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I frequently cancel subscriptions to services I don't use often and just re-subscribe when I want them again. I've been on and off spotify, netflix, and amazon

I frequently cancel subscriptions to services I don't use often and just re-subscribe when I want them again. I've been on and off spotify, netflix, and amazon prime, and a few subscription based games quite a few times at this point. The only things I pay for on a subscription basis at the moment is $11 a month for a subscription-based game and $25 a month to a patreon so that I can read their weekly chapter early. I could drop the latter if I was willing to go a few weeks without updates, but I'm too invested in the current point of the story and do not yet mind the cost. I also don't think people spending $200 a month on subscriptions is out of the norm, considering most people I know from the generation above mine pay that just for their cable bill. That being said, I still think it's crazy to spend that kind of money for something like cable. To be honest, this just reads like a post from /r/personalfinance from someone who is not good at managing their money. I don't know how much your monthly expenses cut into your income, but I would guess noticeably so if you are making this post. ----- EDIT I realized I missed a few other things I pay for since I don't think of them as subscriptions, even if they are. I pay whatever it costs to own 5 domain names and a digitalocean droplet.

ozarkerD 5y ago
Does the $11 happen to be Runescape? :) It caused quite a stir when they upped the subscription price.
- xboxnolifes 5y ago
  It is, and I figured a lot of people would recognize the $11 :)
  - ozarkerD 5y ago
    I’m so sad I let my subscription lapse. I was grandfathered in at the $5 price point for quite a while.
vmoore 5y ago
> I frequently cancel subscriptions to services I don't use often and just re-subscribe when I want them again I do this too. One trick for this is to use a 'virtual card' or disposable CC for subscriptions (With Revolut you can create those). And if you don't want to be charged, just terminate the card, rather than cancel the subscription. I do this where cancelling means lots of back-and-forth with support (many services don't make it easy to cancel a subscription)
- orev 5y ago
  I’m so tired of seeing this type of advice given about subscriptions, and shocked to see it on HN. Cancelling the payment method is NOT an acceptable way to cancel a service. It does not absolve you of the obligation you made in the service agreement to pay them. Taking this approach WILL result in your debts being sent to collections and damaging your credit rating. People seem to get away with it for a short time, or for small services where the cost of collecting is more than the subscription cost, but you can be sure that companies will figure this out and come up with a solution to make you pay up.
  - prirun 5y ago
    And for those who think, "F it, I don't plan to borrow money and don't care about my credit rating!", you may want to reconsider. I recently signed up for an Amazon / Chase credit card, hit the $500 limit the first month (I didn't realize the limit was so low), paid it off and canceled it since the limit was too low and it was going to be a hassle to raise it (have to make online accounts with Chase, talk to reps on the phone, etc.) This cause my credit rating to be dinged slightly down from 830, which caused my insurance score to go down, which caused my homeowner's and car insurance to go up - several hundred dollars. How a credit rating has any relation to the cost of insurance is something only Lexis-Nexus and an insurance company could make sense out of.
    - deanmoriarty 5y ago
      I have an incredibly hard time imagining a 10-20 point drop in credit score (which is a typical drop that closing an account on an otherwise healthy creditor would cause) causing such effects. For years my credit score fluctuated between 790-820 depending on how many accounts I open/close at any given time and the outstanding balance, and nobody cared at all. Always got the best interest rates available on the market. I’m sure you are in absolutely good faith, but I just don’t believe the correlation is as you imply. Are you sure you just didn’t get hit by the inflation we are all experiencing?
JadoJodo 5y ago
I'll clarify that I think “afloat” was the wrong choice of word; “lean” is probably a better one. I (generally) am pretty good about killing off subscriptions that I'm not using (I killed one yesterday, gitpod.io because I just haven't been able to use it much); I think this post came more out of a sense that subscriptions are taking over the world. There are numerous services that are good services, that I would use, but it's _because_ it would be irresponsible to spend $200+/mo on subscriptions that I don't subscribe.
BizarroLand 5y ago
Sounds like there's money to be made there, a SaS system that would let you register all of your accounts and then will automatically cancel and subscribe you to them on a revolving system. You set how much per month you want to spend & pay the SaS $2.99 to run the gauntlet of suspending your services and enabling them + sending you an email or notification of what services are changing each month. Ideas are cheap, so if anyone wants to make this I'd appreciate a free year of usage but otherwise have fun!
- bradknowles 5y ago
  If you do your subscriptions through Apple, they make it really easy to track what you’re subscribed to, how much it costs, and make it really easy to terminate any subscriptions that you no longer want. This is one of the things that many Apple customers actually value the most about their service. But I think only Apple is big enough that they can make this model work. Otherwise, no one would want to offer their services through Apple, because Apple makes it too easy for customers to terminate their subscriptions.
DiggyJohnson 5y ago
Is that game RuneScape?

ozarkerD 5y ago

Does the $11 happen to be Runescape? :) It caused quite a stir when they upped the subscription price.

xboxnolifes 5y ago
It is, and I figured a lot of people would recognize the $11 :)
- ozarkerD 5y ago
  I’m so sad I let my subscription lapse. I was grandfathered in at the $5 price point for quite a while.

vmoore 5y ago

> I frequently cancel subscriptions to services I don't use often and just re-subscribe when I want them again I do this too. One trick for this is to use a 'virtual card' or disposable CC for subscriptions (With Revolut you can create those). And if you don't want to be charged, just terminate the card, rather than cancel the subscription. I do this where cancelling means lots of back-and-forth with support (many services don't make it easy to cancel a subscription)

orev 5y ago
I’m so tired of seeing this type of advice given about subscriptions, and shocked to see it on HN. Cancelling the payment method is NOT an acceptable way to cancel a service. It does not absolve you of the obligation you made in the service agreement to pay them. Taking this approach WILL result in your debts being sent to collections and damaging your credit rating. People seem to get away with it for a short time, or for small services where the cost of collecting is more than the subscription cost, but you can be sure that companies will figure this out and come up with a solution to make you pay up.
- prirun 5y ago
  And for those who think, "F it, I don't plan to borrow money and don't care about my credit rating!", you may want to reconsider. I recently signed up for an Amazon / Chase credit card, hit the $500 limit the first month (I didn't realize the limit was so low), paid it off and canceled it since the limit was too low and it was going to be a hassle to raise it (have to make online accounts with Chase, talk to reps on the phone, etc.) This cause my credit rating to be dinged slightly down from 830, which caused my insurance score to go down, which caused my homeowner's and car insurance to go up - several hundred dollars. How a credit rating has any relation to the cost of insurance is something only Lexis-Nexus and an insurance company could make sense out of.
  - deanmoriarty 5y ago
    I have an incredibly hard time imagining a 10-20 point drop in credit score (which is a typical drop that closing an account on an otherwise healthy creditor would cause) causing such effects. For years my credit score fluctuated between 790-820 depending on how many accounts I open/close at any given time and the outstanding balance, and nobody cared at all. Always got the best interest rates available on the market. I’m sure you are in absolutely good faith, but I just don’t believe the correlation is as you imply. Are you sure you just didn’t get hit by the inflation we are all experiencing?

JadoJodo 5y ago

I'll clarify that I think “afloat” was the wrong choice of word; “lean” is probably a better one. I (generally) am pretty good about killing off subscriptions that I'm not using (I killed one yesterday, gitpod.io because I just haven't been able to use it much); I think this post came more out of a sense that subscriptions are taking over the world. There are numerous services that are good services, that I would use, but it's _because_ it would be irresponsible to spend $200+/mo on subscriptions that I don't subscribe.

BizarroLand 5y ago

Sounds like there's money to be made there, a SaS system that would let you register all of your accounts and then will automatically cancel and subscribe you to them on a revolving system. You set how much per month you want to spend & pay the SaS $2.99 to run the gauntlet of suspending your services and enabling them + sending you an email or notification of what services are changing each month. Ideas are cheap, so if anyone wants to make this I'd appreciate a free year of usage but otherwise have fun!

bradknowles 5y ago
If you do your subscriptions through Apple, they make it really easy to track what you’re subscribed to, how much it costs, and make it really easy to terminate any subscriptions that you no longer want. This is one of the things that many Apple customers actually value the most about their service. But I think only Apple is big enough that they can make this model work. Otherwise, no one would want to offer their services through Apple, because Apple makes it too easy for customers to terminate their subscriptions.

DiggyJohnson 5y ago

Is that game RuneScape?