading Your Best Financial Life by Anne Lester, and she said to pick a subscription, multiply the monthly cost by 12, and then decide if the annual price is still worth the money. So that’s what I did for all of my subscriptions last night.
Before I started, I made it a point to remind myself to not over-dramatize keeping or cancelling anything. None of these things mean life or death. I didn’t have a long list in the first place, but here’s what didn’t make it:
Apple Music ($11/month - $132/year): I just finished Patti Smith’s Just Kids, which was a great reminder that I miss making art, and half the fun of living is digging around to find cool things. It’s just not worth the yearly cost when free alternatives exist. I’ve also been in a real plateau for listening to music in general, so I think this will be a nice shake up.
CHANI ($11/month - $132/year): I love the daily readings and it comes with a ton of other content, but I don’t use any of it.
Eddie’s List ($8/month - $96/year ): This one was hard because I want to support the writer, I just can’t justify the cost when there are other event calendars/apps out there. I plan on picking this one back up though someday when I can.
All together that’s $360 a year. Sure it's not a lot, it doesn’t even cover a car payment, but it’s also not so little that I’d be ok just throwing it out the window for things I don’t truly need.
So what survived the purge? One $5 Patreon subscription to Celebrity Memoir Book Club and $5 for Bear Blog. That’s it. (watching TV and movies has always been a communal activity to me, and I live alone right now, so I don’t have any streaming services)
When I started writing this out earlier today, I had already forgotten what subscriptions I “lost” last night. It may not be much, but this feels good.