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$9.99/month

• sdze 4y ago
  That’s why I have a personal finance spreadsheet. Also I despise subscriptions
• chazeon 4y ago
  I recently build a importer for Beancount to allow me to import AppStore orders into beancount to analyze my subscription situation there. From my experience I want to accuse Apple has make this particularly difficult against user to do this kind of analysis easily. https://github.com/chazeon/beancount-extra/tree/master/importers/itunes https://github.com/chazeon/beancount-extra/tree/master/impor...
• t0bia_s 4y ago
  Subscription model should be abandoned and replaced by paying for actual time using/consuming. Many useless apps would die immediately, scammers would be reduced and innovation would grow up. More subscription = more consumerism = less time for creativity. And more work to pay all subscriptions. It's a trap.
• hendersoon 4y ago
  Yep, they certainly do add up! That's why I refuse to subscribe to any app. I will never, ever, subscribe. I've abandoned apps I love when they transitioned to subscriptions. Note that I do subscribe to services. Disney+ and Amazon Prime provide a service. I also subscribe to Deliveries (which is $5/yr not $7 as the article states) to track packages. Again it's a service not just an app; they actually do something on the backend-- I autoforward package notifications to a special email address and they're immediately added to the app. Very convenient.
• game-of-throws 4y ago
  That is an unreal amount of money to be spending on subscriptions. I can't imagine paying more for software every month than my mortgage.
  • dqv 4y ago
    ha I think you may be getting the yearly and monthly costs mixed up. Under $126/month for a mortgage sounds like an amazing deal
    • game-of-throws 4y ago
      Oops you're right, I take it back. $1500/year is still pretty steep though.
      • bombcar 4y ago
        Not as much as many pay for their cell phone, tbh.
  • system2 4y ago
    Where do you live that you can pay $1,500 per month mortgage? I am assuming out of the states?
    • dqv 4y ago
      Before 2020 that was pretty easy to accomplish. My home in the Raleigh-Durham area is under $1500/month including taxes, homeowner's insurance, and HOA fees.
      • system2 4y ago
        That's almost twice cheaper than California studio rent. No wonder why people are leaving the big cities. Thank you, I was considering moving out of California and I might if the mortgages are still like that in other states.
• gtm1260 4y ago
  Highly recommend an app like truebill or something that analyzes your bank account! I found subscriptions to things I had totally forgot about etc. and saved a significant amount of money right away.
  • noirbot 4y ago
    How much value does this provide vs. just checking over your account history every month? It feels like a pretty high price to pay in terms of access to your data just to have them check for things that you could probably do by exporting a CSV and searching for things.
    • gtm1260 4y ago
      Can I say, just having the transaction merchant name converted to a more human readable version makes it worth it in and of itself (there are probably some free services that do this).
    • travisjungroth 4y ago
      I've found it's not worth it. What I've had be most impactful is just to look at all the transactions on my accounts every paycheck. I notice subscriptions to cancel, spending I want to change. I don't think looking at sums is actually much more powerful than looking at items. The count carries a weight. There's also no chance of analysis paralysis, slicing and showing things a hundred ways to avoid the heart of the matter. It's just you and the transactions. It leads to less understanding but better decisions.
  • capableweb 4y ago
    I took a look at Truebill, and expected to find a list of supported banks somewhere, probably prominent on the landing page, as how are they supposed to be able to analyze my bank account otherwise? But, there is no such information. Applications that reads data from banks keeps doing this, missing to display the single most important piece of data before I signed up.
    • 4y ago
• 63 4y ago
  Is it typical to spend so much on software subscriptions? I pay for Spotify and a cheap VPS if that counts but that's it. I figured the average person probably has one or two media subscriptions (Netflix, Disney, Spotify, etc) and nothing else.
  • ghaff 4y ago
    I would say that's definitely on the high side. What you're describing is probably on the low side. Of course, many people spend about $100/month on a cable TV bill. It looks like he has a couple of sports subscriptions but doesn't actually seem to be paying for live TV in general.
    • reaperducer 4y ago
      Of course, many people spend about $100/month on a cable TV bill. I think $100 may be low these days. At a neighborhood party around 2017 I asked people what they were paying for their cable service, because I was thinking about switching from satellite. Not one was under $125, and most were in the $175 area. $250 with internet. The big sports fans were well over $300/month. One guy who considers himself a "professional sports gambler" (when he's not repairing air conditioners 9 to 5) said he was paying over $600/month to feed the wall of six 60-inch TVs in his man cave. "Hunnert bucks a screen!" he crowed proudly. I ended up keeping my existing service, which I think was in the $35/month range.
      • ssl232 4y ago
        I know this has come up before, but since the gulf in cost is so stark I thought I'd mention it again. In the UK I just signed up to a £20/month VDSL2 broadband service (approx 65 Mbps, FTTC, unmetered), rolling monthly contract, and £65 up front. The contract guarantees at least around 50 Mbps or they automatically pay compensation. $100/month seems pretty crazy to me. I know the lack of competition and widespread collusion is bad in the US amongst cable companies, but you saying people typically pay 5x more for what seems like similar service to what I'm getting is really eye-opening. Apart from Virgin Media most companies share the OpenReach network that's sort of publicly funded (ish). Yet, the UK isn't exactly known for investing well in public services so I'm still surprised at the gulf in cost.
• bergenty 4y ago
  This list is particularly egregious. I have a Netflix and Amazon prime subscription and that’s about it.
  • rr808 4y ago
    Why do you need Amazon? You can easily live without that.
    • bergenty 4y ago
      Not really, shops around me don’t have the niche things I want. I have a Amazon credit card that gives me 5% back on each purchase and a lot of things are one day deliveries.
    • whymauri 4y ago
      I actually stream more, rather than shop, via Prime these days.
    • collaborative 4y ago
      Funny, it's my only subscription. Wife is gonna buy loads from them anyway, and this way I also get some digital content (which happens to be more than I can watch)
    • mechanical_bear 4y ago
      Because they like it?
      • noirbot 4y ago
        Presumably this is why the writer of the article is paying for everything they're paying for as well, but per the OP, they're "egregious" for doing so.
• noirbot 4y ago
  I always find these discussions interesting. The risks that the article outlines around losing track of how much you're spending are certainly real, but there's two things that strike me around all of this: 1. I somewhat object to them including things like Disney+ or MLB in this calculation. Sure, it's an app subscription, but you're primarily not paying for an app with its features and development, you're buying access to content that you happen to be receiving and paying for via an app. You wouldn't include subscriptions to products on Amazon as an "app subscription" even if you bought it through the Amazon app. 2. I'm curious to balance the rise of the subscription model with what I see as a generally increased quality and upkeep of many of the apps that are on it. There's obviously exceptions, but apps like Carrot Weather, Craft, and Flighty I find to be a generally superior experience to the $3 single-purchase apps that they generally replaced. Many of them are on the cutting edge of using new OS features well, for instance Carrot's widget support is amazing. I've totally forgotten the dread of an OS update where half of your programs just stop working for weeks or months, or even forever.
  • ghaff 4y ago
    Yeah, while he did categorize the subscriptions, I do think it would be useful to break things down as content, applications, and infrastructure. There's some overlap as with Apple One (which includes both storage and News+ for example), but it probably makes sense to separate out a Disney+ from a Grammarly.
    • noirbot 4y ago
      I even see Grammarly as being in an odd category since it's also presumably something they use on a computer and not just an app. I'd split it up as Content, Services, and Applications. Something like Apple News, The New York Times, or MLB you're buying access via an app to content you could potentially get/consume via non-app means, though likely still paid. Services like a Grammerly or a VPN are an ongoing cost for usage. Applications like a Bear or Carrot Weather are purely optional. You could use Notes and Apple Weather if you wanted, but you're paying an extra X per month to fund the development and upkeep of a tool you find use out of. The split I think helps you identify what you may want to stop paying for because each of those are slightly different calculations. You could maybe replace Netflix with a local library card, or just buying theater tickets and DVDs. You could go back to using Notes or some other app instead of using Bear. There's no real alternative to paying for a VPN, so that becomes harder to decide you no longer need once you've decided you need it.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• DantesKite 4y ago
  I'm surprised there isn't a straightforward financial app that could tell you all this information with an intuitive graph. I'd pay $9.99 a month for that.
  • skydhash 4y ago
    I use bobby [0] for that [0]: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bobby-track-subscriptions/id1059152023 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bobby-track-subscriptions/id10...
  • Tepix 4y ago
    I wouldn't.
  • pards 4y ago
    The major Canadian banks offer this as a standard feature.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • paradite 4y ago
    It's free. I use one dedicated free debit card to pay for all my subscriptions. You can see the bank statements in details every month. Also graphs.
    • lotsofpulp 4y ago
      In the US, you can even earn at least 2% cash back with a free credit card and get the same breakdown and analysis from almost any bank website.
  • sakopov 4y ago
    I use virtual cards via privacy.com to pay for subscriptions. I generate a virtual card with a monthly or annual limit on it for each individual subscription service. Each card is backed by my real credit card. When a virtual card is charged, my credit card is charged. If it's charged over card limit, the transaction doesn't go through. The nice thing about this is i can login to my privacy.com account and look at all of my subscription spend. If I ever needed to cancel any subscription I can also burn the virtual card so I don't get over charged.
• jsnell 4y ago
  > didn't think my list was particularly egregious. There's Apple One, a markdown app, a weather app, a few streaming services, a VPN, a password manager, and a few more At this point I thought I was reading satire, but reading to the end it is clearly earnest. How is an annual subscription to a weather app not egregious? Commercial VPNs are mostly scams preying on people's irrational privacy fears. I personally wouldn't pay an ongoing fee for a password manager. And paying $400 / year for cloud storage seems pretty steep, but we can't know whether the author really needs 2TB.
  • SoftTalker 4y ago
    Yeah I have two subscriptions: Netflix, and YouTube Premium. I have purchased a handful of other apps on my phone but all were one-time payments.
  • ghaff 4y ago
    Apple One is a bundle. If you use the majority of the services at a given tier, it can make sense to just buy the bundle rather than a la carte. Some of those definitely seem high for what they are. Certainly he has more than I do although I do subscribe to The Economist and The New York Times which are relatively high ticket and also have an Adobe subscription--in addition to various streaming content.
  • perardi 4y ago
    I didn’t realize Apple One Premier was that expensive. I…guess it could make financial sense? If you do use Apple Music for streaming, and you do watch shows on Apple TV, and if you have a family that could plausibly use 2TB of backup storage. But yikes that seems costly—I have the 200GB iCloud Storage plan, and I still have over 100GB available.
    • iasay 4y ago
      I have it. I use it with 6 people and we all use Apple Music, watch stuff on Apple TV and use about 1.2TB of storage for backing up 5 macs and 12 iOS devices. Two of us use Apple Fitness. Oh plus hosting 3 email domains. Works out fairly cheap if you use it all.
• tppiotrowski 4y ago
  A CEO I worked with a while back just cancelled her CC every few months. Then she'd resubscribe to things she was still using. She said she didn't have time to cancel all those subscriptions individually. I thought it was poor form since a lot of services bill at the end of the month and would never get that last months due.
  • lozenge 4y ago
    That's definitely CEO behaviour, legally she is still on the hook for that expense and it can go on her credit rating. Don't try this at home!
    • lh7777 4y ago
      Is this a common risk? Most subscriptions I can think of are prepaid —- they charge you when service starts. If your card expires or is cancelled, they shut down your account once the paid subscription runs out. A notable exception is US cell phone plans. I think most people still have postpaid plans and of course the carrier will send you to collections if you don’t pay. That’s why you have to agree to a credit check, though. I’ve never been subject to a credit check to sign up for a software or streaming service.
  • slotrans 4y ago
    If by "cancel" we mean have the CC issue a new card with a new number but the same account, this doesn't always work anymore. The issuer may supply the new number to merchants who perform recurring charges.
• daneel_w 4y ago
  I currently have two online service subscriptions: Posteo (e-mail) for €1.20/month, and a VPS for €5/month.
• Invictus0 4y ago
  Is it unusual that I have zero subscriptions to anything?
  • jjice 4y ago
    Most people I know at least use a music streaming service, so I'd say you're in the minority of people that I know. Respect to you!
  • grishka 4y ago
    I pay for my server, but I don't consider that a subscription. So I also have zero subscriptions.
  • McNutty 4y ago
    Unusual in terms of total world population, probably not. Unusual in terms of HN readers, I'd think most people here have at least 1x video streaming service at home.
  • system2 4y ago
    Maybe one video (Hulu or Netflix) is understandable. Maybe one Spotify if the person likes to listen to music without interruptions or non-youtube form on the go. Anything else in this article is hard to believe/understand for most of us.
• izzydata 4y ago
  I haven't even heard of 90% of these things. It seems hard to believe that people could have so many things in their life that need paid software solutions. I get the feeling that most of these are solutions trying to invent problems instead.
  • system2 4y ago
    You are in the majority. I bet 99.9% of HN readers don't have these either.
  • noirbot 4y ago
    The more charitable read is that there's a lot of free 80% solutions that a lot of people are totally ok with, and some number of 90-100% solutions that a dedicated set of developers provide to people who actually care. I don't NEED almost any of the software I pay for, but I can justify spending $20/365 on an application I use a few times per day to make it better for me to use than the free version.
• 1270018080 4y ago
  I would be embarrassed to post a list like that. This "consooming" just for the sake of it. Like part of their identity is paying for subscription services. I wish I had the writing skills to fully elaborate on why this irks me so much.
  • noirbot 4y ago
    That seems like a profoundly ungenerous take to have on someone making a fairly honest post about them realizing they'd let their finances get away from them. It's not as if they're bragging about how much they spend. Presumably these are all things they started paying for because they found enjoyment or value in them at the time - no different than why anyone else pays for anything.
    • cowtools 4y ago
      The best things in life are free.
      • noirbot 4y ago
        While we're throwing out cliches, I pay far more than this for health care and health insurance. I can promise you that me being alive still is the best thing in my life, and it is definitely not free.
  • bowsamic 4y ago
    I think you are projecting quite a lot here
• sashk 4y ago
  Most of my subscriptions are for video services like Netflix, Hulu, Disney+ and HBO Max.. But some of the software subscriptions present there and my current monthly bill comes to little bit over $150/month. Well, at least it is what Bobby (iOS app - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bobby-track-subscriptions/id1059152023 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bobby-track-subscriptions/id10...) says. The only problem I need not to forget to add/update subscriptions. There are apps which will track these things for me, but will require to share access to credit card/bank accounts, which I don't feel like providing.
• hgazx 4y ago
• _Algernon_ 4y ago
  My subscriptions amount to b2 for backup (<1$ a month), a Linode for projects/experiments from time to time (5$/month). Everything else I'd rather pay a flat fee to own it or find a free alternative. The author's list is ridiculous.
• teeray 4y ago
  A cheap way I’ve been keeping subscriptions from getting away from me is to log each one in a spreadsheet with name, type (monthly, annual), amount, and renewal date. Using this, I can find things to cancel when I want to sign up for something new. It also helps point out opportunities for annualizing monthly subscriptions I want to keep for additional savings.
  • Havoc 4y ago
    > and renewal date. Might just do that. The auto-renews always slip past somehow...
    • enos_feedler 4y ago
      Most things let you keep access until expiration so just default to cancel and see what sticks for you. I always log in to cancel most things I start right away.
  • CarVac 4y ago
    I log all my subscriptions and other periodic income/expenses and keep track of my daily net income... when you look at the impact a subscription makes per day it makes you very wary of them.
  • neilv 4y ago
    For people using GnuCash, you can define these in GnuCash rather than separate spreadsheets/files (menu "Actions > Scheduled Transations"). Then, whenever the scheduled time occurs, GnuCash will add the right double-entry accounting entries, and notify you the next time you start an interactive session. Like any transactions added manually in GnuCash, these will be matched up with imported data (and any transactions in imported data that are not already entered manually or by schedule will be highlighted as new). The scheduled transactions also show up like any other when you reconcile a GnuCash account with a statement from the bank/CC.
• josnyder 4y ago
  I'm a big fan of privacy.com: they provide me with a spend-limited debit card number that varies by vendor. I use them especially for newspaper subscriptions that make it difficult to cancel and have balloon renewal payments.
• nharada 4y ago
  I'm surprised that this crowd in particular is so incensed by someone paying $125 bucks a month for their software. If anyone knows how much it costs to make good software and run a company that operates and maintains, I'd think it would be HN.
  • otterley 4y ago
    It's been this way for years. HNers have a particularly egregious sense of entitlement around software, which is ironic because writing software pays their own bills. Perhaps a larger proportion of them nowadays are writing services that advertisers, rather than customers, are paying for, and so they don't see the cognitive dissonance.
  • rootsudo 4y ago
    Because most people don't realize how these fees compound. The realization is why people are incensed. Which really makes you wonder, what businesses just survive by just this SAAS model that couldn't before in perpetual license/pre smart phone world.
    • otterley 4y ago
      You would also think that HNers, being programmers, know how to do basic arithmetic.
  • ricardobeat 4y ago
    It's easy to lose perspective, but that amount is 5% of the average net income in the US.
    • temp_praneshp 4y ago
      Any reason to believe that's true for the subset of US residents that are on HN?
    • noirbot 4y ago
      Sure, but not the average net income for people on HN probably, or the author's. The entire article is about them realizing they're probably spending too much!
• blackdogie 4y ago
  I tend to try to cancel some of mine a few times a year and renew the next I need them. That might be a two weeks (save 5%), a month (save 10%) or more. This is also another reason (besides the credit card savings) why SAAS companies offering yearly deals really makes sense.
• davidkuennen 4y ago
  I find subscriptions interesting. Basically any business that wants to survive since forever used subscriptions. The term subscription for monthly or yearly payments labeled as that just receives a lot of hate. But what about the washing machine we have to buy again after X years? The iPhone we have to buy again after X years or any other product we use? Basically all subscriptions in disguise. Name one company that was successful in just selling their product one time to a customer.
  • Tepix 4y ago
    If i sell you lunch, is it a subscription just because you will eventually eat again? That doesn't make sense. The important criterion is that a subscription will make you pay automatically without you making another choice.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  • ChildOfChaos 4y ago
    I get it, but when it comes to Photoshop, you buy it and then can use that one version of the software for 10 years if you don't care about all of the upgrades, which aren't necessary, or you can pay ten years worth of monthly subscription fees. The subscription is massively more expensive. Buying a product and then buying a replacement at some point in the future is massively preferred to me over paying every month for that product. It allows me to budget and update when I want to depending on what features are released that I need or want or to replace the item when it wears out a subscription generally costs more and robs me of any flexibility. Production quality and innovation is also better without subscriptions. Businesses have to win me over with there new product or version and convince me it's worth paying to upgrade, if i'm already on a subscription, they don't really care as long as there are competitive to alternatives.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • 4y ago
• avgcorrection 4y ago
  Things like buying coffee (a hot cup of coffee while out and about) is not something I started doing before I had a full-time job. It would have been mad of me to do that as a student.
• austinl 4y ago
  I've become more open to paying for subscriptions over the years—especially for apps that continue to release updates or provide new content. Just to add another data point, I'm currently at $858.21/year: Music, TV Apple One (Family): $19.95/month Amazon Prime: $139/year Formula 1 TV: $79.99/year Fitness OpenSnow: $29.99/year AllTrails: $29.99/year Strava: $59.99/year Strong: $29.99/year Learning Lingvist: $9.99/month Waking Up: $99.99/year Misc VSCO: $29.99/year
• deleted 4y ago
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• mgaunard 4y ago
  I don't understand, 1,700 per year is nothing. You'd need to spend twice that amount just to acquire decent coffee equipment. Then waste a huge amount of time teaching yourself how to source good beans, make good coffee, not mentioning the time needed to execute and clean up even when you have achieved mastery. No, buying from a coffee shop with trained baristas making coffee all day is a much better deal, unless you're in need of a new hobby.
  • nicce 4y ago
    Where do I need to spend that much for coffee equipment?
    • mgaunard 4y ago
      The hint was in the "decent". The decent espresso machine is more than $3,000. You'll also need to acquire a grinder, usually around $1,000.
      • nicce 4y ago
        I did not think that espresso is standard for high quality coffee. It is just a type of the coffee. You can make ”decent” coffee with regular pressure boiler and $200 grinder.
        • mgaunard 4y ago
        • newaccount74 4y ago
          You don't even need a grinder unless you make espresso IMO. Filter coffee from pre-ground coffee is pretty good (as long as you drink enough coffee so it doesn't go stale).
          • nicce 4y ago
            I agree that if you are able to consume filter coffee quick enough, grinder is optional. Of course, unless you want to be picky with the roast of the coffee.
• dfee 4y ago
  I’m finishing up making my family a GAAP family (kinda joking, but mostly serious). I’m doing this to understand where my money comes from and where it goes. Think YNAB, but including paychecks, etc. against a family of four. Built with some hand crafted software on top of hledger, too. Anyway, we’re at about $80/mo, largely dominated by Apple One and Google Cloud subscriptions (though I’d love to move off the latter, but lock-in). What really gets me is the cell phone bill, though.
  • gumby 4y ago
    > What really gets me is the cell phone bill, though. What I don’t understand is that we have been on the same fixed, unlimited plan with five identical lines yet somehow the bill varies each month.
• gumby 4y ago
  Due to the screwy way credit works in the US I just use one card but have several (free) ones. Cancelling the others would make my credit worse; if I don’t use them for a while two companies have reduced the credit lines and I have heard others can be cancelled due to non use. So I distributed my subscriptions among them (in my case news, video, apps, clown subscriptions); every month I get a reminder to consider the spend. When I had everything on one card I had only one bill to pay but these subscriptions were buried in everything else.
  • fshbbdssbbgdd 4y ago
    I similarly have several credit cards, but they’re all on autopay. There’s some older ones where I don’t use the card anymore haven’t even logged into the account in a long time (but I may still use them for new transactions on websites where I saved the credit card info). The autopay comes out of my checking account, but it just says things like “citi $271.15” (made-up example). So effectively I do not know where my money is going and it’s possible I have subscriptions I forgot about. Just pointing out a potential pitfall of this situation. Someone’s who better at keeping up with all the details would not have this problem.
    • gumby 4y ago
      My cards are all on full autopay. This spreading around of subscriptions is it’s a way of making it easy to check and not be overwhelmed.
  • egypturnash 4y ago
    I am trying to decide if I want to learn more about your “clown subscriptions”. I’m betting it’s probably an autocorrect failure for “cloud” but I keep on trying to figure out what it would entail if you really meant to type “clown”.
    • gumby 4y ago
      The autocorrect is in my fingers — I’ve been saying/writing “clown” instead of “cloud” for so long it’s automatic. And rarely does anyone notice.
• dvt 4y ago
  > My current subscription tally came to $1,500 ($1,520 to be exact) per year Maybe I'm the crazy one, but how is this a lot? First, almost all of the apps are used by multiple people (Apple One Premier, the VPN, MLB, NHL, etc.). Second, let's assume a family of four with a US average salary of $55k for both parents. We end up with a household income of $110k, so the subscriptions are 1.3% of gross income. This is barely a blip on your financial radar. If your household income is $200k or above (which, let's face it, most HNers probably do earn), worrying about these subscriptions (which in this case would be <0.6% of your gross income) would literally not even be worth thinking about. I know HN has a thing for penny pinching, but if you're trying to build wealth, this ain't it.
  • lentil_soup 4y ago
    > If your household income is $200k or above (which, let's face it, most HNers probably do earn) What? Not everyone here lives in the US
    • noirbot 4y ago
      And? The author seems to, since they're paying for a number of US-specific services. Obviously if you make 20k USD, then paying 2k USD on entertainment and optional applications for you and your family is a bad idea. If you make 200k then it's probably not. We're here to talk about TFA. Coming here to comment that "people in country X can't afford this" isn't going to be a helpful conversation. People are aware that there's income differentials between countries.
      • lentil_soup 4y ago
        Sorry, but no, read again what I quoted. I never said people in X country can't afford this or passed any judgement on any of the numbers. I didn't even make a comment about the article. The poster claimed "If your household income is $200k or above (which, let's face it, most HNers probably do earn)" and I disagreed
  • thrdbndndn 4y ago
    Agreed. To be totally fair, I don't think $1500/yr is a small number, but the author subscribes to so many stuff. I can't get close to that even actively trying. I think most of people would end up with something close to $500/yr which is even more reasonable.
• wirthjason 4y ago
  Say you are building an app or service, does anyone have rules of thumb to setting subscription amounts or tier levels? As a consumer I like subscriptions because I can easily calculate, “how much time and effort do I spend doing X, is it worth $_____ a month for that?” My career has been enterprise software for internal apps so I’ve never sold software before. Setting costs feels like a WAG (at least initially).
  • ketzo 4y ago
    One very basic one that I see is "how much employee time am I saving you?" If a company pays its engineers $75/hour, saving 10 hours of engineer time is worth $750/month! That's a high number -- plus, it's on you to prove you really can save that much time with your service -- but I think it's a reasonable starting point.
• nonameking2026 4y ago
  A good reminder - thank you for sharing.
• cercatrova 4y ago
  With this many subscriptions, no wonder piracy is up, not to mention free and open source alternatives to many of these apps, such as with weather, productivity or note-taking apps.
• visiblink 4y ago
  This kind of calculation is what convinced me to quit smoking before going to university in 1990. Cigarettes were $5 / pack. I smoked a pack a day. $5 x 365 days x 4 years = $7300. Given that I was saving up the money beforehand, quitting was the difference between starting school in 1990 or 1991. I felt like a 'cold turkey' for about three months. But it was so worth it.
  • ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
    > Cigarettes were $5 / pack. I quit in 1980 ($0.65/pack). They are now close to $15/pack, in NY. I know, because I have a family member that still smokes. This does not even touch the cost to health.
    • conductr 4y ago
      That $5 number is suspicious to me, or perhaps just geographically skewed. In early 90s, I went to the store and bought cigarettes for my mom almost daily and I remember it being about $2.
      • visiblink 4y ago
        The $5 figure was from northern British Columbia. Cigarettes were much cheaper in the U.S. at the time (Canadians used to bring back a couple of duty-free cartons on a regular basis) and in Ontario, where the government reduced the taxes to counter smuggling. Edit: in the link below you can see that over the course of 1990, cigarette prices rose from $35 to $48/carton (so $4.80/pack if you bought them by the carton) in 1990. They were, of course, more expensive if you bought individual packs, or if you lived in the north. https://otru.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/update_may2002.pdf https://otru.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/update_may2002.p...
        • ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
          I remember visiting Canada, in the 1970s, and cigarettes were about $4 a pack. Everyone used to buy big cans of Export tobacco, and roll their own. Apparently. pre-rolled cigarettes were taxed heavily, but loose tobacco was not. I think this is still the case, in many nations. I have a friend from UK, who is always smoking hand-rolled "fags."
• andix 4y ago
  If you’re deciding to buy a subscription you should calculate the price for 2 or 3 years. So it is comparable to other things you buy. New phone (I will use it for 3 years): 1000$. Some weather app, 2.99 per month, so 107$ for 3 years, is it really worth it?
• galleywest200 4y ago
  I think banks should implement a feature where you can navigate to a tab on their website that shows you all repeating charges you have been paying for, maybe even giving estimates of total future cost. This would be very easy for them to implement. I have written to my credit union suggesting this. This is one advantage of having an app-store manage my subscriptions - I am the person who forgets what all I am subscribed to.
  • ricardobeat 4y ago
    ABN Amro does this. Their app automatically groups expenses into categories and is able to identify recurring costs. Video is in Dutch but you can get a rough idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1MJrhED4Lc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1MJrhED4Lc
  • criley2 4y ago
    A number of credit cards have apps/websites with recurring charge trackers. As much as I love credit unions, they don't do 2-5% cashback, so it can be wise to stack recurring payments onto credit cards for benefits.
  • neilalexander 4y ago
    HSBC in the UK does something like this. It detects the regular monthly outgoings from your account, like bills paid by Direct Debit or other regular payments, groups them by whether they’ve been paid yet this month or not (based on the date that you entered as your payday) and estimates what your remaining bank balance will be after the bills are all paid.
  • vorpalhex 4y ago
    Amex does this and will alert you when it finds a new recurring charge.
• BiteCode_dev 4y ago
  It reminded me of a youtube video were a chief was explaining how to cut vegetable quickly. One of the comment said: "I can cook diner with what this guy throws away". Well years ago, I used to live an entire month on what this guy spend yearly on subscriptions. I could now afford all this, but it still seems odd to me to spend so much on this. I guess old habits die hard.
• UkrainianJew 4y ago
  >At $3/coffee (black, nothing fancy) purchased on average four times per week across 4.5 years of school, the total came to roughly $1,700 $3 x 2 people x 365 days = ~$2K A decent fully automatic Espresso machine is ~$1K. You load the beans once per week, water every day, and run the descaling cycle once every few months. And these things are modular as hell: if you are not intimidated by reading a service manual and know how to get around with a multimeter, you can get replacement parts from specialty shops and maintain them yourself at reasonable cost. And the best thing is, you don't need to go anywhere. You wake up, crawl to the kitchen, press the button and enjoy the coffee.
• pixelrevision 4y ago
  What I usually do these days is subscribe to a streaming service when I want to watch something then immediately cancel my sub. If I need to extend that it’s a couple button presses away. I generally find I do not. The only service that sucks with this is Netflix, as they often delete inactive accounts.
• hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
  I just can't figure out one thing: why would one ever want to buy a Twitter subscription?
• killjoywashere 4y ago
  We came to a similar calculus, nearly the same cost of unattended subscriptions. Dropped the obvious ones, and for entertainment, we usually have 1 a month, and actively decide what we're going to bing watch.
• sylens 4y ago
  Two things from this article stick out to me: 1) The author was paying for both Bear and Craft. To me, they serve the same purpose - Markdown notes editors with a sync component. I tried both out (and liked both) but have since settled on Obsidian because I like being able to see my notes as .md files on a device I own. 2) The author mentioned Microsoft Office was a lifetime purchase in 2021 which confused me - are they are referring to Office 2019 instead of Office 365? I don't believe O365 offers a lifetime option.
  • lh7777 4y ago
    Looks like they bought the standalone Office suite, a lifetime license, for about double the price of a year of Office 365. Makes sense if you only need Office on a single PC or Mac (365 can be installed on 5 computers) and store less than 5gb on OneDrive.
  • nytesky 4y ago
    Yeah O365 is not same as Standalone Office 2019. First off his version would not include outlook at that price point. Second, the 2TB storage and mail service (and maybe personal domain?) is part of the value.
• aluminussoma 4y ago
  Hardware is also turning into a subscription-like model. You can't upgrade a component on your iPhone or Android without needing to purchase a new phone. With Macbooks, you can no longer update the hard drive, battery, and RAM. You must purchase a new Macbook. Remember the recent story about BMW charging for heated seats in South Korea, another hardware as a subscription idea. I read that Apple is considering a subscription model for iPhone devices. That will formalize what is already implicit.
  • cowtools 4y ago
    That sucks for apple users I suppose, but I don't think that's the direction the rest of the industry is taking outside of luxury brands.
  • jcubic 4y ago
    I don't know about other countries but in Poland we have subscription based phones for ages from mobile operators. You get the phone for 1PLN but you pay for it with the bill for 1-2 years, when you get another phone with new agreement. I don't know about you but I call that subscription for device.
    • n3t 4y ago
      Right but you get to keep the phone after these 1-2 years. Once it's paid, it's paid and it's yours. It's more like a consumer loan than a subscription in my eyes.
      • blfr 4y ago
        Ha, yes, you get to keep the phone, they even have to unlock it (remove the SIM lock), but you also still pay the monthly installments because it is a subscription. They just change the name of the line item to some other service. It's supposed to incentivize people to move to a new fixed term contract. But people often simply just keep paying. I only learned about that recently since I always buy my phone separately.
  • MAGZine 4y ago
• brushfoot 4y ago
  Kudos to OP for spring cleaning, but the idea of many of these being subscription services to begin with is outrageous to me. Software as a service rarely makes sense on a scale of 1. - 1Password (Family): $59/year. Replace with a shared spreadsheet. - Bear: $20/year. A markdown editor for Apple devices. - CARROT Weather: $40/year. For the weather. - Day One: $32/year. A personal journal app that runs on "unlimited devices." Why, unless writing the journal with a team of ghostwriters? - Lost It!: $28/year. Supposed to be Lose It!—a weight-loss app? Replace with books: The Blue Zones, Spark, Self-Directed Behavior. - Habitica: $63/year. Habit tracking, gamification. Replace with books. These are tactics, not technologies. Learn the tactics once and use them for life. - Ulysses: $67/year. A writing app for Macs. What could justify a recurring fee? - Squash 3: $41/year. A batch photo editor for Mac for resizing photos. Like the free IrfanView or many others.
  • karamanolev 4y ago
    - 1Password (Family): $59/year. Replace with a shared spreadsheet. Saying (Family) doesn't mean they only use it for sharing. In our family we're using it for our individual password management, sharing is just an add-on. Having it as a family plan is just cheaper. Please don't replace your password managers with spreadsheets (unless you really really know what you're doing and few people do).
  • Shank 4y ago
    > Replace with a shared spreadsheet. I really do not suggest storing passwords and sharing them with family members in a spreadsheet. Of all of the services on this list, a system that provides end-to-end encryption, autofill, generation, and sync for passwords across a family, is a fairly good rationale for a subscription. They at least offer a server side component that has to be paid for somehow. A shared spreadsheet doesn’t even come close to matching 1Password’s features.
    • brushfoot 4y ago
      > I really do not suggest storing passwords and sharing them with family members in a spreadsheet. Why not? Password-encrypt the spreadsheet if you want. The browser can do the "last mile" of autofill. Realistically, a family's going to be just as safe with an encrypted spreadsheet on OneDrive or a home file share as they would entrusting their passwords to a centralized service that's highly visible to attackers. Alternatively, just write them in a notebook. A family isn't webscale.
• Cockbrand 4y ago
  I see a lot of potential for the EU* to mandate an API that each company offering software or service subscriptions would have to implement. The goal being that every end user can have a central point where they could see all their subscriptions and cancel them at any point in time. * or any other powerful government body
  • ecedeno 4y ago
    I don't know the details behind it, but I can already cancel all of my subscriptions through an app (Grip) my Dutch bank (ABN AMRO) provides
    • Cockbrand 4y ago
      Ah, it's great that this exists! Can you give us a quick explanation how that works?
      • ecedeno 4y ago
        Most subscriptions here are paid via direct debit, which the app detects and groups under a "fixed expenses and subscriptions" category. If the charge is considered a subscription, they let you fill a generic form with some details about yourself (i.e. Address, Email, Phone, CustomerID ...) to request it be cancelled. I reckon the bank(s) requires payment providers to handle this as part of the integration for recurrent debit authorizations.
• ww520 4y ago
  BMW sells heated seat subscriptions to car owners, starting with $18 a month.
• joshe 4y ago
  One practice that's helped me is to always cancel immediately, which translates to only paying for one month. Ie. for spotify, netflix pay for the subscription, immediately jump through the hoops to cancel. Forgetfulness turns into money savings, and as a bonus I get to review whether I am getting much out of it. Especially for tv like disney/netflix/apple tv, I often run though everything interesting and don't have much else to watch with them. Also psychologically there's resistance to a boring to do that involves loss. I will put off "go to netflix and figure out how to cancel." So do that work when you are excited to see the new show.
  • XCSme 4y ago
    I wonder if there could be a service/different way to pay such that you pay for a month, it cancels at the end of the month, it renews as soon as you want to use the service again. I guess this is closer to paying pro-rata/per usage.
  • bombcar 4y ago
    This works really well, especially the year subscriptions - buy, cancel, get the year's worth. If you're using it, you'll notice when it dies and can resubscribe.
    • littlecosmic 4y ago
      This was a few year ago now, but I was caught out by Adobe because they only enabled the 'cancel' button a few weeks before the subscription was about to renew. I contacted support and they said all I could do was wait until the correct time.
      • hendersoon 4y ago
        I subscribe to the Humble Bundle, where you get 10 PC games per month for $12. The trick is they pick the games, and you may not want to pay that month. You can skip a month whenever you want, but you need to remember to do so. That's their business model, assuming people won't remember to skip. I'm frickin' iron man when it comes to this. I set a reminder on my phone every single month and haven't missed a pause yet, now over three years.
• annoyingnoob 4y ago
  I had the same idea about saving on coffee around 2003. I started making coffee at home. But I found that a drip coffee maker needs to make a minimum of about 4 cups of coffee to make proper coffee. I was only drinking 2 cups, and I was throwing away 2 cups. This seemed like a giant waste too. I used this to justify a fully automatic espresso machine that makes a variety of coffee drinks one cup at a time without extra waste. The payoff (in savings) of the fancy machine was quite long but totally worth it in the long run. The first machine was done after about 12 years and I'm on a second one now.
  • cagey 4y ago
    > I was only drinking 2 cups, and I was throwing away 2 cups. I make enough for 2 days and microwave the leftovers for 2nd days' coffee.
• hnthrowaway0315 4y ago
  I don't have any subscription aside from utility (including network). I don't watch Netflix/Disney+ (anymore) as I realized there are too many good free contents out there on YouTube and such, and modern shows are pretty much garbage comparing to X-Files and "Yes (Prime) Minister". Those two and a few similar old-timers can keep me entertained till death (I'll just loop through them every year). I don't have music subscription. Actually music subscription is a very alien idea. I buy cheap CD given the chance and they stay with me for a very long time, while subscription service could screw people if they want. The only subscription I really have a motivation to purchase are high quality magazines. I don't have any yet because I'm a bit picky at the moment. I once purchased a year of "Archaeology" but then realized I don't really get much from it. It goes a lot more in-depth with books and academic papers. Actually, with the boom of Internet, very few magazines have reason to exist. I really enjoy the PoC GTFO magazine but it's free. Anyway I'll probably keep spending $0 on magazines and more on books.
• rs_rs_rs_rs_rs 4y ago
  >The findings shook me. My current subscription tally came to $1,500 ($1,520 to be exact) per year I want to know how much you earn yearly. So let's assume this person makes $50k/y after taxes. How is 3% of your yearly income paid for stuff you use shocking? It's really not that much...
  • franciscop 4y ago
    Put it the other way. If you could have an extra $1500/year after-tax, would that motivate you to do some lifestyle changes? In EU you can travel to 3-5 countries (like a weekend trip) as a 20-something with that amount. Edit: $50k after-tax is probably even low for HN, but it's probably in the top 1% globally.
    • antisthenes 4y ago
      > If you could have an extra $1500/year after-tax, would that motivate you to do some lifestyle changes? When I was younger and poorer, maybe. Now, not really. $1500/year for things I actually use on a 50k post tax income is nothing for peace of mind and convenience and saved time. Compare it to things like health insurance that you pay $3000-4000 a year for and maybe end up not using at all if you're healthy. The problem for me, personally, is that I would be very hard pressed to find enough SAAS services I find useful to get to the $1500 number, if we exclude must-haves like utilities + internet subscription. I pay ~$60/yr for a VPS and ~$35/yr for an email provider, and that's about it.
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• xanaxagoras 4y ago
  I pay for my VPN, one health app and one productivity app. I've left a ton of software behind. I moved to self hosting, piracy, and free software alternatives that are good enough.
  • m_a_g 4y ago
    Which apps are those?
• diebeforei485 4y ago
  I went into the Subscriptions page and found a few subscriptions to cancel. Thank you Apple for making this easy to do, but they're the ones who pushed everyone into a subscription model to begin with - by staying stubbornly at 30% for purchases, but 15% for subscriptions.
• sfled 4y ago
  Somewhere along the line I automatically started internally multiplying monthly payments into yearly payments. It really helps when I'm in the decision stage.
• balderdash 4y ago
  This is a simple hack, but I just put everything that is recurring on a single credit card (auto insurance, cell phone, app subscriptions, etc)… it really strikes home to see how much your monthly nut is. It also helps to not have these charges buried in amongst Ubers, lattes, lunches, etc.
• ProllyInfamous 4y ago
  I am a retired, mid-30s, former IBEW electrician. That there are even so many subscription models, and that a single person/family could spend THOUSANDS of dollars, annually, on "apps" ... just blows my mind. Definitely, I'm "an old fogie" : I still use a pager for incoming contact; I still mainly use Mac OS 10.6/10.8; I have an iPod, which is outdated but task-specific (and I enjoy its simplicity); my kid-sister installed Pandora on the iPod, which I ENJOY (and pay for)... BUT Apple no longer offers updates for the iPod, and Pandora does not allow updating without installing an unsupported iOS. The "licensing model" most major platforms are pursuing is alarming; when my Mac Pro 5,1 goes out, I'm not sure what I'll do without my long-ago pirated edition of CreativeSuite4. ---- Reading about all the menstruation cycle tracking apps, and the criminal/civil vulnerabilities some women may/will face in some jurisdictions... is just alarming. Already, the data mined from these apps can be pretty "choice" for advertisers (e.g. hormonal cravings &c).
• Animats 4y ago
  I tend to avoid subscription services. But it means I watch more Asian drama than US TV. "Log in with your television provider?" What television provider?
• pedalpete 4y ago
  What I don't see anyone discussing is the value that the subscriptions are providing. Isn't that the real justification we should be looking for? Rather than just saying "life-time fee vs subscription"? For a time I was subscribed to Nuraphones (headphones). I had no problem with the subscription because I was getting value from the headphones. Sure, I looked at the cost of paying outright vs monthly, and the monthly made sense to me.
• bmitc 4y ago
  Corporations have essentially enacted private taxation on the public. Sure, you are paying for a service, but does the service you receive really add up to what everyone is paying for? I'm not even that old, and I still miss the time where you could simply buy software or a digital product and it didn't change out from underneath you all the time. A lot of the time, it feels like you're paying these corporations to test their software for them. For example, we went months while the voice search on our YouTube TV app went away, presumably part of some A/B testing, or when Amazon temporarily (on the order of months) removed the ability to see pending orders and pre-orders.
  • curo 4y ago
    A tax is compulsory. You cancel an app whose cost > value. The friction for canceling a government whose cost > value is much greater.
  • imgabe 4y ago
    "taxation" is being a bit melodramatic. These services require an ongoing cost on the part of the service provider to keep a backend running in order to be useful. It's not really economically feasible to have a one-time payment and provide infinite ongoing support for it. Take 1Password for example. If you paid one time you could have a local app that exists on your computer. Want to access your passwords on your phone? Well, too bad, you can't. If you want to do that, there needs to be a server which means 1Password needs to keep paying to keep a server running, hence you have an ongoing subscription cost. You could host the server yourself if you're technically capable and so inclined, but lots of people aren't so they pay someone else to do it.
    • skippyboxedhero 4y ago
      Software devs should work for free. Servers should also be free. Electricity, free. Computer hardware, free. Anything that I pay for is a tax. ...I won't work for free though.
    • deleted 4y ago
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• deanmoriarty 4y ago
  Wow, this person is wild, so much wasted money. I don’t have any digital subscription. Any, I’m not kidding. My only automatically recurring expenses are utilities: phone, internet (both subsidized by my employer) and electric. I can’t say my life has been impacted at all and I am certainly not a hermit or anything like that. My girlfriend and I live completely normal lives in a major US city. Most of the stuff is just junk.
  • standardUser 4y ago
    I also live in a major US city and everyone I know pays for at least a handful of subscriptions. Some people in my friend group share subs with each other, and/or with family. My mother and I split a few newspapers and media subscriptions. I'd say on average, most people I know pay for 5-10 subs and have access to 10-15. Yet no one can share TruTV with me! It's especially hard to imagine not having a music subscription these days.
• devney 4y ago
  I am frankly astonished by this article and all of these comments. Right now I have only 3 digital subscriptions totalling $20.58/month. (Admittedly that's low right now; I usually have an additional 2 streaming services, rotated every few months, for maybe another $25/month). The key thing to remember is that any recurring subscription costs us theoretically infinite money (given infinite time). Obviously we won't have that subscription forever, so it's up to us to calculate how much it will cost us over the next month, year, decade. Any time someone says "Just $N per month!" all I hear is "costs infinite money unless I do something about that." This thought really helps me resist leaking money like that.
  • deleted 4y ago
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  • imgabe 4y ago
    It's just a matter of cashflow. Presumably, you will continue making money. Either from salary or hopefully from investments / pension later on. Is money in > money out? Then you're good. You can keep paying infinitely if you have income infinitely.
  • noirbot 4y ago
    That seems like an unhelpful way of thinking about it. I always think about it as "I make X per Month. This thing costs Y per month. Is Y/X a reasonable amount of money to spend on a thing?" By your logic, I earn "just $N per month" so I'll earn infinite money unless I'm fired. That's obviously not a useful way to budget, but neither is thinking about $5/month as "costs infinite money". If, after taxes and mandatory expenses I have $500/month left over, then the proposition "Should I spend 1% of my discretionary money on this?" is a much more reasonable way to think about things until your financial situation changes. If I lose my job, or take a pay cut, then it's obviously time to consider cutting back unnecessary expenses, but otherwise, it's as "infinite" as my income.
    • devney 4y ago
      It is interesting to me that you have income and outflow so tightly coupled that you think in terms of "N% of income". I did that for several decades. These days I take pains to decouple income and outflow. That is: I judge the expenditure on its own merits, whether I need or want it by itself, without regard to what % of income it might be. Think of it like a leaky bucket: my paycheck goes in the top, and I control how much leaks out the bottom. Of course, I am lucky enough to have that luxury. Many people (most Americans) don't have enough income to decouple outflow from it, and are forced to think in percentages of income.
• deleted 4y ago
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• shanusmagnus 4y ago
  Related: Substack and other paid newsletters are bringing the same energy. I have just one subscription (Stratechery, which my old job paid for and which I will let lapse) but I'm gobsmacked at how many there are. Many are actually _good_ and I would like to read them, but they're not $100 / year worth of good, and yet that's like the price people default to. I'm all for peeps getting what the market will support, and I love that random obsessive genius oddballs can now theoretically make a living by going direct to their 1000 true fans, but to me the value isn't there, and I suspect most others are in the same boat. I hate myself for saying this, but I think it's time to re-bundle.
  • DataGata 4y ago
    Thanks for reminding me. I planned on doing "cycles" between my favorite substackers (buy, cancel, read the backlog, switch to a new author), but i ended up with 5 concurrent subscriptions. Canceled now.
  • Red_Leaves_Flyy 4y ago
    Of the podcasts I listen to many don’t have a monetization model at all, some are ads only, and others have patreons, or their own online storefronts. Considering all the time it would take to pay them all individually, and add their feeds to my app, and this starts to sound like a major chore. Between the time, and the cost you noted, directly supporting podcasts at this time is pretty broken for anyone that listens to more than a few podcasts.
• Sophistifunk 4y ago
  Yup. YNAB says my "software subscriptions" averages out to $92 a month, and that doesn't include Apple music, Spotify, Audible, Kayo, Prime, and Stan, which would be around $90 a month also, off the top of my head. Not sure if I should include Prime, since I signed up for the shipping, but I do watch it more often than I watch Stan. I should probably go back to torrents. I just wish I could buy/rent individual shows and movies like you do on iTunes, but each platform has such a limited range of content, I no longer feel like we've made any real progress from the old days where you'd have one big subscription to Foxtel or similar.
• maerF0x0 4y ago
  A lot of times what people dont realize when they get sticker shock from these recurring revenue models is what the price of the software would have been if the company wasn't willing to accept a future cashflow instead of the full discounted present value. I think people don't really realize how expensive life has gotten because most of us dont pay full price for anything anymore. Even the idea of $12 a month for a heated seat ruffles some feathers, but many balk at the idea of paying $1200[1] upfront for a heated seat. Perhaps because they don't have $1200, but they do have a (presumed) income stream of $12 a month. Ultimately I presume the internal rates of returns really benefit the companies (eg, maybe discounted using credit card rates) [1]: (made up number to illustrate the point)
  • skippyboxedhero 4y ago
    The heated seat comparison is pointless. The reason why this system exists is because company costs to run these products are largely ongoing. With a physical product, they release, do some updates, and then eventually release a new version to keep it going (this still largely exists with games, P2W games are the only ones who created a business model from free...and people also hate that passionately). With a digital product, you need servers which is an ongoing cost (that is sometimes a large component of overall cost) and you just keep releasing. It is actually a better system. There is no logical reason to pay monthly for heated seats (that product is a just a loan, it isn't a subscription). There are logical reasons to pay monthly for software (when things were physical, you had buy new software every couple of years...that is how the nice things appeared, stuff today is crazy, crazy cheap...monthly models definitely de-risk the financial model but prices haven't and aren't going up).
• burlesona 4y ago
  One thing I think may be underrated by many: We cancelled Amazon Prime, and besides the annual fee, we noticed that our household retail spending went down significantly. It turns out that when it takes more than 1-click to buy stuff… we buy less stuff. As far as convenience, one of the reasons we felt it was time to cancel is that we can just as easily get almost anything we wanted from Amazon direct from the seller or via Target/Best Buy/B&N/B&H. Surprisingly, this is often cheaper than Amazon (and almost never more expensive). While there’s a bit of added friction to think for two seconds which store to check, the benefit of fewer impulse buys seems worth it. Plus, we haven’t ended up with any crappy knockoffs since we bailed on Amazon.
  • elektor 4y ago
    It was the excessive knockoffs that got us to quit our Prime too. Nowadays, I forego the 2 day "free" shipping for peace of mind that the product I get is straight from the vendor and the price difference is negligible.
  • annexrichmond 4y ago
    Yeah shipping logistics as improved dramatically over the years. I live 45 mins from any city and I am constantly surprised with how quickly things arrive, usually with FedEx or UPS. I've had a BBQ arrive from Home Depot next day, and just as quick shipping from Chewy, Best Buy, and Walmart as well -- no membership required! I try to buy local in town from the hardware store, etc. before buying online. Anyway, happily cancelled Amazon Prime a couple years ago.
  • account42 4y ago
    This isn't at all surprising when you consider how pushy Amazon is with getting you to sign up to prime - they are clearly getting a lot out of it.
    • illiac786 4y ago
      They're not actually, or at least they were not making much money with it. Since they significantly hiked the prices multiple times I'm not sure it's still true.
• standardUser 4y ago
  I saved a little money last year by going through my subs and purchasing annual subscriptions where available. I think on sites like Substack and Patreon it's determined by the creator, so you might be able to message them and ask for an annual option. I found it odd that my own digital subs, which number precisely 19, have almost no overlap with the author! Only Disney+ (which I don't actually pay for) and NordVPN. I guess that's a testament to how many digital subscriptions are out there today. And a good sign that people are actually paying for things more now instead of being data-minded into oblivion or force fed grotesque ads.
• NonNefarious 4y ago
  Stupid title. Re-do.
• dreamcompiler 4y ago
  > Twitter: $36/year Why is he paying for Twitter?
• Daveenjay 4y ago
  Currently I’m working on a app that helps you keep track of your spending including subscriptions. I myself ran into this problem of what/where my money is going. Keeping track of spending habits is hard to see just from looking at your bank transactions.
• random_kris 4y ago
  I use disposable revolut cards for all my subscriptions.. Makes me only pay when I use the service in coming months
  • janandonly 4y ago
    Same here... Later i read that this is the only way to get rid of a New York Times subscription...
• michelb 4y ago
  Love reading this discussion, even though it feels to be primarily limited to unix/linux users in a US-centered echo-chamber. (I'm in Europe) Regardless of what the author is spending his money on, I think he is along the median of subscription spend in most of Europe. (counting software and services(streaming, podcast, amazon prime)) I'm not a huge fan of subscription-by-default myself but it has grown on me for certain apps/services. I used to pay $xxxx for a software package and now pay a price per month and getting way more updates, and I can easily cancel at any given time, and resume when I need to with the latest version. As a professional user, I'm amazed at the amount of people not willing to pay for their daily tools, but I guess that's another discussion.
• stefandesu 4y ago
  For some services, my friends and I are sharing accounts, even if it's not intended by the services. It works very well for streaming services (I'm fine paying €4 a month for Netflix even though I rarely use it), but with two very close friends (who I trust a lot), I'm also sharing a YNAB account because YNAB's subscription prices have become ridiculous. All in all, I pay "only" about €35 a month total for all my subscription services even though I use quite a few.